Articles

NOVANEWS January 7, 2009       It was one of the most relevant and–considering the times in which we find ourselves today, profound lines ever uttered in a movie. The scenario is thus–In the film The Lost Boys, “Max” (played by actor Edward Herrman) has just been “outed” as the “capo di tutti capi”–meaning the head vampire leading a gaggle of them responsible for terrorizing a small California town. A few of the more vigilante-oriented/vampire-conscious community members (the Frogg brothers) had suspected he was a bloodsucker and had set up a series of tests involving all the usual anti-vampire-related items–garlic, holy water, mirrors, etc–to find out if indeed he was one, all of which turned up negative results. When circumstances finally forced Max to “come out of the closet” as it w...

NOVANEWS January 6, 2009     As soon as the slaughter began, I avoided it–meaning the internet–like the plague. I had already been through it before–a thousand times at least–and knew if I was to keep what little sanity I had left I simply could not do it, meaning looking at the photos, and particularly those of innocent kids being shot and blown to pieces. It’s not that I’m the typical callous, stupid American who would rather see Britney Spears wiggling and jiggling herself to pieces in some new music video than the real-life suffering of real-life others. Rather, it is the other direction–I’m over-sensitive to it and for the easy-to-understand reason that those pictures look just like any one my 9 kids. Just about every boy or girl–Palestinian, Lebanese, Iraqi or whatnot–is a spitting...

NOVANEWSW  Joseph Massad, The Electronic Intifada, 4 January 2009   Nazi troops round up Polish Jews during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in May 1943. (Photographer Unknown) One is often baffled by the ironies of international relations and the alliances they foster. Take for example the Zionist colonial settlement that had declared war on the Palestinian people and several Arab countries since its inception while at the same time it built alliances with many Arab regimes and with Palestinian leaders.While Hashemite-Zionist relations and Maronite Church-Zionist relations have always been known and documented, there has been less documentation of the services that Zionist has provided and continues to provide to Arab regimes over the decades. It is now recognized that Zionist's 196...

NOVANEWS “The amount of death and destruction is inconceivable” Safa Joudeh writing from the occupied Gaza Strip, Live from Palestine, December 27 & 28 2008 It was just before noon when I heard the first explosion. I rushed to my window and barely did I get there and look out when I was pushed back by the force and air pressure of another explosion. For a few moments I didn’t understand but then I realized that Israeli promises of a wide-scale offensive against the Gaza Strip had materialized. Israeli Foreign Minister Tzpi Livni’s statements following a meeting with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak the day before yesterday had not been empty threats after all. What followed seems pretty much surreal at this point. Never had we imagined anything like this. It all happened so fast but th...