On 'Hamastan'...

Days after the Hamas takeover, 'pro-Western', pro-Abbas propagandists have conjured up a new and scary title with which to refer, pejoratively, to Gaza - 'Hamastan'. Officials and journalists have already started to use the phrase openly (see here, here, and here), some even going so far as to claim that "a new Islamist state is emerging", or that "Gazans now find themselves living under an illegal, self-proclaimed Islamic Republic" (at which point I feel it should be noted that Hamas received a clear parliamentary majority, especially in Gaza), later referred to in the same (hilarious) article as "the terrorist state of Hamastan" (another, here). Besides being outright lies, these allegations completely ignore the fact that the deposed legitimate Palestinian Prime Minister, Hamas's Ismail Haniyeh, has repeatedly called for the resumption of the representative national unity government, as well as clearly indicating that Hamas intends to work and negotiate with Abbas. This, however, is looking less likely each day, as Abbas moves further away from dialogue, and closer towards co-operating with foreigners willing to help him consolidate power ("Bush backs Abbas Cabinet; U.S. Poised to Resume Aid").

As the BBC notes, 'key powers' (being the U.S., European leaders, and Israel) are more than willing to back the Palestinian government - a sure sign that that the Palestinian leadership is now wholly unrepresentative, and, one might say, 'under control'. In fact, it would appear that these 'key powers' are the only supporters of Abbas's new governmnet. Journalist Peter Beaumont of The Observer summarizes;

It was a good election, as former US President Jimmy Carter observed at the time, a free, fair and accurate expression of the desires of a Palestinian people sick of the uselessness, corruption and gangsterism of Fatah. The problem was that it didn't quite reflect the wishes of Washington and the international community...

Beaumont provides us with the newly appointed Prime Minister Salam Fayyad's 'democratic credentials' (which, predictably, are few);

...in last year's elections to the Palestinian Legislative Council - the election Hamas won - Fayyad's list secured just 2.4 per cent of votes. Not exactly a popular guy to lead a society in collapse... That is not his only problem. Analysts of the Palestinian political scene don't rate Fayyad's lack of democratic credentials simply on his feeble showing in the elections.

They'll tell you he is largely unknown to most Palestinians; that he has no party machinery to support him; and that his running mate Hanan Ashrawi is unpopular with many Palestinians.

Taken together, Fayyad's vast unpopularity amongst Palestinians and his being the choice-representative of Western statesmen, his appointment as Prime Minister speaks volumes about the new Abbas dictatorship.

Beaumont has also written a piece entitled, ‘How Hamas Turned on Palestine’s Traitors’ that serves as a nice follow up for an article cited in my previous post detailing a Fatah member’s praise for Hamas’s actions in Gaza. Beaumont explains that;

…the leaders of Hamas had in mind a different solution to Gaza's corrosive security crisis: a definitive attack on… the security institutions still controlled by Fatah and Abbas, which had been bolstered by US funds.

Discreetly, Hamas had forged links with members and former members of Fatah with whom it was happy to deal. It had drawn up a list of buildings belonging to the security forces of Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen, to be overrun, and lists of Fatah loyalists it blamed for the murder of Hamas members. Finally, it had briefed journalists on the Hamas-controlled television channel al-Aqsa TV on the message to broadcast to Gaza's 1.4 million people to reassure them, as the fighting turned from clashes to an all-out assault on Fatah-held positions.

It was a message that would dramatically underline the nature of last week's assault. It was not an attack on Fatah, the broadcasts would insist, or Gaza's people. Instead, those under attack, the supporters of Gaza's head of the Preventive Security Force, Mohammed Dahlan, were 'collaborators with Israel and the US and traitors'…

Beaumont cites a Gaza resident who reports that, “some officers in the Presidential Guard had sent their men home as the fighting began”. Another resident speaks of the motivation of the Hamas fighters and Dahlan’s organization of Fatah’s security services in Gaza (some more testimony can be found here);

…'Some [Hamas fighters] fought for four days without going home. They believe in what they're doing. The others, Fatah security forces, fought for their thousand shekels (£120) or a packet of cigarettes. Dahlan had used poverty to recruit the people. The majority didn't even turn up to defend their stations, many stayed at home. Most were in plain clothes. Dozens called the Qassam and said, "We want to leave, give us security and a safe passage." Most of the decent security people don't want to fight for Dahlan, or Israel or America. They don't feel they should be killed for the American or Israeli agenda.'

