The Fanonite

Panelists discuss the alarming trend of politicians who break their promises to the lobbyists who helped elect them.

Syrian Media – The Challenge and the Need to Act. This article from Syriacomment.com by by Averroes is a revealing analysis of the Arab media wars.

With the latest events in Lebanon, Saudi channel Alarabiya is again doing what it does best, inflaming Arab public opinion against Shiites, Syria, and the Lebanese Opposition, and it is doing so using the most recklessly sectarian language imaginable. The words Shiite, Sunni, Ta’ifi (sectarian,) and Alawite, are being repeated at an alarming rate on this and similar “Moderate Arab” media outlets, in reference to the political situations in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Iran. In spite of the fact that the two sides of the power struggle in Lebanon have Sunnis, Shiites, Christians, and Druze, Alarabiya and other similar media outlets are adamant on painting everything with the ugly sectarian color.

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Adrian Monck, author of Can you trust the Media?, in the Guardian examining the medias obsession with building trust.  For more try his blog Views on the News Biz.

Why do media organisations want to wallow in trust like hippos in mud? They want to roll in it until they’re covered from head to toe. When it dries up, thanks to dodgy editing on a royal documentary promo or phoney phone competitions, such as on Ant & Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway, right, the mud cracks and it’s a “crisis”.

Trust has become a key concern in our media-obsessed age. It is the currency of Nick Davies’ Flat Earth News, in which he despairs of journalism as a profession but refuses to give it up. It may be broken, but Davies still believes what he does can somehow restore the sacred covenant between the reporter and the public through honest graft and shoe leather.

All this is well and good, but forgets one thing: the media are in the business of grabbing your attention. And that business becomes more competitive every day.

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‘No matter how much he grovels, it’s never enough’, writes Justin Raimondo.

Poor Obama. No matter how much he tries to placate the Israel lobby, they just won’t take yes for an answer. The Lobby has been after him for months, trying to dig up “evidence” that someone with the middle name of “Hussein” is necessarily an enemy of Israel. The best they could come up with so far were the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s jeremiads, which didn’t have much of an effect at the polls, as the North Carolina and Indiana primary results – and subsequent national polls – attest.

Yet Obama still keeps trying to appease the Lobby. He’s purged staff members who so much as looked cross-eyed at the Israelis, such as one poor adviser who meekly suggested that talking to Hamas might not be such a bad idea. He was out faster than you can say Mearsheimer and Walt.

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Obama faces racism in West Virginia: Many blue collar Democrats are not ready for a black President.

Today’s guest editorial on developments in Egypt and Lebanon from regular Fanonite contributor Alberto Cruz of CEPRID.

On April 6th a general strike was called in Egypt. One month later, on May 7th, another one was called in Lebanon. The causes were the same in both countries: calls for an increase in the minimum wage and improvements to workers’ statutory benefits and also to protest against the neoliberal, IMF-friendly, pro-Western political attitudes of the respective governments. The responses of the Egyptian and Lebanese governments were the same, although with different results: attempts to defuse the protests with repression, confronting the people and increasing the minimum wage as a last resort. The media account of the two strikes was the same too: minimizing the effects of the protest in government and international media, while the few media that can be described as independent in these countries reflected the strike calls’ success.

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Naomi Klein explains how “with the help of U.S. defense contractors, China is building the prototype for a high-tech police state. It is ready for export.”

Thirty years ago, the city of Shenzhen didn’t exist. Back in those days, it was a string of small fishing villages and collectively run rice paddies, a place of rutted dirt roads and traditional temples. That was before the Communist Party chose it — thanks to its location close to Hong Kong’s port — to be China’s first “special economic zone,” one of only four areas where capitalism would be permitted on a trial basis. The theory behind the experiment was that the “real” China would keep its socialist soul intact while profiting from the private-sector jobs and industrial development created in Shenzhen. The result was a city of pure commerce, undiluted by history or rooted culture — the crack cocaine of capitalism. It was a force so addictive to investors that the Shenzhen experiment quickly expanded, swallowing not just the surrounding Pearl River Delta, which now houses roughly 100,000 factories, but much of the rest of the country as well. Today, Shenzhen is a city of 12.4 million people, and there is a good chance that at least half of everything you own was made here: iPods, laptops, sneakers, flatscreen TVs, cellphones, jeans, maybe your desk chair, possibly your car and almost certainly your printer. Hundreds of luxury condominiums tower over the city; many are more than 40 stories high, topped with three-story penthouses. Newer neighborhoods like Keji Yuan are packed with ostentatiously modern corporate campuses and decadent shopping malls. Rem Koolhaas, Prada’s favorite architect, is building a stock exchange in Shenzhen that looks like it floats — a design intended, he says, to “suggest and illustrate the process of the market.” A still-under-construction superlight subway will soon connect it all at high speed; every car has multiple TV screens broadcasting over a Wi-Fi network. At night, the entire city lights up like a pimped-out Hummer, with each five-star hotel and office tower competing over who can put on the best light show.

