Our addiction to the black gold has made us morally complicit in horrific discrimination. Farzaneh Milani writes in the New York Times: The Arab Spring is inching its way into Saudi Arabia — in the cars of fully veiled drivers. On the surface, when a group of Saudi women used Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to…
Showing all posts tagged Afghanistan
Global dissidents may not want US openly backing them
Promoting web freedom is a noble idea, especially since so many autocratic regimes and Western multinationals are working together to stop citizens accessing the glories of information on the internet. But this idea is full of potential problems (via the New York Times), not least because Washington has a shocking record of supporting dictatorships at…
Murdoch logic; backers of war should receive a peace prize
Noam Chomsky has won the 2011 Sydney Peace Prize over his legendary support for human rights and challenging power it all its forms. That makes him an enemy of a Murdoch empire that spends its entire time wanting to be intimate with government and business. The poor dears can’t understand why a man who opposes…
How Serco thrives by failing constantly
Australia’s immigration detention system is in chaos and yet the company running them, Serco, is about to be rewarded. Again. The perverse logic of privatisation: The federal government is believed to have signed a contract to outsource the management of defence base operations in the Middle East and Afghanistan to the foreign company running Australia’s…
Fisk on why Arabs rightly only see bowing down to Zionism
Robert Fisk on the oh-so-predictable speech by Barack Obama to inject the US back into relevance in the Arab world. It should fail, as Muslims there know full well what America’s role has always been; repression: It was the same old story. Palestinians can have a “viable” state, Israel a “secure” one. Israel cannot be…
Permanent occupation of Muslim countries great for Western capitalism
Any serious draw-down of US troops from Afghanistan will affect the massive industry that’s expanded post 9/11; private military contractors. Joshua Frost on PBS contemplates the future and the likely push by major interests to maintain the occupation in the war-ravaged land; business will be negatively affected if things change too radically: Very few who…
Dark words of a private contractor in Afghanistan
Writer David Isenberg sets up the scene: I received the following email from a Dyncorp contractor working in Afghanistan. He works as a trainer to the Afghan National Police. His comments below are worth reading. But before you do you might remember that DynCorp is a member of the International Stability Operations Association, which has…
Pro-settler Zionist says young Jews love fundamentalism, too
This is so desperate it’s comical. Those backing Jewish colonies who live in the Zionist Diaspora want nothing more than no debate over the growing numbers of young Jews turning away from Israeli occupation policies. American Ted Lapkin (who used to work for the Zionist lobby AIJAC and now lurks with a right-wing think-tank) once…
Liberal hawks should hang heads in shame over Libya
The Western-assisted war in Libya isn’t going too well. So much for a quick victory against Gaddafi forces. The utterly confused strategy, even with US-led bombing runs, has not overwhelmed government troops. Gary Younge writes in the Guardian that such missions should force “liberal interventionists” who backed this war to question (yet again!) their belief…
Imagining an America that doesn’t invade and occupy
This is a moving piece. Written by US journalist Michael Hastings (a friend and colleague) about the real opportunity that should be taken with the death of Osama Bin Laden. An imperial nation that continues to believe it can rule by brute force and invade Muslim nations is delusional: Osama bin Laden’s actions, and our…