Whither, American journalism: CNN vs. Al-Jazeera

Yesterday, WikiLeaks leaked a video exposing a US government cover-up of the killing of 2 Reuters cameramen in Iraq in 2007. Juan Cole writes that an attack, also captured in the video, on people trying to help the wounded may constitute a war crime.

“Surprise, surprise! More ‘angry Muslims’ killing people!”

The recent clashes between Han Chinese and Turkic Uighurs in China’s Xinjiang province have made the front pages here in the States and around the world as of late.

Headlines flashing “Tensions worsen in China’s West,” “Deadly ethnic Violence in China,” and “Uighurs vs. Han Chinese” have been the some of the eye-catching titles of some of this past week’s articles and news reports about the violence and the bloodshed in the former Islamic Uighur Kingdom.

Speaking of Authoritarianism

The Kingdom of Jordan is striking down hard against a serious threat to its security, a member of one of the most venomous and destabilizing crafts the in the world: a poet.

Thinking that the 27 year-old poet Islam Samhan’s words could bring down monarchs, A Jordanian court sentenced the wordsmith to a year in prison and fined him $14,100.

As Iranians Struggle for Reforms…

Saudi Arabia, that bastion of freedom, continues its existential ridiculousness by arresting 67 guest workers at a party for reportedly wearing women’s clothes.

The men are Filipinos and the Philippine embassy says they have since been released.

They now face charges of imitating women, and possession of alcohol.

The Saudi authorities were tipped off to this egregious transgression by the Saudi newspaper, al-Riyadh, which said those arrested were celebrating the Independence Day of the Philippines at a private party in the Saudi capital on 13 June.

Glenn Greenwald Pounds the New Republic

Following on Kalash’s post about the media’s hypocritical love affair with Iran’s imprisonment of Roxana Saberi, you have to read Glenn Greenwald’s devastating rebuke to this myopic, selective advocacy of press freedom. He makes the same point as Kalash about the American government’s detention of journalists, who have been held for years with no trial [...]

Saberi’s Release & its Implications for US-Iran Relations

In case you haven’t heard, US-Iranian journalist Roxana Saberi is free after being locked up in an Iranian jail for a few months under questionable circumstances. Her sentence was reduced to a suspended two-year term and she was ordered released. She was also banned from practicing journalism in Iran for five years and is on [...]

More Reasons to Show Disdain for Israel

In case dispossessing the Palestinian people, setting up an exclusivist state that welcomes just about every non-Palestinian who claims some nominal strain of Judaism as a faith, and continuing to oppress and occupy the people they stole the land from isn’t enough, here are new reasons to show disdain for Israel. This list of recent [...]

The Qur’an: Always Applicable?

Popular Moroccan weekly TelQuel is apparently at it again (and by “it” I mean controversy). The cover story on the issue set for release tomorrow is entitled “Le Coran: Est-il vraiment applicable ‘en tout temps et en tout lieu?’” (or “The Qur’an: is it really applicable ‘at all times and in all places?’”) TelQuel (which [...]

Gaza: Fighting for liberty even if the price is death

For the tenth night in a row, Israeli warplanes pounded the densely populated refugee camps of the Gaza Strip. By daybreak, 18 Palestinian civilians had been killed, all in their homes as they cowered with their families. The Israeli artillery and navy were also involved last night. The targets were, without fail, civilian institutions and [...]

Can’t even attend a funeral…

Today started in a somber fashion for me, with the news that a colleagues mother had passed away suddenly yesterday evening. Death and tragedy are universal, but nothing is quite ordinary when you live under occupation-whether it is driving from one town to the next, or trying to attend a funeral. The colleague in question [...]