Showing all posts in June 2019

Every so often an album of exquisite beauty lands in my lap. Last year the Arcade Fire rocked my world. Those fine Canadian folk sure knew how to serve up a generous helping of sweet melodies with a Talking Heads ear for rhythm. And now we have the Mars Volta and their latest release, Frances…

Marvel at George W. Bush presenting Ariel Sharon with a collection of Laura’s home-made “Israeli” cookies. The US President once again proves that America will never be an honest-broker in the conflict with comments rivalling his infamous quip about Sharon being a “man of peace” a few years ago. “Prime Minister Sharon is showing strong…

Dissenting historian Mark Curtis reveals how the British provided assistance in the Ba’ath party’s seizure of power in Iraq in 1963. Furthermore, “the February 1963 coup was masterminded by the CIA, which provided the coup leaders with a list of 5,000 people who were hunted down and murdered. Ostensibly directed at eliminating the Iraqi Communist…

“As the United States gears up for an attack on Iran, one thing is certain: the Bush administration will never mention oil as a reason for going to war”. So writes Michael T. Klare, professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College. It’s almost unspeakable that America will soon be in desperate need…

Neve Gordon teaches politics at Ben-Gurion University in Israel. He explains today how Israel perfectly explains the Bush administration policy in Iraq. Gordon discusses the ideology behind colonial-minded governments offering the illusions of democratic elections while fundamentally operating to control and manage that country’s natural resources: “First, like Israel, the United States has made a…

Counterpunch’s Jeffrey St. Clair reports on the Bush administration’s role in the clandestine “rendition” of suspected terrorists around the world. The corporate community is implicated. Who is behind the Gulfstream V jet?

– The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights reports on a new kind of x-ray machine being used on the Rafah crossing point in Gaza. Aside from serious health concerns, civil liberties campaigners in the USA and the UK have condemned the machines as a “voyeurs charter”. Civilians can be photographed naked by the Israeli authorities.…

The Sydney Morning Herald reports today that Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY) visited East Timor, “during which he laid a wreath at the Santa Cruz cemetery where Indonesian troops massacred civilians in 1991.” The paper said that Yudhoyono pledged to respect East Timor’s independence. Max Lane is convenor of the Asia Pacific International Solidarity…

“In the West, since the collapse of Communism and the fall of the Soviet Union, the one discipline both the official and unofficial have united in casting aside is history. It’s as if history has been subversive. The past has too much knowledge embedded in it, and therefore it’s best to forget it and start…

That bastion of conservatism, The Economist, occasionally moves outside its establishment roots and runs an article such as this, on Israel’s “barrier” through Palestinian territory. The writers are Palestinian, a rarity in Western media, and they explain the lives of people affected by a wall designed to make life unbearably difficult. Take this piercing analysis…