Getting Africa Wrong; The Bush Breakdown; The Wolfowitz-Zoellick Two-Step

FEATURED ARTICLES

The Right Gets Africa Wrong
By Conn Hallinan

Africa plans pushed by outfits like the Heritage Foundation and instituted by the Bush administration reveal an agenda aimed at securing oil interests while extending the war on terror to a new continent. But observers in and outside Africa see an agenda that repeats the same mistakes of the past. Read full story.

Putting Friends in High Places
By Tom Barry

President Bush’s decision to back Robert Zoellick as Paul Wolfowitz’s replacement at the World Bank served two purposes: making sure a loyalist led the powerful multilateral institution, and continuing the trend of putting U.S. interests at the Bank ahead of those of the rest of the world. Read full story.

FEATURED PROFILES

Heritage Foundation
A mainstay of the conservative movement for over three decades, the Heritage Foundation has lately taken to hawking the "Islamofascist" threat while pushing an indefinite U.S. intervention in Iraq.

Hillel Fradkin
Fradkin, a noted Straussian scholar, senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, and longtime fellow traveler of the neocons, hears the threatening echoes of the distant past in the words of America’s "enemies."

Paul Wolfowitz
The controversial former Pentagon official and ex-president of the World Bank has followed other erstwhile Bush administration officials, including John Bolton, to the American Enterprise Institute.

Robert Zoellick
The former U.S. trade rep and supporter of the Project for the New American Century, Zoellick began his new job as head of the World Bank this month.

ALSO NEW ON RIGHT WEB

The Bush Breakdown
By Jim Lobe

On everything from domestic policy to the Iraq War, an increasing number of Republicans and members of the public are abandoning the president and the vice president. Read full story.

LETTERS

Re: Khody Akhavi, " The Media War," Right Web, June 28, 2007

Khody Akhavi’s review of neoconservative efforts to take over U.S. government information sources in "The Media War" (Right Web, June 28, 2007) was concise and very informative. The neoconservatives’ myopically narrow worldview and their imperialistic solutions for the world’s problems presented without counterpoint will not serve our country’s better interests because the world’s listeners are capable of distinguishing truthful information from propaganda. Unadulterated and dishonest, propaganda discredits both the source and the message.

Similarly, however, al-Hurra’s broadcast of Hassan Nasrallah’s speech should have been accompanied by a thoughtful critique by someone with expert credentials. Considering Hassan Nasrallah represents only 3-4 in 10 Lebanese (although he seemingly believes he represents everyone in Lebanon but [Prime Minister Fouad] Siniora and his family) and has his own narrow worldview and imperial solutions for the problems he perceives, he’s hardly an impartial speaker—he is his own, best, propagandist. Likewise, considering the storm of protest and outrage in the Arab media in response to Iran’s "Holocaust Conference," failure to honestly report that rejection of Iran’s actions was similarly dishonest—as though America would not take issue with Holocaust denial.

That [former al-Hurra director Larry] Register was too naïve to realize what was happening under his nose is not to his credit, and Mr. Akhavi’s description of these omissions as "attempts to appeal to an Arab audience" are similarly misleading. They weren’t that, and characterizing the uncontested broadcast of extremist Arab positions as an American position misleads the audience regarding the values America’s information broadcasts should be trying to communicate. Again, unadulterated and dishonest propaganda discredits both the source and the message.

Rael Nidess, M.D.
Marshall, TX

IRC encourages feedback and comments. Send letters to rightweb@irc-online.org. IRC reserves the right to edit comments for clarity and brevity. Be sure to include your full name. Thank you.

If you would like to see our variety of free ezines and listservs, please go to: http://www.irc-online.org/lists/.
To be removed from this list, please email rightweb@irc-online.org with “unsubscribe Right Web.”