Mohammad Dahlan, by the way, is coming under intense criticism from fellow Fatah members in Gaza for abusing his power (to put it mildly...) over the Palestinian Authority security services. They are calling for his trial.

Abu Obaida, the spokesperson for Hamas’s Qassam Brigades, is also quoted in Beaumont’s article as stating that;

'Hamas has issued a full pardon to all the security leaders and personnel who participated in the fight against Hamas. Our fight is not against Fatah, the one with the long history in the struggle, but against just one group of Fatah agents who were following the Zionist agenda. The decent people of Fatah were co-ordinating with us and are happy we have got rid of the corrupt people of Fatah…

In line with this, it appears as though Fatah fighters and officials are being urged to return to Gaza from Egypt, where they fled to during the battle.

On a final note, I’d like to direct readers to this frighteningly hilarious piece from the editors of U.S.A. Today, entitled ‘Dealing With Hamastan’ – according to which U.S. meddling in Palestine amounts to “good intentions in a bad neighborhood”, and Hamas is characterized as “Shiite and linked to Iran” (they really dropped the ball on that one…). “The real need”, according to U.S.A. Today, “is to force Hamas political leaders to understand that they need to gain control of their militias and find a way to negotiate with both Fatah and Israel. That suggests a role for a credible negotiator — perhaps Saudi Arabia or Egypt”. The fact that Hamas has been open to negotiations, and that the Saudi and Egyptian governments can hardly be considered ‘credible’ (or impartial) by virtue of their ties with the U.S. and Fatah, make this article either an incredibly well-thought out and witty piece of sarcasm, or irrefutable proof that the editors of U.S.A. Today have absolutely no idea what they’re talking about. Enjoy.

And the new Palestinian PM is... *drumroll*

... A former World Bank executive! Evidently, Salam Fayyad is 'admired by the Bush administration'. I don't know whether to laugh or cry... Painfully obvious isn't it?

Meanwhile, the 'extremists' are granting amnesty to captured Fatah fighters in Gaza and have signalled their willingness to negotiate, while the 'moderates' rampage through the West Bank, arresting activists and torching offices. Hamas has gone so far as to ban the wearing of masks in the streets. For some interesting and unexpected commentary on the atmosphere in Gaza from a Fatah leader (as well as from officials within Hamas's Qassam Brigades), see this article.

Only now that our good democrat, Mahmoud Abbas, has sworn in an illegitmate and non-representative parliament with no Hamas members (the ex-Prime Minister/bad guy, Hamas's Ismail Haniyeh insists that the Hamas-Fatah unity government remains the only legitimate authority), and has called for an international force to take charge of Gaza, is the U.S. finally planning to end the Palestinian embargo, in an attempt to further bolster Fatah forces. As per usual, beating and starving the Palestinians into submission in order to force them to choose leaders that we like, appears to be the tactic of choice (see the entire history of U.S. foreign policy for more on this).

In other news, Fatah may be planning an 'Iraqi-style insurgency' in Gaza. Ordinary Palestinians must be honoured to know that Fatah is willing to go to such great lengths for them - subverting democracy with the help of foreign powers, crushing dissent in the West Bank, and now this! Full of surprises.

There may, however, be no need for this as Israel looks willing aid Fatah in its quest for absolute power. Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni stated, as if to clarify the wishes expressed earlier by Abbas, that, "those who are talking in terms of international forces have to understand that the meaning is not monitoring forces but forces that are willing to fight, to confront Hamas on the ground". There are already reports that Ehud Barak, set to become the new defense minister on Monday, is planning a military operation 'aimed at destroying Hamas's military capabilities in a short period of time'. Tellingly, an Israeli official remarked that, "the question is not if but how and when”.

Oh, and Mohammad Dahlan? He's in Cairo... "recovering from knee surgery".

A Hamas 'Coup'?

Big news in the Occupied Territories over the last few days. Hamas guerrillas have taken Gaza with relative ease, overrunning Fatah's security outposts in the region. President Mahmoud Abbas, the head of the Palestinian Authority and of the Fatah party, has, predictably, responded by calling Hamas militants names, like 'criminals' or 'outlaws', and has accused Hamas of attempting a 'bloody coup'. He would appear to be half-right - it was bloody.

