| ||||||||||||||
|
Local News & Opinion
Ref. : Civic Events Ref. : Arts & Education Events Ref. : Public Service Notices Travel
Books, Films, Arts & Education
05.17 Why American Colleges Are Becoming a Force for Inequality 05.17 Why Private Schools Are Dying Out Letters
Ref. : Letters to the editor Health Care & Environment
05.23 The Canadian War on Science: A long, unexaggerated, devastating chronological indictment 05.22 Global inaction shows that the climate sceptics have already won [6:22 video] 05.22 Dylan Ratigan & Life After Cable News [5:39 video] 05.21 Ellen Page [6:49 video] 05.20 Lisa P. Jackson [6:19 video] 05.20 Climate Change Denial is Costing us Trillions, Threatening Farming, Fishing, Animals (Video) 05.20 Blinding Us From Science 05.20 The Baltimore Lead Study [3:17 video] 05.19 A Black Mound of Canadian Oil Waste Is Rising Over Detroit 05.18 Four Examples from the Last Week Prove Obama Is Full of Hot Air on Climate Protection 05.17 The Murky World of Hospital Prices 05.17 New Jersey Hospital Is the Costliest in the Nation 05.17 Angelina Jolie has done something extraordinary 05.17 Obama must Make Fighting Climate Change National Project, or Die the death of a thousand Scandals 05.17 Study: Why Pot Smokers Are Skinnier 05.16 What Will It Take for Us to Recognize That the Way We Live Could Be Destroying Life as We Know It? 05.16 How Drug Companies Keep Medicine Out of Reach Video Health Care Systems in Less Corrupt Countries News Media
05.23 WSJ Argues For Reducing Historically Low Corporate Tax Burden 05.23 PBS and the Koch Brother Scandal (plus “Koch Brothers Exposed”) [1:00:52 video] 05.22 Costs of Spying on the AP That the Establishment Ignores 05.22 Greg Sargent (and others) are playing us rubes! Daily FAIR Blog Justice Matters
05.21 Guatemala annuls Rios Montt's genocide conviction 05.21 Obama DOJ formally accuses journalist in leak case of committing crimes 05.21 The Criminal Case Against the Tea Party Cabal and Why the Justice Department Won’t Pursue It 05.21 Carl Hiaasen: IRS went after small fry, but let the big ones get away 05.18 Senator wants U.S. in oil price-fixing probe 05.18 Timothy Geithner Is Key To IRS Scandal 05.16 Why Won't the SEC Rein In the Firms That Tanked America's Economy? 05.16 Elizabeth Warren to Obama Administration: Take the Banks to Court, Already! US Politics, Policy & Culture
05.23 Six Facts Lost in the IRS Scandal 05.23 The Long, Sordid History of the American Right and Racism 05.17 The Great American Descent into Plutocracy 05.17 The Real Benghazi Scandal 05.16 Take Politics Away From the I.R.S. 05.16 Should 501(c)(4)’s Be Eliminated? 05.16 What We Mean When We Say 'Race Is a Social Construct' High Crimes?
Economics, Crony Capitalism
05.23 Deja Vu on the Hill: Wall Street Lobbyists Roll Back Finance Reform, Again 05.22 Even Before Apple Tax Breaks, Ireland’s Policy Had Its Critics 05.22 Apple Avoids Paying $17 Million In Taxes Every Day Through A Ballsy But Genius Tax Avoidance Scheme 05.22 David Dayen: The Uprising of the Second Tier in a Time of Late Capitalism 05.20 Paul Krugman’s right: Austerity kills 05.20 Is EVERY Market Rigged? 05.19 Can two senators end ‘too big to fail’? 05.18 Pope blames tyranny of capitalism for making people miserable[1:00 video] 05.18 A Simple Graph That Should Silence Austerians and Gold Bugs Forever [graph] 05.18 The Savings Heist 05.18 Sheila Krumholz and Danielle Brian on How Money Rules Washington [20:31 video] Ref. : Susan Crawford on Why U.S. Internet Access is Slow, Costly and Unfair [25:35 video] Ref. : Nurses vs. High-Speed Traders Ref. : We’re More Unequal Than You Think – Graphic: Unequal rise in income International
05.23 New Documents Reveal How a 1980s Nuclear War Scare Became a Full-Blown Crisis 05.22 C.P. Chandrasekhar and Jayati Ghosh: The Great Jobs Disaster 05.21 Jobless Youth: Europe's Hollow Efforts to Save a Lost Generation 05.21 The Job Market of 2045 [14:32 podcast] 05.19 Italy coalition: Thousands rally in Rome against cuts [graphic] 05.18 Hans Rosling: the man who's making data cool [3:19 video] 05.18 Washington gets explicit: its 'war on terror' is permanent 05.17 Egypt 'suffering worst economic crisis since 1930s' 05.16 Catholic Church Finally Decides That Austerity is Bad We are a non-profit Internet-only newspaper publication founded in 1973. Your donation is essential to our survival.
