In recent decades, the U.S. government and news media have treated international law as a matter of convenience and hypocrisy, applying rules self-righteously when they’re useful and ignoring them when a hindrance. The dispute over Iran’s nuclear program is a case in point, as Flynt and Hillary Mann Leverett explain.
Though South Africa emerged from the cruel injustice of Apartheid to create a multiracial democracy, the country never addressed the residual inequality of wealth and property, contributing now to social unrest and political turmoil, as Danny Schechter reports from Durban.
Israel and its apologists react in fury when anyone likens the oppression of Palestinians to South Africa’s white supremacist system of apartheid toward blacks, but the comparison is growing harder and harder to dispute, a disturbing reality that ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar examines.
The anti-Arab racism that increasingly pervades modern Israel surfaces in the non-human images applied to Palestinians, such as the metaphor “mowing the grass” when targeting militants in Gaza. This tragic development traces back to the attitudes of old European imperialism, argues Lawrence Davidson.
The latest fury over Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s condemnation of Israel’s Zionist government as “an insult to all humanity” ignores the growing body of evidence that today’s Israel is evolving into an Apartheid state similar to the old South Africa, Nima Shirazi writes.
Author James Douglass, who produced a thoughtful book on President Kennedy’s assassination, has now turned his attention to the murder of nonviolent Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi in 1948, providing rare context for that momentous event, writes Jim DiEugenio.
Nearing his 94th birthday, Nelson Mandela is revered for his courageous struggle against apartheid and for racial justice in South Africa. His legendary movement drew in many reformers from around the world who made South Africa’s challenges their own, including Danny Schechter, writing from Cape Town.
Synergos, a Rockefeller family NGO, seeks common ground with anti-poverty activists around the world. But do reformist groups funded by the rich help solve problems or perpetuate them – a question addressed by Danny Schechter.
The U.S. appears on the verge of a new war in the Middle East, between Israel and Iran, but much of the casus belli traces back to the long-running dispute over the rights of Palestinians. In that context, Lawrence Davidson asks again if a one-state solution might be the only viable answer.
In the Western news media, South Africa is often treated as an African success story, with attention focused on its wealthy businessmen, its elegant neighborhoods and its glimmering malls. But the glitz obscures another reality, one of continuing inequality, poverty and injustice, as Danny Schecther observed on a recent visit.
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