Looking ahead

Iran has a new President. Ultra-conservative Tehran mayor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is likely to inflame relations between the West and Iran. Vote-rigging has been alleged. Iranian born Hossein Derakhshan, currently living in Canada, blogs about the likely changes to Iranian society. Suffice to say, he is less than optimistic about the flowering of democracy in his…

US invaded

“The 14 democratic member nations of the Middle Eastern Union unanimously voted to declare war on the U.S. Monday, calling the North American country a ‘dangerous rogue state that must be contained.’” Read on.

Get real

“It’s easy to criticise from my ergonomic chair. Let’s not forget: [Paul] McGeough is in Iraq and I am not”, wrote Murdoch and pro-war lapdog, Andrew Bolt this week. How does anyone take this man seriously, other than propagandists and those suffering delusions? The war in Iraq is not going well, the American people are…

Shameful

Der Spiegel reports on the crisis in Darfur. It’s a tragic tale of world indifference, Sudanese viciousness and African Union bungling and buck-passing: “The world knows exactly what’s happening in western Sudan, but hasn’t taken any serious steps to intervene and put a stop to the conflict between the Arab Islamist central government in Khartoum,…

Selective memory

“The Simon Wiesenthal Centre gives its 2005 tolerance award to a torturer. It also gave the Sudanese government its 2005 award for ethnic harmony.” Via the Angry Arab. The Centre, according to its website, is: “…an international Jewish human rights organization dedicated to preserving the memory of the Holocaust by fostering tolerance and understanding through…

The other side

The recent controversy over Chinese diplomat Chen Yonglin continues. He is currently waiting for confirmation of his Australian asylum bid. Road to Surfdom reports today – and Tim Dunlop expresses initial scepticism of his source – of an alternative perspective on the Chen case and his claims. The anonymous author takes on the Howard government’s…

God help us

The Guardian reports: “The war in Iraq is creating a new breed of Islamic jihadists who could go on to destabilise other countries, according to a CIA report. The CIA believes Iraq to be potentially worse than Afghanistan, which produced thousands of jihadists in the 1980s and 1990s. Many of the recruits to Osama bin…

Not Happy, Fairfax

Fairfax’s new chief operating officer Brian Evans has ordered his management team to slash $100 million from the publishing company. The Australian’s lead media story this week must have made News Limited staff smile. It’s a worrying development, however. Evans is asking for massive cut across all divisions, including editorial. The paper reports: “The closure…

Democracy? Unlikely

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has told an audience in Egypt that America’s policy towards the Middle East has been wrong for a very long time: “For 60 years my country pursued stability at the expense of democracy in this region here in the Middle East, and we achieved neither. Now we are taking…

Israel’s bleak future

Israel is currently going through a bleak period in its history. Why? I’ve been commissioned to write three articles for online magazine New Matilda on the subject, as well as examining the wider implications for the Middle East and the journalistic profession. My first piece is here. “Israel of 2005 is a state in crisis.…

Text and images ©2024 Antony Loewenstein. All rights reserved.

Site by Common