My following article is published today on US website Mondoweiss: “The future of relations with the Muslim world” was the UN-sponsored event hosted at the New York Times building in central Manhattan on 21 July. Filled with journalists from Egypt, China and Turkey and the foreign policy establishment, roughly 150 people came to hear Roger…
Showing all posts tagged Afghanistan
Can we please have a grown-up conversation about Afghanistan?
So let me get this straight. Years of futile fighting, tens of thousands dead and now a realisation that the “enemy” must be engaged? The White House is revising its Afghanistan strategy to embrace the idea of negotiating with senior members of the Taliban through third parties – a policy to which it had previously…
Twitter won’t really help America be more liked
A very revealing essay in today’s New York Times Magazine on the US State Department’s major use of the web, Twitter, Facebook and online tools to push Washington’s agenda globally. The article is curious for its almost complete lack of discussion about whether Obama administration policies are in fact useful or productive but instead focuses…
Blair knew about rendition and embraced it
Following recent revelations in the Guardian about British complicity in torture post 9/11 – here’s a comprehensive map of what happened to whom – this story is getting closer to the centre of power: Tony Blair was aware of the …existence of a secret interrogation policy which …effectively led to British citizens, and others, being…
Mercenaries are dying in Afghanistan and nobody really seems to care
A secret war reported by virtually no media outlets. I wonder why that is: In one of the least examined aspects of President Obama’s escalation of the Afghan war, armed private security contractors are being killed in action by the hundreds — at a rate more than four times that of U.S. troops, according to…
Our Afghan “team” doesn’t like us very much
When Australians on the ground believe their Afghan “partner” can’t be trusted – hard to imagine why an occupying army isn’t more popular – can we now have a serious and mature debate about why Australia is still in the country? An Afghan soldier working alongside Australian troops was suspected of spying for the Taliban…
Britain’s hands are blooded with torture
The British investigation into the previous Blair regime’s complicity in torture and terrorism is becoming clearer by the day. Such studies, while inevitably flawed due to a generally bi-partisan belief in keeping the worst details private, are a far cry from anything undertaken by America or Australia: The true extent of the Labour government’s involvement…
Chomsky on the justification for arming
Talk at UC Berkeley on U.S. foreign policy in Central America, May 14, 1984: We have a big argument here about whether Nicaragua and Cuba are sending arms to El Salvador. Well, I don’t know, so far there’s no evidence that they are, but that’s not really the interesting question. I mean, you gotta watch…
American use of torture was common and still is
American journalist and author Joshua Phillips talks about his discoveries while writing, “None of Us Were Like This Before“: Prisoner abuse and torture was far more widespread than most people understand. It happened well beyond the walls of Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib, and CIA “black sites.” Prisoners were seriously abused in other U.S. military bases and…
Australia’s Prime Minister is a pale shadow of nothingness
Dissident writer and academic Scott Burchill on the dead heart at the centre of the ruling Labor party in Australia (and the Prime Ministership of Julia Gillard): Caved in to miners within hours of becoming PM – not prepared to stand up to corporate power in the West, or defend the population’s resources equity Gushed…