Like in so many other conflicts around the world, the general public is usually far savvier than the political and media elite. The population largely don’t want war; sadly, our system is largely set up to encourage and defend foreign, military adventures. After all, who is getting killed in these wars (apart from civilians)? Us,…
Showing all posts tagged Afghanistan
Ahmadinejad wonders just what Obama has really achieved
The Guardian asks Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad what it would take to normalise relations with the US: Change should happen in practice. Which change has happened? Was Guantánamo Bay shut down? Were the US policies supporting Zionists and the mass murder of Palestinians stopped? Were the US policies in Afghanistan changed? Were the policies in…
How to kill all those Arab terrorists in one, painless attack
Aluf Benn in Haaretz needs to know whether America loves Israel for its brutal methods of managing “terrorism”. Please Washington, he seems to be saying, please love us. They already do, nearly to breaking point: It would be interesting to know if Obama, who is due to decide on the future of the war in…
Indonesia moves a little towards America, for now
Following my recent visit to Aceh in Indonesia, this piece in today’s Washington Post is particularly interesting (though highlights the seeming inability of the American corporate media to see the world in anything other than what benefits the US): In many ways, Indonesia — a nation of 240 million people scattered across 17,000 islands —…
The weakness of Obama’s war machine
Leading American journalist Seymour Hersh has more explosive revelations: The U.S. military is not just fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, America’s most renowned investigative journalist says. The army is also “in a war against the White House — and they feel they have [President] Obama boxed in,” Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Seymour Hersh told several…
Israel wants to be special (and kill unarmed civilians)
Here’s the message from Israel. Other nations kill civilians, why can’t we? This is what Israel has become: Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz on Sunday accused the United Nations Human Rights Council of anti-Semitism, after the UN body endorsed a damning report on Israel’s winter Gaza offensive. “This is an anti-Semitic attempt to decide that what…
The war on terror isn’t a reason to kill Palestinians
The UN Human Rights Council last week endorsed the Goldstone report over Gaza. Israel may soon have its own Pinochet moment. Leading Jewish American journalist Jeffrey Goldberg is worried, however, and his reasoning is revealing: Tactics deployed to hurt Israel inevitably cause collateral damage. It’s a good thing that the United States, and a handful…
Judge Obama on what he does, not what he says
Howard Zinn on Obama’s peace prize: I was dismayed when I heard Obama was given the Nobel Peace Prize. A shock, really, to think that a president carrying on wars in two countries and launching military action in a third country (Pakistan), would be given a peace prize. But then I recalled that Woodrow Wilson,…
Not buying the Obama “dream” in Indonesia
The following article appears in Saturday’s Jakarta Post: A discussion about writers’ views on the United States President Barack Obama and on the Middle East peace process stole the show during the third day of the annual Ubud Writers and Readers Festival on Friday. Speaking at the discussion were Benazir Bhutto’s niece, Fatima Bhutto, Australian…
Those indigenous Afghans should just shut up anyway
The New York Times today features many “experts” to explain “10 Steps to Victory in Afghanistan” yet no Afghan voice are heard. Guess they don’t really matter.