IntenseDebate - Idrees

14 years ago @ Antiwar Radio with Sco... - Pepe Escobar · 0 replies · +1 points

No shit. Where in the book does it say that?

I am pretty sure that like Escobar this fellow hasn't read Brzezinski's book. Escobar hasn't offered a single original insight in 10 years. He visits Juan Cole's blog and passes everything he reads with approrpiately embellished conspiratorial overtones to a generally passive audience who want some kind of a grand conspiracy in order to absolve themsleves from the responsibility of changing things. The Iraq war had nothing to do with oil, just as Afghanistan had nothing to do with it.

14 years ago @ Mondoweiss - http://www.philipweiss... · 2 replies · +1 points

The entire article is based on a strawman argument, and a false dichotomy. The fellow appears to have his own axe to grind. And curiously, he at no point allows empirical evidence to slow down his rhetorical flourishes.

14 years ago @ Mondoweiss - http://www.philipweiss... · 1 reply · +1 points

"He has a better grasp of Iranian politics than most western reporters I know, and he doesn't take sides; he explains sides. "

Escobar has zero understanding of Iranian politics. On most days he just picks up whatever he reads on Juan Cole's blog and passes it off as original analysis. At one point he even declared my city, Peshawar, under Taliban control. Obviously, it came as news to all of us.

14 years ago @ Mondoweiss - http://www.philipweiss... · 0 replies · +1 points

Or perhaps he genuinely believes that the person with the most votes should be president.

14 years ago @ Mondoweiss - Breakfast in Gaza with... · 0 replies · +2 points

Unlike you I have read her reports in the Times, they had little to say about the suffering of Palestinians, and much about the fate of collaborators. She's a disgrace.

Anything else I could do for you? I do like taking my orders from the literacy impaired.

14 years ago @ Mondoweiss - Breakfast in Gaza with... · 2 replies · +2 points

And I am sorry, but I also don't accept that we have anything to thank the New York Times for. So it is willing to assign a Palestinian the role of a native informer? Big deal. They need her name, so that they can legitimize their pro-Israel propaganda. And she participated with relish.

14 years ago @ Mondoweiss - Breakfast in Gaza with... · 0 replies · +2 points

Can't say I particularly care for the woman or am moved by her alleged 'nobility'. So right after Israel murders up to 1,400 innocent Gazans, the first thing she considers writing about is 'Hamas's treatment of collaborators'?

Her reporting was pathetic, and there was no 'other narrative' in the story. She was assigned the role of a native informer, and she played it to the hilt. I usually find very little that I can agree on with As'ad AbuKhalil, but all the ridicule he heaped on her "journalism" was in my view well-deserved.

14 years ago @ Mondoweiss - You can now follow Mon... · 0 replies · +1 points

Congratulations Adam! And as dalybeam put it, I applaud their judgment.

14 years ago @ Mondoweiss - Edinburgh Film Festiva... · 0 replies · +1 points

Yeah, that's what the response was. It isn't any more. As noted above, the EIFF has changed its mind.

"Ginnie Atkinson, Managing Director of the Edinburgh International Film Festival (EIFF) has confirmed that EIFF will not be taking Israeli Embassy money to help fund the 2009 film festival. Atkinson was unwilling to admit EIFF was influenced by Scottish PSC, or by the protest emails the EIFF has received since Tuesday, and said that the decision was “a natural conclusion to having realised that we had made a mistake in the first place”. Their decision follows the Scottish PSC call earlier today for a protest outside the Filmhouse in Edinburgh where the EIFF is based. Mention of the Israeli Embassy on the EIFF’s ‘Honour Board’ was removed after Atkinson and the EIFF admitted that “it was a mistake to accept the £300 from the Israeli Embassy”."

14 years ago @ Mondoweiss - Edinburgh Film Festiva... · 0 replies · +1 points

Actually this is the second year running that the SPSC has succeeded in getting the Edinburgh Film Festival to back down. Initially they had refused with a pro forma response about not discriminating against anyone who donates, and how politics and culture are separate spheres etc. SPSC has also succeeded in the past in getting keynoters at the JNF's annual galas to withdraw.

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