But logic of Abbas's claim that Hamas's actions amount to a 'coup' is baffling. In 2006, Hamas was democratically elected to the legislative council, winning a parliamentary majority over the corruption-wracked 'old guard' of Fatah. Hamas was seen as a relatively non-corrupt alternative, with strong grassroots social programs (especially in Gaza) filling the void left by Fatah's decades of misrule. Their election had little to do with Palestinians being in ideological agreement, and much more to do with a wholly legitimate dissatisfaction with Fatah. This, of course, was followed immediately by the crippling sanctions applied to the Occupied Territories by Western states and the EU, in what can only be described as a devastating decision to collectively punish the Palestinian people for exercising their right to vote.

Let's take a look back at some of Fatah's past dealings. During the January 2006 elections, the Fatah campaign received $2 million in U.S. dollars. Throughout the year, Abbas continued to accept money from the U.S. under the premise of 'democracy building'. Obviously, Hamas did not have the luxury of receiving a massive financial boost to either run its election campaign or to help 'build democracy'. Condoleezza Rice helped confirm U.S. support for Fatah when in September she proposed 'creative means' to bolster Abbas, in order to help create a so-called 'alliance of moderates' across the Middle East. This meant $42 million to throw dirt all over Hamas, to better train and equip Abbas's Presidential Guard, and to act as an "incentive to them [Fatah]... to get their act together". The U.S. funding of Fatah's military apparatus steadily continued well into the factional violence ($59 million in mid-February), with the prospect of Gaza descending into civil war looking more and more plausible each day. The cover of 'democracy building' has been cast off - a more accurate be description would be 'direct military aid'.

Note the apparent correlation between an increase armed conflict in Gaza, and the increase in U.S. involvement with Abbas and Fatah.

And then there's this guy. Mohammad Dahlan, a Fatah loyalist born in Gaza with contacts in the U.S., Israeli, and Egyptian authorities, was appointed in March, by Abbas, to the head of the Palestinian National Security Council. TIME journalist Tony Karon explains that Dahlan resisted the move towards the Mecca Agreement's unity government, and refused the opportunity to integrate the Hamas fighters into the PA security forces under a politically neutral interior minister, personally ordering Fatah militants to take to the streets. According to Dahlan, Hamas,

"... will have to suffer yet more until they are damned to the seventh ancestor. I will haunt them from now till the end of their term in four years. And I swear, whoever within Fatah says 'we should join the government,' I will humiliate them."

Considering Dahlan's history with Hamas (and, may I add, torture. See here and here for more), and his massive clout within the PA security apparatus, it would appear that no better candidate could be chosen for the effort to undermine democracy in the Occupied Territories. He fits perfectly into the category of what might be called 'our moderates'.

More now - a document titled the 'Action Plan for the Palestinian Presidency', revealed on April 30th (over two months after the Mecca Agreement's unity government was agreed upon), details a 'U.S. plan to sink Hamas'. Mark Perry and Paul Woodward of the Asia Times report that,

The plan envisages delivering “a strong blow to Hamas by supplying the Palestinian people with their immediate economic needs through the presidency and Fatah”. At the same time, the international boycott of Hamas would stay in place and Hamas-affiliated programs would be starved of funds.

Indeed. While Hamas-affiliated programs are being starved of funds, and the international boycott continues and is exploited by Fatah for political gain, ordinary Palestinians have been, quite literally, starving to death.

Perry and Woodward continue:

The plan re-emphasizes the US commitment to building Abbas’ security service, a program now funded by some US$59 million in direct congressionally approved security assistance. The money “will deter Hamas or any other faction from any attempt at escalation, as long as the security control of the Palestinian Authority and Fatah is on a firm basis”

...The plan’s components envisage that Israelis and Palestinians will engage in a coordinated series of actions that will expand PA security control to all sectors of Gaza and the West Bank. Mohammad Dahlan, the newly named head of Abbas’ National Security Council, will be charged with drawing up and implementing a security plan that will ensure this.

Dahlan's name is dropped several times throughout the article. In any case, it appears as though the general scheme of this plan has been more or less ongoing throughout the Hamas-Fatah negotiations. Its being revealed makes the Mecca Agreement look farcical.

As if this were not enough, there is veteran neo-conservative and U.S. Deputy National Security Adviser (who helped fund terror in Nicaragua during the Reagan era) Elliot Abrams' suggestion last January (immediately after the Hamas electoral victory) of what he called a 'hard coup' against the Hamas government. Conflicts Forum reports that,

Abrams was adamant — the U.S. had to support Fatah with guns, ammunition and training, so that they could fight Hamas for control of the Palestinian government.

