- May 10, 2024
Articles
Despite ‘Good News’, Iraq is not Okay
By RAMZY BAROUD In recent months, we have been inundated by media reports bringing good news from Iraq, with countless testimonials to the great improvement in security enjoyed by the country in general and the Baghdad area in particular. This progress is attributed solely to the judicious ‘surge’ of US military presence, and the astute […]
Machiavellian Musharraf
By RAMZY BAROUD The 42-day drama in Pakistan is far from over; the declaration of emergency and the lifting of emergency are part of a charade, behind which exists a complex power play between Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, various camps within the military elite, and the US government. The Pakistani people are the least relevant […]
Politicising Gaza’s Misery
By RAMZY BAROUD Intense debate over Gaza is subsiding as the status quo is delineated — predictably — by those with the bigger guns. But to what extent can human suffering be politicised, turned into an intellectual polemic that fails to affect the simplest change in people’s lives? Hamas’s political advent in January 2006 as […]
On Romney, Mormonism and Islam
By RAMZY BAROUD Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s speech on December 6th – in which he tried to ‘explain’ his Mormon faith – was met with a mostly sympathetic reception at George Bush Library in Texas. The speech has been long anticipated, not so much for its relevance to the pressing debate on the defining […]
The True Aim of Annapolis, and Why It Failed
By RAMZY BAROUD The US-sponsored peace conference in Annapolis, Maryland was neither a success nor failure, if one accepts that its so-called objective was indeed ‘peacemaking’. From a US perspective, the meeting was, at best, a diplomatic manoeuvre on the part of the Bush administration, a last chance for becoming relevant to a region that […]
Palestine: Demoralisation and Absence
By RAMZY BAROUD A once profound and widely read commentator recently claimed he no longer writes about the Palestine/Israel conflict because "Palestinians are killing each other". Feeling his words have ceased to carry weight he simply decided not "to take sides". What should be made of such a reaction? Granted, what has transpired in Palestine […]
A Matter of Opinion
By RAMZY BAROUD What do an organic farmer from Spain, a union worker activist from Brazil and a human rights scholar living in London have in common? They are all individuals who affect substantive change in their communities and they are also individuals who are overlooked by the corporate media. The latter has its own […]
Somalia: What the News Failed to Report
By RAMZY BAROUD The people of Somalia are enduring yet another round of suffering as Ethiopian forces wreck havoc in the capital, Mogadishu. Apparently in response to an attack on one of its units, and the dragging of a soldier’s mutilated body through the city’s streets, an Ethiopian mortar reportedly exploded in Mogadishu’s Bakara market […]
Peace and Democracy
By RAMZY BAROUD After years of marked absence, the Bush administration has finally decided to upgrade its involvement in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The announcement of a Middle East peace conference in Annapolis, Maryland has raised red flags for anyone who has learned from past experience how unbalanced and insincere peace efforts actually can lead to […]
A Case for Arab Dignity
By RAMZY BAROUD The ongoing socio-economic and political ills that mar potential progress in Middle Eastern countries can largely be attributed to the ill-defined foreign policy of the United States. Utterly desperate situations have arisen whereby US clients rule with an iron fist, making prospects for a meaningful democracy sit at an all-time low. However […]
Peace Conference is New Case for War
By RAMZY BAROUD The Middle East peace conference proposed by the Bush administration is clearly a smokescreen, aimed at concealing the true intentions of US foreign policy in the region. In the predictable process of rewarding ‘moderate’ allies and chastising ‘extremist’ foes, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas will most likely receive the accolades befitting a […]
Policing Truth: The Debate on Palestine, Israel
By RAMZY BAROUD The last time I spoke publicly in the United States before my current tour was nearly four years ago. During that time I travelled the world, passing my message to people in nearly 20 countries. Wherever I went, my calls for justice for the Palestinian people and for global alternatives to racism […]
Burma is Not Iraq
By RAMZY BAROUD The 2003 invasion of Iraq has enabled two important realisations. First, that imperial powers act only to preserve their interests, and second, that humanitarian intervention — i.e. humanitarian imperialism — is touted and encouraged by the media and official circles mostly to circumvent the true self-serving intents of aggression. Granted, many Americans […]
Haider Abdul-Shafi: Passing Undefeated
By RAMZY BAROUD The recent death of Haider Abdul-Shafi could not have come at a worse time. Bearing in mind the grim shortcomings of the Palestinian leadership and the lack of any serious attempt to rectify the situation, the loss of this unique and iconic leader feels all the more acute. Here was someone who […]
Lebanon and Syria: The Politics of Assassination
By RAMZY BAROUD The assassination of Lebanese politician Antoine Ghanem on September 19 is likely to be used, predictably, to further US and Israeli interests in the region. Most Western and some Arab media have industriously argued that Syria is the greatest beneficiary from the death of Ghanem, a member of the Phalange party responsible […]
Convenient Racism: The ‘Us’, ‘Them’ and ‘Non’ Factors
