Ali Abunimah on his blog points to a former Barack Obama who offers pretty quotes but still supports the fundamentals of American empire: Just a month after the 11 September 2001 attacks, then Illinois State Senator Barack Obama — a political unknown nationally — spoke to the Chicago Defender newspaper (Chinta Strausberg, “Sen. Obama: Barriers…
Showing all posts tagged Afghanistan
Please explain the real reason we back Mubarak’s Egypt
Seumas Milne writes in the Guardian that Western support for a terror state such as Egypt merely inflames anti-Western anger everywhere: Decades of oil-hungry backing for despots, from Iran to Oman, Egypt to Saudi Arabia, along with the failure of Arab nationalism to complete the decolonisation of the region, fuelled first the rise of Islamism…
What the Australian/American alliance really means
Scott Burchill and Kristian Lewis, The Age, 8 January: The only rationale left for our involvement in Afghanistan is to restore Washington’s military credibility, which was badly tarnished in Iraq. As John Howard said recently, a withdrawal from Afghanistan would be “an enormous blow to American prestige”. For the same reasons it bombed Serbia in…
Is the US capable of not only sending missiles to help Yemen?
Patrick Cockburn in the Independent on Washington’s seeming desperation to fall into al-Qaeda’s trap again and again and escalate militaristic policies in a Muslim land: There is ominous use by American politicians and commentators of the phrase “failed state” in relation to Yemen, as if this some how legitimised foreign intervention. It is extraordinary that…
169,000 Americans occupying Afghanistan
Jeremy Scahill on America’s hidden war: At present, there are 104,000 Department of Defense contractors in Afghanistan. According to a report this week from the Congressional Research Service, as a result of the coming surge of 30,000 troops in Afghanistan, there may be up to 56,000 additional contractors deployed. But here is another group of…
Australia snubs Tamil refugees
My following article is published in US magazine The Nation: Sri Lanka’s brutal war against the Tamils, a native ethnic group that has suffered legal, economic and political discrimination for more than half a century, has come at a huge domestic and global cost. Human rights in the Sinhalese-dominated nation are consistently violated, with journalists,…
Western troops in Muslim lands can only lead one way
Barack Obama’s escalation in Afghanistan may come with a very high price: Robert A. Pape, a University of Chicago political scientist, contends that suicide attacks are almost always prompted by resentment of foreign troops, and that escalation in Afghanistan will fuel more plots. “This new deployment increases the risk of the next 9/11,” he said.…
Australia uses Israeli tools in its futile Afghan mission
From a state that knows all about bombing innocents to a nation that craves becoming more experienced in the art: Ten new Israeli-made unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) will debut in Afghanistan in the coming weeks, after the Israel Aerospace Industries made the first delivery of the Heron UAV to the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF)…
Bolivian democracy in action (and the West should notice)
Bolivia this week re-elected an inspirational man to lead the country for another five years. The Wall Street Journal isn’t pleased (rambling about dictatorships), but the Guardian editorial perfectly explains the reason why Noam Chomsky calls the country a leading example of real democracy: President Evo Morales won a stunning victory in Bolivia yesterday, taking…
Analysis must not be a war casualty
My following article appears on ABC’s Unleashed: The Iraq war has virtually dropped off the media radar. The country remains far more dangerous than Afghanistan and yet Barack Obama’s “surge” against the Taliban and al-Qaeda is the biggest international story of the day. Even leading neo-conservative William Kristol writes in The Washington Post that Obama…