Noam Chomsky on a nation that threatens something other than Israel: Such harrowing pronouncements aside, what exactly is the Iranian threat? An authoritative answer is provided in the April 2010 study of the International Institute of Strategic Studies, Military Balance 2010. The brutal clerical regime is doubtless a threat to its own people, though it…
Showing all posts tagged Iran
The boats will be sailing into Gaza one day soon
This is inspiring. Let the boats come, as many as possible and as often as possible, inevitably forcing Israel to abandon its futile siege on Gaza: The [Israeli] security forces are preparing to receive the three vessels expected to reach Gazan shores soon. Israel’s policy, as declared by Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Prime Minister…
The last thing Iran needs is American “assistance”
I write extensively about the web in repressive regimes but I remain skeptical (to put it mildly) when neo-conservatives talk about democracy promotion. Take Reuel Marc Gerecht in today’s New York Times: The democracy movement also needs a large supply of digital-video broadcasting cards, which function much like prepaid telephone cards and allow downloading and…
Inciting race hatred on Murdoch money
A helpful reminder of the kind of hatred that regularly appears in the pages of a leading Murdoch publication. Alan Howe is a senior figure in Melbourne’s Herald Sun newspaper who loves to demean Arabs and praise Israel (free trips to the Jewish state thanks to the Zionist lobby have certainly helped him hone his…
Riyadh loves a good Zionist love-in
Good to see that one of the key Arab nations, like Egypt, is happy to lie down with a rapacious Jewish state: Saudi Arabia has conducted tests to stand down its air defences to enable Israeli jets to make a bombing raid on Iran’s nuclear facilities, The Times can reveal. In the week that the…
Listening to whispers in Tehran and beyond
Dissent exists in the Islamic Republic, away from the Western media.
The reasons most Israelis have no real interest in giving up the West Bank
While America’s neo-conservatives begin a full-fledged campaign of hatred directed at Turkey, this is how one of the United States’ major (war-supporting) Jewish writers, The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg, frames the debate; Israeli fear, paranoia and belligerence: Last night Mrs. Goldblog and I went to a dinner at which The Situation was the main topic of…
We don’t care about the people of Iran
A new Human Rights Watch report on the desperation in Iran one year after the disputed elections: Reports received by Human Rights Watch from human rights campaigners and others inside Iran suggest that the current atmosphere inside the country is markedly different than the images of mass protest beamed across airwaves and cyberspace a year…
Israel must be “enlightened”
What world do these people live in? Here’s Ari Shavit in Haaretz: If Israel intends to attack Iran, it must carry out the following diplomatic operations during the year preceding such an offensive: position itself anew in the international arena as an enlightened, peace-seeking democracy; tighten its alliances with the United States and the West;…
Syria, Iran and Turkey are now calling the shots
The major role of Turkey in the Middle East is shifting fast, damn fast. Old alliances, always formed around convenience over principle (that’s foreign affairs, I hear you say) are moving. Paul McGeough outlines what’s going on but a stronger analysis is by Pepe Escobar in Asia Times. Poor, little Washington just can’t control the…