Just what the Middle East needs: There is possibly no person President-elect Barack Obama considered for secretary of state who is more reliably pro-Israel than Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), the woman to whom he appears likely to give the job sometime after Thanksgiving.
Showing all posts in June 2019
From China to a tin-pot dictator
Internet censorship grows in even the smallest nations on earth: In the African nation of Mauritania, the military dictatorship has used Cyber War techniques to shut down two opposition web sites that provide the most information on what is going on inside the country. The generals apparently hired several botnets (networks of illegally controlled PCs,…
Spreading the word in the US
After years of talking in Australia and overseas about the Israel/Palestine conflict and internet repression, I’m about to commence a US… speaking tour. My first presentation early next week, at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government/Centre for Middle Eastern Studies, is on “The Shifting Sands of the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: An Australian Perspective“: A critical examination of…
That aid was handy, after all
The idea of some of the world’s most repressive regimes taking over the US car industry is ironic in the extreme (not least because many of… these dictators are wholly backed by Washington): The United States has asked four Gulf states for close to 300 billion dollars to help it curb the global financial meltdown, Kuwait’s…
When a voice is so important
Gideon Levy, writing in Haaretz, perfectly skewers the profound failures of the Israeli left: The Israeli peace camp was born in sin and died because of a lie: It was born as the legitimate son of the sin of occupation, and died the illegitimate son of the lie that “there is no partner” with whom…
We decide for you
Is this the way for a media company to manage sensitive information? Channel 4 News has blocked internet users in China and Zimbabwe from accessing its films online for fear of reprisals against those involved in their investigations, an industry conference heard today. Tim Lambon, the assistant foreign editor of Channel 4 News, told delegates…
Behold the fall of the US?
The United States‘ leading intelligence organisation has warned that the world is entering an increasingly unstable and unpredictable period in which the advance of western-style democracy is no longer assured, and some states are in danger of being “taken over and run by criminal networks”. The global trends review, produced by the National Intelligence Council…
The “terrorist” runs free
Former Australian Guantanamo Bay detainee David Hicks will soon be a free man, no longer needing to report to the police under a draconian control order. He was only recently regarded as a threat to society. Now, apparently, he’s harmless. What changed? It’s called political opportunism to scare the public into believing authorities are protecting…