Articles

After less than a month in office, US president George W. Bush left no doubt about his combative attitude to Iraq: like father, like son. George W.’s approach is one of gunboat diplomacy based on the unbridled use of force without scruple.

The last colonial outpost in the heartland of Islam is crumbling under the power of the intifada. The overwhelming vote for war-criminal Ariel Sharon in the Israeli elections (February 6) is a sign of zionist desperation in the face of the Palestinians’ achievements.

It is true that American and European traders and expatriates are the backbone of the multimillion-dollar market for smuggled alcohol in Saudi Arabia, and take the lion’s share of the proceeds.

Since he became president last July, Bashar al-Asad of Syria has initiated a process of political and economic reform. Asad has issued a series of decrees and submitted several draft laws to the country’s People’s Assembly (parliament) dealing with various aspects of Syrian political and socio-economic life.

Tens of thousands of Afghani refugees are at risk of starvation as a result of a three-year drought compunded by US-led Western sanctions. More than 100,000 have been forced to seek shelter in makeshift refugee-camps in Pakistan...

As president Jacques Chirac of France received Robert Kocharyan, the Armenian head of state, who arrived in Paris on February 12 for a five-day state visit...

The Russian government claimed on February 20 that the London School of Economics was being used as a recruitment ground for “Chechen terrorists”.

The US media’s anti-Islam bias is well known; it is reflective of the establishment’s views. Academia in the US, however, used to pride itself on being free of such biases, yet of late the anti-Muslim virus seems to have infected these so-called bastions of intellectual freedom as well.

STEPS TO AN ECOLOGY OF THE MIND by Gregory Bateson, with a new foreword by Mary Catherine Bateson

Imperial Israel and the Palestinians: the Politics of Expansion by Nur Masalha. Pub: Pluto Press, London, UK, 2000. Pp: 320; Pbk: £14.99.​​​​​​​