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Spielberg’s Munich: A Critique
GUEST: As’ad Abu Khalil, Professor of Political Science at California State University in Stanislaus and a Visiting Professor at UC, Berkeley, blogger at angryarab.blogspot.com

The 1972 Olympics in Munich, Germany, was marked by the kidnapping and murder of 11 Israeli athletes. The group splintered from the Palestine Liberation Organisation, Black September, took credit. Now, award winning film maker, Steven Spielberg has made a film about the Israeli response to the murders. It’s called simply, Munich, based on a novel entitled, ‘Vengeance’, by Canadian journalist George Jonas. Spielberg’s Munich depicts how Israeli intelligence agents hunted down and assassinated Palestinians supposedly connected to the murders, on the orders of Israel’s then-prime minster Golda Meir. On his blog, As’ad Abu Khalil has critiqued the film, as depicting “the humanization of Israeli killers, and the dehumanization of Palestinian civilians.”

Read Abu Khalil’s review of Munich.

Environmental Issues of 2005
GUEST: Jim Motavalli, Editor of E/The Environmental Magazine

In Geneva last week, the World Meteorological Organization reported that 2005 was the second warmest year on record. This stunning fact extended a trend that climatologists attribute, at least partly, to heat-trapping “greenhouse gases” accumulating in the atmosphere. In late 2005 the annual 189-nation U.N. climate conference took place in Montreal, Canada, failing once again to win U.S. commitments to reduce greenhouse emissions — as almost all other industrialized nations are committed to do by 2012 under the Kyoto Protocol. Meanwhile some geologists have asserted that oil production peaked in 2005 – this may be the beginning of a long decline.

For more information, visit www.emagazine.com.

Read Jim Motavalli’s article on peak oil production.

Empire Notes
GUEST: Rahul Mahajan, author of Full Spectrum Dominance and The New Crusade

We go now to our weekly commentary Empire Notes by Rahul Mahajan, author of Full Spectrum Dominance and The New Crusade. Today’s commentary is about imperatives for the new year.

Empire Notes is online at www.empirenotes.org.

CAFTA passed – now, will it be implemented?
GUEST: Burke Stansbury, Executive Director of Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES)

January 1st, 2006 was to mark the beginning of the implementation of the Central American Free Trade Agreement or CAFTA. However, many of the six nations that signed the agreement with President Bush in May of last year will not be ready for implementation until at least February 2006. The delay has been attributed to so-called “technical changes” demanded by the trade agreement. Lawmakers in various countries are debating issues of tariffs, intellectual property rights and customs procedures. Critics of CAFTA note the reasons for the delay as evidence of its undemocratic nature and are taking the opportunity to continue protests against it. Even some supporters of CAFTA believe that the United States is asking too much of the Latin American nations.

For more information, visit www.stopcafta.org, and www.stopcafta.com.

Sonali’s Subversive Thought for the Day:

“The never-ending pursuit of the lowest-cost labor is spreading, and CAFTA will only just cement this cycle. We need to break the cycle now.”