Showing all posts in June 2019

George Bush gave one of his less coherent, but nonetheless more disturbing speeches this week, and virtually declared war on Iran. President Bush gave warning last night that Iran’s pursuit of the atomic bomb could lead to a nuclear holocaust in the Middle East, and promised to confront Tehran “before it is too late”. What…

Isn’t liberation a beautiful thing? More than four million Iraqis have fled their homes because of sectarian violence, the largest population movement in the Middle East since Palestinians left the new state of Israel, the United Nations refugee agency said on Tuesday. “An estimated 4.2 million Iraqis have been uprooted from their homes, with the…

My latest New Matilda column is about the disintegration of the Iraqi state: Andrew Bolt wrote in his Herald Sun column last week: ”˜Almost unacknowledged by the Australian media, the tide in Iraq is turning. We can now dare to think Iraq will indeed survive as a democracy.’ How delightful it must be to walk…

Arianna Huffington sums up the ugly truth surrounding Allawi’s campaign to ouster the Malaki government and assume the job for himself. First, there is the detail about whom Allawi is aiming his campaign. He clearly knows that despite Bush’s bathetic paeans to Iraqi sovereignty, the real deciders in Iraq are not the Iraqi people, but…

The image of the right wing “family values” closet gay for an uncontrollable obsession with tasting the forbidden fruit, has almost become a stereotype, but these troubled souls continue to provide us with plenty of grist. Of course, the issue isn’t one about sexuality, but the hypocrisy of these individuals who not only claim moral…

Behold the fruits of the Bush doctrine. Zalmay Khalilzad told the daily Die Presse the Middle East was now so disordered that it had the potential to inflame the world as Europe did during the first half of the 20th century. “The (Middle East) is going through a very difficult transformation phase. That has strengthened…

Remind me again why we should be supporting anything the US does in Iraq? Iraq’s deadly insurgent groups have financed their war against U.S. troops in part with hundreds of thousands of dollars in U.S. rebuilding funds that they’ve extorted from Iraqi contractors in Anbar province. The payments, in return for the insurgents’ allowing supplies…

Noam Chomsky, Khaleej Times, August 27: In Washington a remarkable and ominous campaign is under way to “contain Iran,” which turns out to mean “containing Iranian influence,” in a confrontation that Washington Post correspondent Robin Wright calls “Cold War II.” The sequel bears close scrutiny as it unfolds under the direction of former Kremlinologists Condoleezza…

A fascinating and disturbing account of how the corruption in Washington and the revolving door of lobbyists has led to the looting of the US Treasury. How is it done? How do you screw the taxpayer for millions, get away with it and then ride off into the sunset with one middle finger extended, the…