Get out of Afghanistan now:
Showing all posts tagged Afghanistan
Reporters might like to consider the Arab point of view
The Australian Committee for Truth in the Middle East, a group with a fine pedigree, offers some advice to journalists covering the Middle East: 1. In Gaza and the West Bank Hamas won popular support – enough to win an election generally regarded in the West as fair (except for the result, of course) –…
Afghanistan is a war with no end
Raja Anwar’s The Tragedy of Afghanistan (Verso, London 1988) has this revealing quote: In Afghanistan, settling a blood feud is an unemotional and impersonal act. It is like a sacred obligation which must be fulfilled. According to one Pashtun saying, ”˜a Pashtun curses himself for his hastiness even if the murder he has avenged took…
America says it is good and true and the globe laughs
Salon’s Glenn Greenwald on the inherent delusions of the American corporate media and posits: the world looks at us with contempt and slams the exceptionalist mindset: I’m asking this sincerely, not rhetorically:… is there anything other than extreme self-delusion, grounded in blinding self-regard… (i.e., self-decreed exceptionalism), that can explain this?… … The Washington Post Editorial Page today is…
Afghan occupation breeds hatred
The war in Afghanistan is an unmitigated disaster. It deeply shames me as an Australian that we have trooops in the country contributing to the carnage. Pull out now. The Guardian published on the weekend a moving essay about the effects of last week’s NATO missile attack in Kunduz. The stories of civilian suffering is…
What are soldiers really doing in Iraq and Afganistan?
An important editorial in the Columbia Journalism Review on the need for journalists to report fairly and deeply into wars fought in our name: General William Tecumseh Sherman, like a number of military leaders through history, despised journalists. Tom Curley, president and CEO of The Associated Press, noted in a recent speech that a reporter…
A journalist’s price for going undercover
This smells fishy (and displays the kind of overly macho attitude all-too-common in the “war on terror”): Hostage negotiators expressed shock and anger at Gordon Brown’s decision to approve a commando raid to free a kidnapped British journalist, saying that they were within days of securing his release through peaceful means. Stephen Farrell — who…
In the midst of Afghan madness, freedom for one
With civilians the main victims of NATO and Western “liberation” in Afghanistan, a small piece of good news: Sayed Pervez Kambaksh, the student sentenced to death in Afghanistan for trying to promote women’s rights, has been freed from prison. The Independent has learned that he is now living outside the country after being secretly pardoned…
What are the real responsibilities of the press during war?
An intriguing story. It’s hard to ever really trust government perspectives on war – they simply want the ugly truths to be ignored – but did Associated Press do the right thing here? Defense Secretary Robert Gates expressed disappointment Friday at news outlets that used a picture taken and distributed by The Associated Press depicting…
My Israel Question Sydney launch
My Israel Question will have its Sydney launch on 17 September at Gleebooks in conversation with Australia’s leading foreign correspondent, Paul McGeough: At this event, Antony Loewenstein will have just returned from the Middle East and Paul McGeough from Afghanistan. Loewenstein and McGeough are the foremost Australian journalists and writers covering these war-torn, troubled countries.…