Showing all posts in June 2019

The Sydney Morning Herald makes a startling yet unsurprising discovery: “Men suspected of terrible war crimes remain free in Australia for years while other asylum seekers, innocent of everything except arriving illegally, are being locked up or fast-tracked out of the country. “One of Saddam Hussein’s former personal bodyguards, Oday Adnan Al Tekriti, has been…

Robert Fisk, The Independent, December 3: “Watching the pathetic, old, lie-on-its-back frightened labrador of the American media changing overnight into a vicious rottweiler is one of the enduring pleasures of society in the United States. I have been experiencing this phenomenon over the past two weeks, as both victim and beneficiary. “In New York and…

The hanging in Singapore of Australian drug trafficker Nguyen Tuong Van has caused a public outcry. It was a barbaric act, devoid of compassion or reason. Any country that sanctions state murder should be condemned. There are, however, many Australians who don’t share this view. Such support for cold-blooded murder is not a day to…

Iran is evil, according to the US. Iran must be contained, says George W. Bush. Iran’s leadership must be overthrown, demand the neo-cons. Then, of course, reality sets in: “In a new indication that the balance of power within the administration of President George W. Bush has tilted strongly in favour of the realists, Washington’s…

Israel resents November 29th being Palestine day: “I will allow them to express their complaints and demonstrate to the world how stuck they are in the past, with their tedious speeches.” Daniel Gillerman, Israel’s UN Ambassador. Only Jews, apparently, are allowed to refer to the past.

Ghazi Hamad, editor in chief of Al Risala newspaper in the Gaza Strip, Bitterlemons-International, December 1: “…From the perspective of Islamists, a dangerous turn of events is taking place in Iraq. Increasingly, Muslims are fighting Muslims rather than a foreign occupation, and this can only lead to a further dilution of Islamic strength at a…

The Blog Herald estimates the number of blogs worldwide to be around 100 million. In Iran, for example, 700,000 blogs in Persian is the quoted figure. This is a remarkable number in a country with no free press and draconian attitudes towards free speech. This revolution will not be stopped.

Wonkette reveals Bush’s “backwards engineering foreign policy.” It’s perfect for hacks, true believers, war-mongers, armchair generals, Arab-haters, PR experts and insiders. Everyone else should simply ignore it.

– The New York Times say that George W. Bush “needs to get out more“: “Mr. Bush travelled 32 miles from the White House to the Naval Academy and spoke to yet another of the well-behaved, uniformed audiences that have screened him from the rest of America lately. If you do not happen to be…