Media Review Network – Page 1055 – Providing Context and Substance

Taliban chief blames blackwater for peshawar blast

by MRN
January 1, 2013July 25, 2013

(source: OutlookIndia.com)

Pakistani Taliban chief Hakimullah Mehsud has claimed that the controversial American security firm Blackwater was behind the deadly bomb attack on a market in Peshawar that killed over 100 people.

Hakimullah questioned why the Taliban should target the public when it was capable of carrying out attacks in Islamabad and targeting the army’s General Headquarters.

In an interview with BBC Urdu, he claimed Blackwater and "Pakistani agencies" were involved in attacks in public places to discredit the militants.

The south Africa lobby

by MRN
January 1, 2013July 25, 2013

by Jeffrey Blankfort

(source: MONDOWEISS)

I wrote this for Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s City Lights Review in 1990. I thought of it when I read Yoel Marcus in Haaretz that if there had been 5 million Afrikaners in the US, there would still be apartheid in South Africa.

If South Africa had a lobby as powerful as the Israeli lobby…

* Nelson Mandela would not be free.
* There would be no sanctions against South Africa.
* South Africa would be the largest recipient of US aid.
* The African National Congress would still be outlawed.
* Congress would have endorsed the idea that apartheid is not racism.
* Pro-apartheid forces cloaked as peace-makers would try to control the anti-apartheid movement.
* Public television would require "balanced" reporting to counteranti-apartheid programs.
* Journalists. academics and others who criticized apartheid would be targets of character assasinations.
* The struggle of the Boers against the British for control of South Africa would be considered a "national liberation struggle."
* South Africa would ultimately be defended as the only "democracy" in Africa.

Taliban declineUSoffer of 6 provinces for 8 bases

by MRN
January 1, 2013July 25, 2013

By Aamir Latif

(source:Islam Online)

ISLAMABAD The emboldened Taliban movement in Afghanistan turned down an American offer of power-sharing in exchange for accepting the presence of foreign troops, Afghan government sources confirmed.

"US negotiators had offered the Taliban leadership through Mullah Wakil Ahmed Mutawakkil (former Taliban foreign minister) that if they accept the presence of NATO troops in Afghanistan, they would be given the governorship of six provinces in the south and northeast," a senior Afghan Foreign Ministry official told IslamOnline.net requesting anonymity for not being authorized to talk about the sensitive issue with the media.

Waging war on students

by MRN
January 1, 2013July 25, 2013

A Palestinian girl daydreams at school

By Stuart Littlewood – London

(source: Palestine Chronicle)

If there’s one thing the Israelis are good at it’s making war on women and children.

They killed 952 Palestinian children in their homeland between 2000 and the start of the Gaza blitzkrieg in December 2008 (according to B’Tselem statistics). They murdered at least 350 more during their Cast Lead onslaught and have kept Gaza under daily attack ever since. So the brave Israelis must have eliminated nearly 1400 youngsters by now. Would anyone care to guess how many they left bleeding, maimed and crippled?

The "most moral army in the world" also loves waging war against Palestinian university students. Not long ago I wrote about Merna, an honors student in her final year majoring in English. Israeli soldiers frequently rampaged through her Bethlehem refugee camp in the middle of the night, ransacking homes and arbitrarily arresting residents. They took away her family one by one. First her 14-year-old cousin and best friend was shot dead by an Israeli sniper while she sat outside her family home during a curfew.