...the “hard coup” talk was hardly just talk. Over the last twelve months, the United States has supplied guns, ammunition and training to Palestinian Fatah activists to take on Hamas in the streets of Gaza and the West Bank. A large number of Fatah activists have been trained and “graduated” from two camps — one in Ramallah and one in Jericho.... While the program has gone largely without notice in the American press, it is openly talked about and commented on in the Arab media — and in Israel... Thousands of rifles and bullets have been poring into Gaza and the West Bank from Egypt and Jordan, the administration’s designated allies in the program...

...The recipients of U.S. largesse have been Palestinian President Abu Mazen and Mohammad Dahlan...

The language is curious, is it not? 'Coup'? Where have we heard this before? Ah, yes... "In a statement Mr. Abbas - the Fatah leader - said some Hamas figures were "planning a coup against some legitimate [Palestinian] institutions". Sorry Abu Mazen, the game's over. Obviously, it would only be possible for Hamas to launch a coup if it were not in power. Unfortunately for Fatah, Hamas won the ability to exercise power through a democratic mandate - which means that either the uprising in Gaza was not a coup or that Abbas's statement was an admission that, de facto, Fatah never truly relinquished power. Much evidence points towards the latter.

The great irony of Abbas's statement is that, in fact, Fatah's own actions, as a minority party with more or less direct control over the security forces, look much more like a 'coup' (a foreign-backed one, no less) than anything Hamas has attempted. Abbas has since sacked the unity government and declared a state of emergency allowing him to rule by decree, appointing a new Prime Minister ("the new government would receive the backing of Washington"). New elections have also been promised, for some reason - what Fatah hopes to accomplish by holding another vote cannot be fathomed. Gwynn Dyer comments (in a misleadingly sub-titled article...) that despite the promise, "Hamas would win again if they [elections] were ever held, so they probably won't be". No doubt a seemingly accurate foretelling based on the assessment of the current situation. Meanwhile, the ex-PM of the unity government, Hamas's Ismail Haniyeh, has called Abbas's actions 'hasty' and has signalled his willingness to negotiate. Abbas will have none of it. This comes as no surprise, as he's been having none of it since Fatah was - theoretically - democratically removed from power in January of 2006.

Abbas's choice of words has fallen miles short of the truth. For Fatah's leadership to call the Hamas takeover a 'coup' is a vast hypocrisy. The Hamas takeover was not a 'bloody coup' - it was bloody justice. And it's a damn shame that it had to be.

And now, a picture to sum up the events of the last few days:

"'Hello, Rice?' the gunman said. 'Here we are in Abu Mazen's office. Say hello to Abu Mazen for me.'"







For a great post-Mecca Agreement report that deals with everything from the effects of the international sanctions, to the issue of security force integration, see International Crisis Group's report 'After Mecca: Engaging Hamas', written on February 28th of this year.

Here is a detailed report by the British House of Commons International Development Committee on the devastating effects of the sanctions placed on the Occupied Territories since the election of Hamas.

Our Man in Iran

I've come across this picture a few times, and I think it's well worth posting. Ah well, he was a good tyrant while he lasted...

The Shah was 'our man in Iran' until he was forcibly removed during the the 1979 revolution after a mass uprising prompted by his absurdly decadent lifestyle paid for by Iranian oil, and the ruthlessness with which his secret police, the SAVAK, dealt with demonstrators. Unfortunately for most Iranians, the regime that took the Shah's place was not exactly what they were hoping for.

In any case, this is an amusing little piece in light of the controversy that surrounds Iran's current nuclear hijinx...

For a good article that deals with post-'79 Iran's rebuffed attempts to acquire peaceful nuclear technology, through legal channels, see this article at the Middle East Report.

On 'Wiping Israel Off the Map'...

So I've decided to take a few events/stories that have been getting a lot of press in the recent past and attempt to deal with them from a critical perspective. This post will be centred on the biggest baddie currently stealing the spotlight - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Ahmadinejad has been hitting the headlines ever since he was lucky enough to make the cut for the now infamous Axis of Evil. Virtually every time he is referred to in the mainstream media, there is mention of his vowing to 'destroy Israel', or to 'wipe Israel off the map'. No doubt, if this was actually what he said, it would be cause for much alarm. However, no matter how many times Wolf Blitzer or Sean Hannity, or for that matter any of the BBC staff, repeat their convenient little sound bite, Ahmadinejad will still not have actually threatened to 'wipe Israel off the map'. In fact, the words 'wipe', 'Israel', 'off', and 'map' are missing from the actual translation.