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James Petras on Salvador Allende and Hugo Chavez examining similarities and differences on the ‘National Road to Socialism’.

I have known and advised three left wing president including President Papandreou (Greece 1981-85), President Salvador Allende of Chile (1970-73) and President Hugo Chavez.

Both Allende and Chavez share many strategic goals and embrace policies favoring the working class, peasantry and the urban poor. They also pursued programs regaining national control over the strategic sectors of the economy, redistributing land (agrarian reform), reallocating budgetary expenditures in favor of social programs for the poor and pursuing independent anti-imperialist foreign policies.

In broad historical and sociological terms, they also share a common belief in constitutional, electoral processes, in a multi-party system, a mixed economy and independent trade unions, business and civic associations.
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Jim Lobe, the best US investigative journalist, on Hizbullah foiling the latest Cheney-Neocon plan for the Middle East.

WASHINGTON - While this week’s trip by President George W. Bush to Israel, Saudi Arabia and Egypt was never conceived as a triumphant “victory lap” around the region, the swift rout of U.S.-backed forces by Lebanon’s Hezbollah Friday has provided yet another vivid illustration of the rapid decline in Washington’s influence in the Middle East during his tenure.

The events in Lebanon will no doubt cast a long shadow over Bush’s tour, which begins Tuesday. After all, it was only three years ago that he hailed the “Cedar Revolution” there as vindication of the kind of democratic transformation of the region that he insisted the invasion of Iraq was designed to launch.

Three years and a brief war between Israel and Hezbollah later, the Iranian- and Syrian-backed group appears more powerful and entrenched than ever, just as its Sunni Islamist ally in the Palestinian Territories (PT), Hamas, remains solidly in control of Gaza and grows in popularity in the West Bank in major part due to the apparent lack of progress in peace talks — formally initiated by Bush himself at Annapolis last November — between the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the Israeli government.

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What’s the BBC’s ‘Birthday’ present to Israel? A stream of propaganda following a story thats Israeli driven. Not content with 3 other, Israeli directed, Storyville documentaries (watch here), a birthday radio show (featuring 4 Israelis with one token Israeli Arab and zero Palestinians) and birthday articles (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, etc) the BBC has gone a step further and commissioned this 60 minute film by Jeremy Bowen, detailing the founding of the State of Israel. To be sure, the events are of immense import and considering their repercussions around the world, the level of coverage is merited. However it’s instructive that this documentary is called ‘The Birth of Israel’ and not for example ‘The Nakba’ - we get an idea of the focus from the start. In fact we might ask where all the Nakba articles (1?), audio and films are? Is it sufficient that it just happens to get a small mention in amongst all this ‘birthday’ nonsense?

Although this film is good in many places, covering the massacre of Deir Yassin for example, overall it fails to place the responsibility of the conflict firmly in the hands of the Israelis and Europeans. It fails to present the Palestinians as the victims of Zionist colonialism which was approved of by the Europeans because of guilt from the Holocaust and because 60 years ago the idea of colonialism, ‘civilised’ Europeans settling land that native ‘barbarians’ are wasting, was still acceptable. Time and again Israelis under interview blame the conflict on the Palestinians for not accepting the 1947 UN partition plan, where the UN carved up the land of Palestine and gave much of it to the colonialists. In the 21st century we should by now understand that the UN had no right to give away another mans home, the Zionists were incorrect in thinking they could colonise another peoples country and that resistance to this dispossession was legitimate. What nation would accept its land being given away to immigrants by the UN? Especially with such a bad deal: Israelis owning 10% of the land but getting 50% while only accounting for only 33% of the total population.

Counting the number of Israelis interviewed we find there were 11 with 10 Palestinians representatives. The number of times they appeared differs more: Israelis appearing 30 times and Palestinians 22. In a 60 minute film this approximately translates to about 8 minutes (15%) more air time. Personally I don’t believe balance is about giving both sides equal time - I follow Robert Fisks example of giving more time to the victims no matter who they are. In the ‘birth’ of Israel the victims were the Palestinian natives: 700,000 of whom were ethnically cleansed and many men, women and children were brutally massacred. This crime has continued as although under international law refugees have a Right of Return this has been denied. And Palestinians that remain in Israel and the Occupied Territories live in Apartheid conditions. Therefore its significant that they are not given priority.

The other big issue I have with the film is its failure to convey the true nature of a Two State solution. Israeli colonialism has continued with the illegal gaining of territory through military force in 1967. It is by now clear the continued Israeli rejection of peace for expansion and settlement of the Occupied Territories has led to a situation where a Two State solution is now unworkable. Only a One State solution where Israelis and Palestinians have equal rights and share the land will provide any meaningful resolution to the regions problems. The idea of a predominatly Jewish State is non-inclusive and racist, it can only be maintained through further ethnic cleansing and apartheid.

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