Posts Tagged ‘politics’
In the short history of social media, Kony2012 is now the most viral video ever, having reached 100 million views inside six days. Its success has been quickly examined by media analysts and some of the early findings are fascinating for what they reveal about the spread of information in the new media economy. The…
The killing of Osama Bin-Laden is another of those issues in which politics is located in or around the image. However, the debate about the rights or wrongs of releasing the post-mortem photograph obscures the fact that any such image will inevitably have been staged. I’ve read the many arguments calling for the release of…
The Israel Defense Forces have completed five investigations into claims of war crimes during the war on Gaza and concluded, unsurprisingly, that those claims are unfounded. As an IDF spokesperson said: “The bottom line is that the IDF conducted itself in an appropriate manner within the limits of international law.” Given the points raised in…
“The underlying meaning of the attack on the Gaza Strip, or at least its final consequence, appears to be one of creating terror without mercy to anyone.” That is the conclusion of an independent study jointly commissioned by Physicians for Human Rights-Israel and the Palestinian Medical Relief Society. It chimes with The Guardian’s investigation into…
Early indications about the emerging Obama doctrine in foreign policy are positive. As Jonathan Freedland wrote in the Guardian, repudiation of the Bush legacy, some plain talking and a few imaginative diplomatic initiatives are all good. But last week there was a disturbing turn, in the withdrawal of Charles Freeman’s appointment to the National Intelligence…
How one thinks about Israel’s war on Gaza depends on where one begins the story. For conservatives like Alan Dershowitz, Hamas declared war against Israel with its rocket attacks in late 2008, meaning that Israel had the right under the UN charter (despite its long history of ignoring UN Security Council resolutions) to take whatever…
It was all about the expectations. Would Obama be true to the progressive ethos of his campaign, or would entering office dull the prospects for change? At the end of week one – too early to offer any definitive conclusions, to be sure – things are looking unexpectedly good. Obama was never going to be…
