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Michael Schwartz , TomDispatch.com, Oct 24, 2008

As the Smoke Clears in Iraq: Even before the spectacular presidential election campaign became a national obsession, and the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression crowded out other news, coverage of the Iraq War had dwindled to next to nothing. National newspapers had long since discontinued their daily feasts of multiple – usually front page – reports on the country, replacing them with meager meals of mostly inside-the-fold summary stories. On broadcast and cable TV channels, where violence in Iraq had once been the nightly lead, whole news cycles went by without a mention of the war.

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carte israel palestine

The Century of the Self

How politicians and business learned to create and manipulate mass-consumer society.

Episodes: One |  Happiness Machines

Episode Two  | The Engineering of Consent
Adam Curtis, The Century of the Self tells the untold and sometimes controversial story of the growth of the mass-consumer society in Britain and the United States. How was the all-consuming self created, by whom, and in whose interests?

Freud provided useful tools for understanding the secret desires of the masses. Unwittingly, his work served as the precursor to a world full of political spin doctors, marketing moguls, and society’s belief that the pursuit of satisfaction and happiness is man’s ultimate goal.

Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3 – Part 4

Source :  Information clearinghouse

DAMASCUS, 30 June 2008 (IRIN) –
“Everything is more difficult to afford now, and it will get worse,” he said, amid the dough and ovens of his bakery in the middle class district of Shalan in Damascus.

The availability of cheap food has been a cornerstone Syrian domestic economic policy.

However, there are growing doubts among ordinary people and analysts as to how much longer the country can remain relatively insulated from the global food crisis which has sparked riots in over 30 countries, including Egypt, where a similar authoritarian socialist government is in place.

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Tuesday, July 15th, 2008

Assyrians, the indigenous people of the Middle East, leave home
by Salim Abraham July 07, 2008 (photo of Salim in London)

On a sizzling summer afternoon in 1974, my mother was trailing behind me, running hastily home to escape one of the stone battles that raged between neighbourhoods in Syria’s northeastern city of Qamishli.

Once we crossed the sand bridge that separated the Assyrian quarter from the rest of the city, we were out of the slingshots’ range.

This one was the last battle youngsters from the Assyrian quarter fought against Khanika, a neighboring Kurdish quarter, as the government soon tightened its policing of neighbourhoods.

The weapons in the battle were giant slingshots (called stone canons) and ghee can lids; the ammunition was stones. It was like a real war with trenches dug along the frontlines of the fighting neighbourhoods.

At the time, I was seven years old. I didn’t understand what was going on; why such wars broke out. The only thing my mother told me was: “It’s a fight between us and the Kurds.”

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Lebanon, July 2006

More pictures here
Type Lebanon 2006 on google and you will get plenty of information
Type Qana and you will get this
Hayawan !

Former White House Press Secretary, Scott McClellan accuses President Bush of “self-deception.” Arab media feels vindicated. Is the U.S. engaged in “political propaganda” and misinformation? Do you remember Al Sahhaf?

Answers to these questions and more on Link TV’s Mosaic Intelligence Report presented by Jamal Dajani.

More on the topic

WASHINGTON (AP) — Human beings may have had a brush with extinction 70,000 years ago, an extensive genetic study suggests.

Geneticist Spencer Wells, here meeting an African village elder, says the study tells “truly an epic drama.”

The human population at that time was reduced to small isolated groups in Africa, apparently because of drought, according to an analysis released Thursday.

The report notes that a separate study by researchers at Stanford University estimated that the number of early humans may have shrunk as low as 2,000 before numbers began to expand again in the early Stone Age.

“This study illustrates the extraordinary power of genetics to reveal insights into some of the key events in our species’ history,” said Spencer Wells, National Geographic Society explorer in residence.

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I am a little late with this news from April 8. It had not escaped my attention but I was just too busy.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — Hungry Haitians stormed the presidential palace Tuesday to demand the resignation of President Rene Preval over soaring food prices and U.N. peacekeepers battled rioters with rubber bullets and tear gas.

A man walks past burning tires set alight during food price protests in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on Monday.

Rioters were chased away from the presidential palace but by late afternoon had left trails of destruction across Port-au-Prince. Concrete barricades and burned-out cars blocked streets, while windows were smashed and buildings set on fire from the capital’s center up through its densely populated hills.

Outnumbered U.N. peacekeepers watched as people looted businesses near the presidential palace, not budging from the building’s perimeter. Nearby, but out of sight of authorities, another group swarmed a slow-moving car and tried to drag its female driver out the window.

“We are hungry! He must go!” protesters shouted as they tried to break into the presidential palace by charging its chained gates with a rolling dumpster. Moments later, Brazilian soldiers in blue U.N. helmets arrived on jeeps and assault vehicles, firing rubber bullets and tear gas canisters and forcing protesters away from the gates. Watch Haitians protest at the presidential palace »

Food prices, which have risen 40 percent on average since mid-2007, are causing unrest around the world. But nowhere do they pose a greater threat to democracy than in Haiti, one of the world’s poorest countries where in the best of times most people struggle to fill their bellies.

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