Rory Carroll, Guardian Comment is Free, August 25: We have just had another installment of the Caracas edition of Looney Tunes, with John Pilger hailing Hugo Chavez as the embodiment of freedom and democracy and detractors denouncing Venezuela’s president as a bloodthirsty tyrant. It’s depressing. Instead of a serious and open-minded discussion about the complex…
Showing all posts in June 2019
Just call me the other decider
Remember Ayad Allawi? The former Iraqi leader has been accused of murdering six insurgents in 2004. He’s now angling to take back the top job in the war-ravaged country and is being assisted by one of Washington’s best PR firms. This could work rather well for the US. A strongman seems to be the preferred…
What bloggers do
Why blogging matters (and academics who don’t understand the technology should really just enjoy their last days praising the “accountable” mainstream media and be on their merry way.)
Target: everybody
As usual, Tony Karon’s analysis of the Middle East is spot-on. The rise of Syria and Iran as regional players is directly related to the clusterfuck that is Iraq: Unlike the politicians in Washington who seem blithely oblivious in their campaign-trail debates, the Iraqis — like everyone else in the Middle East — are well…
The Gaza black hole
Amira Hass, Haaretz, August 23: Not only are some 1.5 million Gaza residents living like prisoners in the largest jail in the world, but they are also subjected to daily attacks by Israel that leave them with more dead to bury. Two children were killed on Tuesday, and not only those suspected of firing Qassam…
Foxman bows to pressure
Abe Foxman , the national director of the Anti-Defamation League , has finally acknowledged that there was an Armenian genocide. The national director of the Anti-Defamation League bowed to pressure from both the Jewish and Armenian-American communities yesterday and officially acknowledged the genocide of Armenians at the hands of Ottoman Turks more than 90 years…
Is Allawi the new Chalabi?
By the signs in Washington, it appears that Allawi is bring groomed to replace Maliki. I had a sense that I was on to something in my last post about how The Party was shifting against Iraqi elected Prime Minister al-Maliki and in favor of previously appointed prime minister Allawi (advocating a tougher stance against…
Zionists have been warned
John Pilger, The New Statesman, August 23: But something is changing [over Israel/Palestine]. Perhaps last summer’s panoramic horror beamed from Lebanon on to the world’s TV screens provided the catalyst. Or perhaps cynicism of Bush and Blair and the incessant use of the inanity, “terror”, together with the day-by-day dissemination of a fabricated insecurity in…
Less legs required
What do pro-war dead-enders do when Iraq isn’t going exactly to plan? More money for the fight, of course: And who is behind this deception? Ari Fleischer, Bush’s former PR bitch.
Palestinian terror and Israeli nobility
My following article appears in Online Opinion and discusses the role of Zionism in the failures of the Middle East: Age journalist David Bernstein has said that he thought Melbourne Jews needed help. “It’s a community [thanks to the Holocaust] that in some ways is sick ”¦ They are neurotic and should be treated with…