Global Spin’s lineup of films to watch this weekend takes its cue from the 10th year anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.
Farenheit 9/11
Michael Moore’s fiery 2004 documentary was agitprop that packed considerable heat. Farenheit 9/11 won the Palme D’Or at Cannes, an award that stoked …
Ten years ago today, the assassination of a militia leader holed up in the north-east corner of Afghanistan garnered little international attention, except perhaps for the Hollywood-worthy way in which he was killed: two suicide terrorists, posing as Belgian documentary journalists, detonated their explosives-packed video camera just …
Not to generalize, but in Gaza it’s said to be possible to estimate the political sympathies of the person approaching on the sidewalk without actually asking. A woman in a snug cloak, hair covered in a scarf of fuscia or some colorful print is likely aligned with Fatah, the secular Palestinian party. While a woman who understands …
There are several reasons one might have chosen to attend the Sept. 8 press conference at the Frankfurt headquarters of the European Central Bank: to find out what the ECB had decided on interest rates (the bank held its benchmark interest rate at 1.5%) or how it had revised its growth forecasts (down to 1.6% from 1.9% in 2011 and …
As the commentaries, retrospectives and meditations pile up ten years after 9/11, expect quite a few in their closing paragraphs to look toward the next grand geo-political challenge facing the U.S. A decade of costly adventurism in the Middle East and Afghanistan, many will argue, distracted U.S. policy making from the new realities …
During his first year in office, President George W. Bush was confronted by the key strategic challenge facing the United States in the new century, in an incident that began with the diversion of a U.S. aircraft — by Chinese fighter planes, which forced a U.S. Navy spy plane to land on the island of Hainan after a collision that …
Baha Mousa, a 26-year old hotel worker in Basra, Iraq, died eight years ago following an “appalling episode of serious gratuitous violence” carried out by British soldiers in “a very serious breach of discipline,” a public inquiry has concluded.
In a damning 1,400-page report published this morning, retired judge William …
A month after an unusual terror attack killed eight Israelis along a desert highway approaching the Red Sea, the incident remains shrouded in mystery, especially in Gaza, where Israeli officials insist the complex, military-style attack was orchestrated but where no group has taken responsibility. “Usually the problem is more than …
Four years after China’s last major slave labor scandal, a group of disabled men has been freed from a brick kiln in the central province of Henan after an investigation by an undercover television reporter. Some of the men had been forced to work for years without pay, enduring beatings and poor food and living conditions, the …
China’s bureaucracy has a lot to handle these days: rooting out corruption, facilitating global trade, censoring independent thoughts online that might “endanger state security.” But on Sept. 6 the Chinese Health Ministry issued a 41-page set of guidelines that was two years in the making. The topic? Technical Guidelines on …
The British Parliament on Wednesday held a rare debate on abortion before shooting down a bill that attempted to curb access to the procedure by a vote of 368-118. Anyone looking for a U.S.-style drag out, hot tempered fight was surely disappointed.
First of all, Nadine Dorries, the conservative member who offered the legislation, …
Ten people were killed and 61 injured by a bomb blast inside the Delhi High Court Complex in the capital on Wednesday morning. The militant group Harkat ul Jihad al Islami (HuJI) took responsibility for the blasts in an email sent to several Indian news organizations. The attack seemed to have been calculated to maximize the loss of …
The military intervention in Afghanistan that began a month after the 9/11 attacks is the longest war in U.S. history, costing 1,750 American lives (and counting) and upward of $300 billion (and counting). And it’s becoming harder to believe Washington’s promises that the end is in sight. President Obama will, this year, withdraw …
