Rapper Kanye West has become one of pop culture's most intriguing political commentators.

During an MTV show in August, rapper Kanye West publicly called for his fellow rappers and the hip hop community to stop gay bashing. With the Aug. 30 release of his latest album, "Late Registration," West started conversations about conflict diamonds with his song "Diamonds from Sierra Leone."

In September, he asserted his belief that "George Bush doesn't care about black people" during a Red Cross telethon for Hurricane Katrina survivors. And now, with his portrayal of Jesus Christ on the cover of Rolling Stone, he has instigated debates about religion and race.

In the cover story of the magazine, which hit the stands Friday, West is pictured wearing a crown of thorns, a serious expression, and a few appropriate trickles of blood.

The magazine titles its cover story "The Passion of Kanye West," clearly playing off the controversial film "The Passion of the Christ." However, it may unintentionally remind readers of the true passion of a musician who is clearly troubled with the state of the world.   more »

In 1996, Governor George W Bush received a summons to serve on a jury, which would have required his admission that 20 years earlier he had been arrested for drunk driving. Already planning his presidential campaign, he did not want this information made public.

His lawyer made the novel argument to the judge that Bush should not have to serve because "he would not, as governor, be able to pardon the defendant in the future". (The defendant was a stripper accused of drunk driving.)

The judge agreed, and it was not until the closing days of the 2000 campaign that Bush's record surfaced. On Monday, the same lawyer, Alberto Gonzales - now attorney general - appeared before the senate judiciary committee to defend "the client", as he called the president.

Gonzales was the sole witness called to explain Bush's warrantless domestic spying, in obvious violation of the foreign intelligence surveillance act (Fisa) and circumvention of the special court created to administer it.

The scene at the Senate was acted as though scripted partly by Kafka, partly by Mel Brooks, and partly by John le Carré.

After not being sworn in, the absence of oath-taking having been insisted upon by the Republicans, Gonzales offered legal reasoning even more imaginative than that he used to get Bush off jury duty: a melange of mendacity, absurdity and mystery.   more »

According to the big-business media, “free speech” is the core issue. In reality, this is a battle between oppressor and oppressed nations.

With the exception of Bosnia, in the Balkans, all the nations where the predominant religion is Muslim are in Africa and Asia and are formerly colonized by oppressor nations.

These oppressed countries are all still under the economic domination of imperialist finance capital, or, like Iran, are threatened with war. Iraq and Afghan istan are occupied by U.S.-led forces.

Comparisons with other religions are rife now after the struggle unleashed by the insults to Islam.

For example, drawing an equal sign between Islam-bashing and anti-Judaism leaves out the role of Israel as an imperialist cat’s paw.

Former President Bill Clinton, among many others, tried to make this equation. Clinton told those gathered at the economic conference in Doha, Qatar, on Jan. 30:

“In Europe, most of the struggles we’ve had in the past 50 years have been to fight prejudices against Jews, to fight against anti-Semitism. Now what are we going to do? Replace the anti-Semitic prejudice with anti-Islamic prejudice?”   more »

Hamas - the Islamic Resistance Movement - has born the torch of Palestinian armed struggle against Israel since the late 80s. Now they bring discipline and a sense of realpolitik.

A year ago I joined a planeload of Israeli journalists flying to the resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. We accompanied Ariel Sharon to a summit with Mahmoud Abbas, the recently elected president of the Palestinian Authority. They met to celebrate a new era in Palestinian-Israeli relations after the demise of Yasser Arafat.

Looking back, it appears that, while reporting scrupulously on exchanges between Sharon and Abbas, I missed the broader picture.

Abbas was a figurehead, carrying messages between Israel's authorities and the Palestinian power-brokers, the leaders of Hamas. Abbas came to the summit only after Hamas agreed to hold fire in return for integration into the political process.

Hamas - the Islamic Resistance Movement - has born the torch of Palestinian armed struggle against Israel since the late 80s. Its suicide bombers murdered hundreds of Israelis, leading the second intifada.

Two years ago Israel hit back, killing Hamas's founder and spiritual leader, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, and his successor, Abdel Aziz Rantisi. Israelis expected deadly retaliation, but it never came.   more »

THE 'CARTOON' WARS

View the first few of many more Anti-Jewish cartoons

Lurid newspaper headlines might refer to the recent violent protests at Danish drawings of Mohammed as 'Cartoon Wars,' but few people in Europe are laughing at some of the tit-for-tat caricatures of Jews and homosexuals circulating on radical Islamist Web sites.

In response to the 12 drawings of the prophet in a Danish newspaper, which have led to violent demonstrations across the Muslim world, The Arab European League Monday began a 'freedom of speech campaign' with a series of cartoons designed to prick Jewish, Christian and western liberal sensitivities.

'Yes Arabs and Muslims are uptight when you touch their religious and national symbols, but Europe has made political correctness, the cult of the Holocaust and Jew-worshiping its alternative religion and is even more uptight when you touch that,' writes Dyab Abou Jahjah, the leader of the Belgian-based radical group.

'I am for the absolute freedom of speech everywhere, and that`s why I call upon every free soul among Arabs to use the Danish flag as a substitute for toilet paper,' continues the Lebanese-born agitator.   more »

Unless saner elements among the Bush administration prevail, the next neocon project might involve playing Alexander the Great vs. Persia.

That ancient conquest took the Greeks right to the doors of India, and history is repeating itself, except that it may have run out of cycles by March, or culminate in a pact for a strategic future in New Delhi.

In March, IAEA director Mohamed ElBaradei may summit the results of his findings on Iran's nuclear program to the UN Security Council.

The United States will be pressing for sanctions, and it is still unclear which way China or Russia may vote, though absention is the most likely outcome. Either way, the neocons are already prodding President George W. Bush along a unilateral path to conflict.

Undoubtedly, Iran's continued uranium enrichment program is a destabilizing factor in the Middle East.

It is not just Israel - the only nuclear armed nation in the region- which may feel threatened. The entry of a nuclear Iran would shift colossal power back to the Persians, and in the long-run, enable it to control oil supplies in the region.   more »

Have a look at this cartoon. An allegedly light-hearted caricature of a "war" among caricaturists is a vicious, racist attack on Islam by the West. It has literally come straight out of Der Stürmer, the Nazis' official anti-Semitic rag

CARTOON CONSPIRACY THEORY

At the ideological level, the racism of those by-now-notorious Danish cartoons is clear enough. The denunciation of this racism is growing and this is positive.

However, in terms of the forces actually organizing and mobilizing something quite dark by means of , it is seriously incumbent on all of us also to penetrate its political significance.

What is being organized via Danish media, in some semi-respectable garb, is nothing less than a pole of public opinion that is not just religiously bigoted in its racism.

This is a pole of public opinion that surpasses the Hitlerian dimension in its effort to justify the extermination of literally billions of other fellow human beings on this planet.

As the following vignette illustrates, this has been on the agenda of Western military forces for some time, and even political forces long assumed to be part of the "peace movement" have been or are being compromised into its service.   more »

8 FEBRUARY

Maureen Dowd: Poor Hillary! Caught between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea

Conspiracy Theory: Were "Muhammad Cartoons" Deliberately Planted?

Bush Regime Calls for "Global Jihad"

Islam Faces Down the West: A Cartoon War of Two Worlds

The Affluenza Epidemic

Iraq: Bush-Blair Bullshit Knows No End

Clinton [Mrs] & Bush: Warmongers United

Keywords: bullshit, jihad, conspiracy, bush, islam, clinton, cartoons, warmonger, muhammad, affluenza, blair, dowd