By RAMZY BAROUD Racism is, among many things, convenient. It provides simplified, definite and ready-to-serve answers to complex and compounded questions. Racists, in turn, come from all walks of life; their motivation and the root causes behind their contemptible views of others may differ, but the outcome of these views is predictably the same — […]
September 11: Relevant Questions
By RAMZY BAROUD Osama bin Laden has once again managed to occupy the stage and to insist on his relevance to the story of September 11, 2001. In his most recent video message, released by Reuters a few days before the sixth anniversary of the terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon, bin Laden […]
The Shiite Power Struggle: Hardly Good News for US in Iraq
By RAMZY BAROUD The decision made by Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr to halt his Mahdi Army’s attacks on occupation forces and Iraqi security is likely to be considered the single most promising breakthrough for the US military in Iraq. Although the move comes ahead of several reports to be presented to the US Congress later […]
US Arabs and Muslims: The Search for Common Identity
By RAMZY BAROUD As the security check line began moving slowly at Washington Dulles airport, one passenger standing a few steps ahead of me appeared particularly uneasy. His dark skin, long beard, trimmed moustache, prayer spot centered on his forehead, and overall demeanor quickly gave away his identity, though he had obviously labored little to […]
Opportunism Trumps in Palestine
By RAMZY BAROUD The rash and self-defeatist behaviour emanating from Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and his close circle in the West Bank cannot possibly be intended for the benefit of the Palestinian people or for their internationally sanctioned struggle for human rights, freedom and equality. Abbas, and his self-serving Palestinian elites seem hell-bent on […]
Managing Consent: The Art of War, Democracy and Public Relations
By RAMZY BAROUD It is Edward Bernays who fine-tuned the art of public relations in the 20th century. Using many of the psychoanalytic theories put forward by his uncle Sigmund Freud, he developed a mastery of public manipulation, suggesting that such manipulation was essential to democracy itself. Bernays strongly believed that people are simply "stupid" […]
A Palestinian Miracle at the UN?
By RAMZY BAROUD For 62 years since the foundation of the United Nations’ Security Council, the Palestinians did not manage to have any kind of sway that would allow them to block or amend a proposed resolution in any meaningful way. But miracles do indeed happen, as, for the first time, and after days of […]
Alberto Gonzales and Coup Against Democracy
By RAMZY BAROUD The name of Alberto Gonzales is rapidly becoming synonymous with all that has gone wrong under the Bush administration. Repeated media discussions of the US Secretary of State in the most contentious tones have served to lay the blame for all the ailments that infected American democracy under Bush squarely on one […]
Bush’s Real Agenda in Palestine
By RAMZY BAROUD The Hamas government crackdown on Mohamed Dahlan’s corrupt security forces and affiliated gangs in the Gaza Strip in June appears to mark a turning point in the Bush administration’s foreign policy regarding Palestine and Israel. The supposed shift, however, is nothing but a continuation of Washington’s efforts to stifle Palestinian democracy, to […]
Bush’s War Policy: When Time Heals Nothing
By RAMZY BAROUD The news of recent weeks emanating from Washington and Baghdad point to one clear, if not final, conclusion: The Bush administration’s adventures in Iraq have been a complete failure. What the media have eagerly dubbed as the Republican Revolt is now reinforced by two of the most distinguished Republican senators: John Warner […]
The Alternative Media: Free Speech is Still Possible
By RAMZY BAROUD To speak of an alternative media is to acknowledge the deficiency of the prevailing media, the mainstream, in addressing the issues, catering to the concerns, and responding to the woes of the general public, the overwhelming majority of people who are almost completely disregarded by the corporate media everywhere. It is disheartening, […]
The Palestinian Left: A Lost Opportunity
By RAMZY BAROUD When Hamas members were elected as the majority bloc of the Palestinian Legislative Council, and as it became apparent that a US-led international embargo would be an adjoining price to that victory, I contacted many intellectuals and writers in Palestine, mostly those who often positioned themselves as part of the Palestinian Left. […]
Finding Lessons in Gaza’s Bloodshed
By RAMZY BAROUD The Hamas-Fatah clash that has culminated into a mini-civil war in recent weeks is both old and new, and while some of its elements are uniquely Palestinian, much of it was manufactured at the behest of US-Israeli intelligence and governments. The tensions between Fatah and Hamas are decades old. Fatah has – […]
Democracy Defeated
By RAMZY BAROUD All my forewarnings have suddenly been actualised, all at once: Gaza has descended into total and utter chaos; Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has capitulated to Israel and to the United States without a shred of reservation; and the Palestinian democratic experiment, which was until recently an astounding success, has been smashed to […]
War Foretold: Mark Twain and the Sins of Empire
By RAMZY BAROUD When I resorted to Mark Twain’s writings I attempted to escape, at least temporarily from my often distressing readings on war, politics and terror. But his “The Mysterious Stranger”, although published 1916, still left me with an eerie feel. The imaginative story calls into question beliefs that we hold as a “matter […]