You can also mail a check to: Baltimore News Network, Inc. P.O. Box 42581 Baltimore, MD 21284-2581 |
WEIRD SOUNDING NEWS:Renunciation and Escalation: Conflicting Tides in the Terror WarThursday, 17 July 2008The fact that the Terror Warriors in Washington and London are trying to turn Islamist renunciations of terrorism into another prop to justify their own violence does not lessen the development's importance in the real world.
As we noted here last year, "an important development has been taking place in the real "war" on terror -- not the profit-making, fear-and-domination machine of the Bush Administration's devising, but the genuine struggle to quell the violence of Islamist extremism. Yet despite the great potential of this breakthrough, an overwhelming majority of Americans have never heard of it. Certainly it has not been featured -- or even mentioned -- by the corporate press and government PR engines in the United States. And why not? Because it is a breakthrough toward peace -- and peace, as we all know, is not boffo box office." Britta Sandberg has a new article on this topic at Salon.com, updating the developments since the spark for last year's story: the stunning renunciation of violence by one of the co-founders of al-Qaeda, the Egyptian doctor Sayyid Imam al-Sharif. Sandberg focuses on a former Libyan terrorist, Noman Benotman, as an example of the trend, and also notes the fatwa against violence issued this spring by the hardline Deoband faction:
Sandberg also notes the founding of UK-based group, the Quilliam Foundation, set up by former militants. But this group is more problematic than Sandberg allows in her story. It is now heavily backed by the UK government, and some of its members have simply converted their Islamic extremism into anti-Islamic extremism. Recently, its most high-profile adherent, Ed Hussain, who wrote a best-selling book about his turn from extremism, was instrumental in sabotoging an important UK conference examining "the diversity of Muslim art and culture" in Britain and drawing moderate, mainstream Muslim forces into a greater political and social engagement, as Seamus Milne notes in the Guardian:
But plans for government ministers to take part were scuttled by attacks from Hussain and the Tory party and press, who claimed that some of the event's organizers "had had links with Hamas or the Muslim Brotherhood, though the details are contested," as Milne reports:
But "sponsorship of clients and stooges" is the lifeblood of Anglo-American policy, and has been for decades. British and American leaders have never been interested in genuine engagement with other political or cultural viewpoints; they want acquiesence, obedience – or else. And as wholesale purveyors of political violence, they much prefer dealing with violent extremists – either by supporting them or fighting them (or, as in Iraq, doing both at the same time) – than coming to terms with more moderate forces who seek peaceful accomodation of diverse interests within society. That's too much like hard work. Still, the fact that the Terror Warriors in Washington and London are inevitably trying to turn Islamist renunciations of terrorism into another prop to justify their own violence does not lessen the development's importance in the real world. To be sure, this renunciation trend is in no danger of turning into a movement of satyagraha. Most of the Islamists renouncing terrorism against civilians still support the idea of open armed conflict against those "directly attacking Muslims." And as we noted last year:
But not, as noted above, among the Terror Warriors. Again, last year's observations still hold true:
Of course, the emphasis on the "Bush Faction" in the preceeding passage is a bit misleading. Because the "War on Terror" is not simply a Bushist operation; on the contrary, it is enthusiastically embraced by the entire bipartisan Washington establishment. For example, Barack Obama has made it a linchpin of his national security strategy, especially with his intention to escalate the conflict in Afghanistan, which he calls a "war we have to win": words that should chill the blood of everyone who recognizes the implications of such an open-ended commitment. For if we "have" to "win" in Afghanistan – if defeat is not an option (just as Bush and McCain say of Iraq) – then what won't we do to secure that victory"? After all, Obama has pledged himself to what has become the most sacred, bipartisan principle of American foreign policy: no president should ever take any option "off the table." [For more on this, see Arthur Silber's devastating essay, Songs of Death.] What a strange pass we have come to: a founder of al Qaeda has taken extremist Islam's most potent weapon "off the table" – while the would-be heirs of Jefferson and Madison adamantly refuse to forego anything -- even the threat of nuclear terror -- in an endless global war that has already killed hundreds of thousands of innocent people. Chris Floyd has been a writer and editor for more than 25 years, working in the United States, Great Britain and Russia for various newspapers, magazines, the U.S. government and Oxford University. Floyd co-founded the blog Empire Burlesque, and is also chief editor of Atlantic Free Press. He can be reached at cfloyd72@gmail.com.This column is republished here with the permission of the author. Copyright © 2008 The Baltimore News Network. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Baltimore Chronicle content is expressly prohibited without their prior written consent. Baltimore News Network, Inc., sponsor of this web site, is a nonprofit organization and does not make political endorsements. The opinions expressed in stories posted on this web site are the authors' own. This story was published on July 17, 2008. |
| ||||||||||||