Tag: usa

Visualizing ideology: Movies, politics and the working class

Posted on By 3arabawy

Labor Vs. Capital in the Age of Silent Film:

Visual images can often be far more powerful than words. Back in late 1800s, when New York City’s infamous Boss Tweed was asked why he had offered cartoonist Thomas Nast $500,000 to stop drawing caricatures of him and his cronies, Tweed replied: “I don’t care so much what the papers write about me–my constituents can’t read; but they can understand pictures.”
The same is true today. Movies and mass media most impact us in the areas we know the least about.

Battleship Potemkin

Bush cites Israel as model of democracy for Iraq

Posted on By 3arabawy

From AP:

President Bush held up Israel as a model for defining success in Iraq, saying Thursday that the goal of the U.S. mission there is not eliminating attacks but enabling a democracy that can function despite continuing violence.
With his Iraq policies under increasing fire from the American public and lawmakers from both parties, Bush went to the U.S. Naval War College here to declare progress. As the president pleaded for patience, his top national security aide went to Capitol Hill to meet with a key Republican critic.

Hamas’ victory in Gaza is a blow to Bush’s plans

Posted on By 3arabawy

Via Socialist Worker:

The stunning military victory by the Palestinian Hamas movement over the rival Fatah organization in the Gaza Strip last week was a strike against imperialism in the Middle East.
The US and its allies have described the Islamist group Hamas’s driving out of Fatah from Gaza as a “military coup” aimed at creating a “mini Taliban state”.
It is nothing of the sort. Hamas is the democratically elected Palestinian government. Its victory last week stopped an attempted military takeover sponsored by the US and its Israeli and Egyptian allies.
George Bush rushed to embrace the “Fatah moderates” in “the battle with extremism”.
Yet it is Bush who has worked hardest to strip Fatah of any credibility among the Palestinians by failing to deliver even the smallest concession in return for its recognition of Israel.
The showdown came last week after the attempted assassination of Hamas prime minister Ismail Hanaiya.
Angry Hamas fighters moved to crush what they considered to be the beginning of an Egyptian-inspired coup. Abandoned by its supporters, Fatah crumbled.
Hundreds of its fighters surrendered or walked away from the battle. Others fled across the border into Egypt.