Arash Norouzi, Iranian and co-founder of 'The Mossadegh Project', and certainly no apologist for the tyranny of the Iranian regime, refers to the buzz caused by this misquotation as 'the rumour of the century'. After explaining to the reader that the original words were, in fact, not Ahmadinejad's, but actually the late Ayatollah Khomeini's (the credit, or blame, for the quote has been successfully transferred to Ahmadinejad by the mainstream media), Norouzi reveals to us a direct translation of Ahmadinejad's words:

Imam (Khomeini) ghoft (said) een (this) rezhim-e (regime) ishghalgar-e (occupying) qods (Jerusalem) bayad (must) az safheh-ye ruzgar (from page of time) mahv shavad (vanish from).

Norouzi, quite effectively, breaks this down for us:

Ahmadinejad did not refer to Israel the country or Israel the land mass, but the Israeli regime. This is a vastly significant distinction, as one cannot wipe a regime off the map... The Persian word for map, "nagsheh", is not contained anywhere in his original farsi quote, or, for that matter, anywhere in his entire speech. Nor was the western phrase "wipe out" ever said.

And thus we've been "led to believe that Iran's President threatened to 'wipe Israel off the map', despite having never uttered the words 'map', 'wipe out' or even 'Israel'". The quote, in full, is, 'The Imam said this regime over Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time'. Norouzi also maintains that it is vital to place the quote in its context within the speech, which was delivered at a gathering dubbed 'A World Without Zionism':

In his speech, Ahmadinejad declares that Zionism is the West's apparatus of political oppression against Muslims. He says the "Zionist regime" was imposed on the Islamic world as a strategic bridgehead to ensure domination of the region and its assets. Palestine, he insists, is the frontline of the Islamic world's struggle with American hegemony, and its fate will have repercussions for the entire Middle East.

It is important to note here, that whether one agrees or disagrees with Ahmadinejad's perception of events has no bearing on the validity of the mistranslation. What's important is to come:

He then proceeds to list three such regimes that have collapsed, crumbled or vanished, all within the last 30 years:

(1) The Shah of Iran- the U.S. installed monarch

(2) The Soviet Union

(3) Iran's former arch-enemy, Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein...

By measure of comparison, Ahmadinejad would seem to be calling for regime change, not war.

Norouzi's conclusion, it appears, is reasonable. In any case, to conclude that he was calling for the wiping of Israel off the map, or as often reported, the destruction of Israel, is quite a stretch, to say the least. I'm sure that the leaders of the United States secretly wish that the post-'79 Iranian regime would 'vanish from the page of time'. This is not an uncommon sentiment between states uncomfortable around each another - especially states with such histories as bitterly intertwined as Iran's and the United States', and, by extension, Israel.

Strangely enough, it appears as though the misquote first appeared not in the Western media, but was poorly translated into English on Iran's own state controlled Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA)! However, as Norouzi explains:

International media including the BBC, Al Jazeera, Time magazine and countless others picked up the IRNA quote and made headlines out of it without verifying its accuracy, and rarely referring to the source.

Doubtless, a gift for Western heads of state so determined to demonize. The media jumped all over this supposedly sensational remark, evidently not wasting time consulting a resident Farsi-speaker. The fault lies in the attributing of the quote directly to Ahmadinejad, and not, as it should have been, to the IRNA. Furthermore, Norouzi points out that the IRNA actually came up with multiple variations of the same statement, which should be "evidence enough of the unreliability of the source, particularly when transcribing their news from Farsi into the English language". The lack of any investigative rigour present in the reports from Western media outlets, raises the possibility that either the misquote was too sensational and attractive to pass up to, or that its continuing use and proliferation is strictly deliberate. Neither possibility can be discounted when we're dealing with The Axis (especially after so much time has passed without clarification or correction)...

So at what point did things start getting out of hand? Norouzi tells us that two write-ups were published in the Israeli newspapers Ha'aretz and the Jerusalem Post, both of which drew heavily from articles published a day before in the wire services, the Associated Press and Reuters... which in turn, drew information from the IRNA's botched translation job. But more damning, Norouzi presents evidence that Ahmadinejad's quote was further skewed, in the transition that it made from the IRNA report to the aforementioned AP article:

There you will discover the actual IRNA quote was:

"As the Soviet Union disappeared, the Zionist regime will also vanish and humanity will be liberated".

