Category: Media perspectives

The Nakba 2012

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By Richard Falk

The recent parallel hunger strikes in Israeli prisons reignited the political imagination of Palestinians around the world, strengthening bonds of ‘solidarity’ and reinforcing the trend toward grassroots reliance on nonviolent resistance Israeli abuses.

The crisis produced by these strikes made this year’s observance of Nakba Day a moral imperative for all those concerned with attaining justice and peace for the long oppressed Palestinian people whether they be living under occupation or in exile. The Palestinian mood on this May 14th, inflamed by abuse and frustration, but also inspired by and justly proud of exemplary expressions of courage, discipline, and nonviolent resistance on the part of imprisoned Palestinians who are mounting the greatest challenge of organized resistance that Israel has faced since the Second Intifada.Read More »

The 1300 Palestinians on hunger strike in Israeli prisons: Where is the media attention?

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By Richard Falk

Can anyone doubt that if there were more than 1300 hunger strikers in any country in the world other than Palestine, the media in the West would be obsessed with the story? It would be featured day after day, and reported on from all angles, including the severe medical risks associated with such a lengthy refusal to take food.

At this time two Palestinians who were the first to start this current wave of resistance, Thaer Halaheh and Bilal Diab, entering their 64th day without food, are reported by the prisoner protection association, Addameer, and the NGO, Physician for Human Rights-Israel, to be in critical condition with their lives hanging in the balance. Despite this dramatic state of affairs there is scant attention in Europe, and literally none in North America.Read More »

Consequences of Annan’s questionable stalemate in Syria

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By Jonathan Power

The Syrian cease-fire supports the status quo – the armed might of the government on one side and the armed opposition factions on the other. The government cannot eradicate the rebels although it can brutalise them. But neither can the armed opposition hope to topple the government which retains its popularity in the capital, Damascus, and in many other parts of the country where Shiite Islam and the Alawites are a majority.

Is this what the world wants? Are the members of the UN and its former secretary-general, Kofi Annan, who has negotiated this cease-fire, aware of the implications of this? Read More »

If it bleeds it leads!

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By Jonathan Power

If it bleeds it leads! The mantra of many a newsroom. In their new book, “Pax Ethnica” two great journalists, Karl Meyer and Shareen Brysac, argue that day in and day out ethnic conflict and tension along religious and cultural lines makes for reliable, if dispiriting, headlines.

Journalists regularly play plenty of attention to failed states, sectarian violence and societies at the breaking point. But what about those unsung exceptions, the communities of the world where diverse groups live together in harmony?Read More »

New media report confirms violence to be much more important than peace

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A new report by Media Tenor and the Institute for Economics and Peace shows that violence still outrules peace in the international TV media. Yet, certain aspects of the study are questionable – how to measure peace quantitatively?

By Jan Oberg and Ida Zidore

We all have a feeling of what peace is. Yet, defining it more precisely is not so easy. It belongs to the category that philosophers have called ‘essentially contested concepts’ – also used about freedom, justice and, say, democracy. Being somehow elusive, perhaps the best we can hope to achieve is intelligent discussions about how to approach peace, rather than defining it precisely.

There are those who jump the philosophy, conceptuality and definitions and go directly to quantifying peace. By means of some “indicators” readily available in data bases they put together a composite measure that enables them to rank-order countries. Developing such hit lists – for happiness, development, corruption, etc.- has become a kind of industry in recent years. Read More »

What the Arab League report on Syria also stated – but you hardly knew from the media

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By Michel Chossudovsky

We publish this post right after China and Russia have vetoed the UN SC Resolution draft. Perhaps the situation in Syria is a bit more complex than you are generally told?

I’d like to bring to the attention of our readers the Observers’ Mission Report of the League of Arab States (AL = Arab League) to Syria.

The report acknowledges the existence of “an armed entity” involved in the killings of civilians and police as well as the conduct of terrorist acts, which in turn have contributed to triggering actions by government forces.Read More »

Iran, the EU and what we should have learned by now*

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By Jan Oberg

On Monday the 23rd of January 2012, the EU’s 27 members unanimously decided to stop their oil import from Iran on July 1 this year. That sort of policy is considered benign in comparison with warfare. It won’t be when seen in the long run.

Sanctions usually have the opposite consequences of those “intended”. Secondly, as we know from the Iraq case, they are part and parcel of a build-up to war and will have, in the longer run, devastating, cruel consequences for innocent civilians whose lives are already hard.

How come EU leaders seem not to see the counterproductivity of their decisions? Do they not know that they contribute to a build up to a war that will be much more catastrophic than that on Iraq both for the region, for themselves and for the economy they otherwise try to keep from even deeper crisis?

Virtually everyone speaking on behalf of their country or the EU as a whole point out the risks of escalating the conflict; it may eventually lead to a spiral, one or more counter measures by Iran and a tit-for-tat dynamics that could – could – go out of hand. The next they therefore say, as if to soothe their own fears, is that war must be avoided and that, rather, sanctions and other types of pressures serve only one purpose: to get the Iranians to the negotiation table.

Don’t they know the basics of psychology?

This is pathetic and militates against everything one knows about psychology.Read More »