November 6, 2008
Posted by yaman
As soon as Obama finished giving his acceptance speech, crowds of students began to gather in the streets of Berkeley. By the time I melded myself into the march somewhere on Durant Avenue, hundreds of students had already amassed. We ran down Durant feeling that a huge weight was off our shoulders, that there were [...]
August 7, 2008
Posted by yaman
Under intense and unreasonable scrutiny from the very beginning for a perceived “closeness” to Islam, the Barack Obama campaign has once again fallen prey to the work of right-wing anti-Muslim organizations in the United States. The campaign’s freshly-appointed Muslim-American outreach coordinator Mazen Asbahi resigned after only ten days on the job following a misinformation campaign [...]
April 20, 2008
Posted by yaman
When it comes to Iran, Barack Obama says that the US needs to be careful about the use of force and must pursue other avenues, invoking George Bush and Iraq as foils to his “new foreign policy.” When it comes to Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama says that Americans should not be quick to judge the [...]
March 25, 2008
Posted by yaman
In the back and forth between the campaigns of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, I generally have had little to say. It is only today, with Clinton’s sneaky remarks about the so-called “controversy” regarding Obama’s pastor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, that I feel impelled to write about one way race has entered this campaign. It [...]
February 26, 2008
Posted by yaman
Way back in high school, I read The Good Fight by Ralph Nader. That was probably the first time I remember feeling a direct connection between the vaguely rebellious political spirit I had developed earlier, and the actual realities of the American political system. It was probably the first time I internalized the term “grassroots [...]
A Yale-sponsored conference about anti-Semitism hosted many blatantly anti-Arab and anti-Muslim speakers. It is unconscionable for a center meant to study one form of racism to indulge speakers who practice another.
(Discussion)
Both the Irish and Middle Eastern conflicts figure prominently in American domestic politics — yet both have played out in very different ways.
A must read piece by Ali Abunimah in NYT.
(Discussion)abc Primetime – How Muslims Are Treated In USA
(Discussion)
To get an idea of the real reason why Apple has succeeded, it was only necessary to look below the May article hailing the company’s success on the front page of the Times business section. A second article reported on a spate of suicides in some Chinese sweatshops that was drawing attention to work…
(Discussion)
Immediately following the incident, McCord was threatened and mocked by his commanding officer for pulling the children from the van. He says his platoon leader “yelled at me that I need to quit worrying about these ‘motherfucking kids’ and pull security.” McCord later approached a staff sergeant an…
Remember the “Collateral Murder” video leaked of the helicopter attack that killed a journalist? Here’s some insights from one of the soldiers at the scene and into the way it was handled by military personnel.
(Discussion)
Portraying “enemy” infants as proto-terrorists has obvious propaganda value: if what you thought was an innocent baby is in fact a weapon with a human face, you will be less likely to protest when it is killed. Murder becomes self-defence. Not only are we supposed to view ‘their’ children as latent …
(Discussion)
HarvardManagementCompany, which manages the university’sendowment, has divested the fund from allinvestmentsit had inIsraelcompanies.
I’m a small pariah state, hear me pout. Though I’m a scandal, don’t shut me out!
(Discussion)A mere thirty-three years ago, on January 20, 1977, Jimmy Carter inaugurated his presidency by proclaiming from the Capitol steps, “Because we are free we can never be indifferent to the fate of freedom elsewhere…. Our commitment to human rights must be absolute.” Most people had never heard of “h…
Thought provoking article for people chained to the language of human rights.
(Discussion)