What a joke. “Yes We Can’t” Obama in action: After three weeks of fruitless haggling with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Obama administration has given up its effort to persuade the Israeli government to freeze construction of Jewish settlements for 90 days, a senior administration official said Tuesday. The decision leaves Middle East peace talks…
Showing all posts tagged Barack Obama
Assange cannot be the new David Hicks; abandoned to his fate
Cameron Stewart writes a perceptive piece in the Australian on the troubles for the Australian government. It either stands up for its citizen, Julian Assange, or is made to simply follow Washington’s dictates. The evidence thus far is not good: Australia faces potentially the greatest political fallout of any non-American nation from the WikiLeaks controversy.…
Is Qatar unduly affecting al-Jazeera’s clarity?
Al-Jazeera is a truly unique news service that covers the world in a way that no other global network does. However, there is always a risk when the major sourcing of funding is a Middle East dictatorship: Qatar is using the Arabic news channel al-Jazeera as a bargaining chip in foreign policy negotiations by adapting…
Obama should resign, says Assange
Too right: President Barack Obama should resign if it can be shown that he approved spying by US diplomatic figures on UN officials, the founder of WikiLeaks said in an interview published Sunday. “The whole chain of command who was aware of this order, and approved it, must resign if the US is to be…
Where’s the media guts over Wikileaks?
My following article appears on ABC Unleashed today: The rolling revelations of the WikiLeaks US embassy cables will continue for months but equally interesting is the reaction of the global media. Many in the British media establishment, not given advance look at the documents, fumed against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and repeated government spin that…
New York Times doesn’t want to upset Obama too much
Here’s Bill Keller, editor of the New York Times, showing his paper’s true stripes over Wikileaks and going to the White House to make sure they weren’t too unhappy with the released cables. Media servitude to the wrong master:
Wikileaks may not be quite as bad as al-Qaeda
Another day and so much more Wikileaks news. Currently snowed under with work related to the information dump, so here are a number of relevant links to keep things flowing (here, here, here, here, here, here and here). This is perhaps the funniest and more tragic response thus far: American Conservative standard bearer Sarah Palin…
Talking to the DPRK is essential
Acting sensibly over North Korea is clearly not in the playbook of Washington. War games beckon. Investigative journalist Tim Shorrock has a great take at the Daily Beast (and here on Democracy Now!): As the Obama administration dispatches an aircraft carrier to the region, following North Korea’s deadly and unprovoked shelling of South Korea, experts…
Corporate “journalist” channels juicy Zionist quotes over Tehran
Are we supposed to thank the US administration for stopping Israel bombing Iran? Some Israeli officials say the country’s fingers are off the hair-trigger that would launch a strike on the Iranian nuclear program, but that convincing the United States to take a harder line on Iran remains a top national priority. The apparent willingness…
The greatest irony of Western policy
My following article appears today on the wonderful literary journal Overland’s website during its Subscriberthon: After the US mid-term elections, President Barack Obama is severely weakened by the rise of the Republicans. His unwillingness or inability to pursue true justice and peace in the Middle East will only be worsened. Indeed, GOP House Majority Leader…