Compare this to the alleged IRNA quote reported by the Associated Press:

"The Zionist regime will be wiped out soon the same way the Soviet Union was, and humanity will achieve freedom".

Norouzi thus concludes:

The AP deliberately alters an IRNA quote to sound more threatening. The Israeli media not only repeats the fake quote but also steals the original authors' words. The unsuspecting public reads this, forms an opinion and supports unnecessary wars of aggression, presented as self defense, based on the misinformation.

It couldn't have been put any more clearly. Ahmadinejad's misquote appears to be the result of a combination of mangled translation and a plausible malign intent to mislead.

While the Iranian regime most definitely has blood on its hands, and is guilty of morally indefensible action taken against its own citizens, the media has failed miserably here to present the public with an accurate and fair depiction of the regime's intentions. The degree to which Western media outlets have either ignored alternate translations/explanations, or due to lack of investigative rigour, have yet to find these alternate sources, is inexcusable.

I realize I've used but one source for this, which would be Arash Norouzi's excellent article. If my summary didn't quite do it for you, I'd urge you to read the article yourself. Some more sources that deal with the misquote include an article by Jonathan Steele at The Guardian's 'Comment Is Free...' page, an article by Journalist Arzu Celalifer of 'The Journal of Turkish Weekly Opinion' (HORRIBLY translated, but well-reasoned...), and an editorial-esque piece by President of the Global Americana Institute and University of Michigan professor Juan Cole, amongst others. Also of worth is a piece by Ethan Bronner, who, responding to Cole and Steele, argues that Ahmadinejad was quoted correctly, but leaves the question open as to whether he was calling for war.

Beware the Murrikans

Hi.

Since last term, the idea of getting a blog up and running has crossed my mind quite a few times. Now that I have a little too much spare time on my hands, I figured I might as well give it a shot - and might as well make it semi-meaningful while I'm at it.

Basically, this blog will make discussion of various world events, often casting a critical eye on the way various media outlets use spin - both subtly and blatantly - to foster in the viewer/reader, often completely unjustified antagonistic feelings towards not only states thrust into centre stage as 'The Enemy', but entire civillian populations.

So, what's a 'Murrikan'? The term may give the impression of a strange, rare, exotic, Gallum-esque, swamp dwelling creature. But alas, the Murrikan is quite prevalent amongst us - for some such as myself, all too prevalent. It is impossible to recognize a Murrikan from his or her physical appearance - for all you know, you could be sitting in class, or at work right now, surrounded by Murrikans. No doubt, quite a frightening prospect, and a very real possibility.

But seriously now - quite simply, 'Murrikan' is a term used frequently by George Bush to refer to his fellow citizens. I'm not using the term though, as he does - that is, to apply to ALL Americans. Far from it. In fact, the Murrikan doesn't even have to be an American. It is also important to note that the Murrikan is not not a new phenomenon, confined to the post-9/11, or Bush administration years. The Murrikan is not bound by time, and has existed to varying degrees throughout the history of the American empire. The belief that 'Murrikanization' is a new development is a fallacy.

So, I use the term 'Murrikan' (I did not invent it) to apply to those of us, primarily in the Western world, who have fallen for it, who have been been taken by the misinformation, distortion of fact, and at times, outright deceit expounded not only by our leaders, but by those who (often) loyally serve them: the 'fourth branch', what we call the mass media. Murrikans are usually characterized not only by their trust in the objectivity and sincerity of the media, but more often, by their unwavering faith in free-market principles and their ability to 'export democracy' and the 'Western way of life' to the peoples of the four corners of the globe. Many Murrikans think fondly back to the Reagan era, the day of the 'great communicator', forgetting, of course, the many murderous regimes installed and supported under his watch (or rather his administration's watch, I doubt Reagan would have been capable of understanding much of anything worth watching). Tony Blair is the quintessential British Murrikan.

Anyways, because this blog will deal primarily with the views, myths, fantasies, double-standards, and re-writing of histories prevalent in Western circles, and perpetuated largely by Western media outlets, I thought such a title would be at least somewhat appropriate (or at the least moderately clever... mildly amusing?).

To conclude, we need less Murrikans.
So, enjoy, or don't enjoy!