My following article appears in today’s Guardian Australia: Politicians and journalists ignore public opinion at their peril. Less than two weeks after the explosive revelations by former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden on the creation of a privatised,… American surveillance apparatus, a TIME poll finds a majority of… Americans support the leak, and… Snowden receives a…
Showing all posts tagged Britain
Public ignorance over Iraq carnage largely due to media blindness
When countless journalists refuse to take responsibility for accurately reporting on the reality of wars in Iraq, Syria or Libya, it’s unsurprising that the effect on civilians can be so easy ignored. Medialens explains: Last month, a… ComRes poll… supported by Media Lens interviewed 2,021 British adults, asking: ‘How many Iraqis, both combatants and civilians, do you…
The last thing Syria needs, or the Middle East, is more Western “engagement”
Stunning Simon Jenkins piece in The Guardian that explains why Western imperialists, of the liberal and conservative kind, just need to butt out of the Middle East: There could no more dreadful idea than to pour more armaments into the sectarian war now consuming Syria.… Yet that is precisely what Britain’s coalition government wants to do.…
20th century Middle East is disappearing but what replaces it?
Astute Patrick Cockburn in Counterpunch on how the new imperial powers are intent on creating a new reality that may ignore the majority of the populations: In the aftermath of the First World War, Britain and France famously created the modern Middle East by carving up what had been the Ottoman Empire. The borders of…
Memo to British Zionists; being anti-Zionist as human as oxygen
Witness the debacle within the British Zionist establishment, via Haaretz, and the increasingly desperate ways that so-called leaders there will do anything to defend Israeli policies without for a minute actually considering what the Jewish state has become; a brutish occupier: LONDON… −… It was only one private citizen suing Britain’s largest academic union, but it seemed…
Novelist Iain Banks backs cultural boycott of Israel
In the Guardian: I support… the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign… because, especially in our instantly connected world, an… injustice committed against one, or against one group of people, is an injustice against all,… against every one of us; a… collective injury. My particular reason for participating in the cultural boycott of… Israel… is that, first of all, I can; I’m…
If I ruled the world
I was asked by Osman Faruqi, editor of the University of New South Wales student newspaper Tharunka, to write a column: The role of the US hegemony is over. Washington no longer controls the world by charm and force. It’s a multipolar planet with countless centres of power. Wouldn’t this be something to celebrate? In…
How anti-Semitism became normalised in the British Muslim community
Mehdi Hasan writes in the New Statesman about an issue that receives far too little coverage: Growing up, I always assumed that this obsession with “the Jews” was a hallmark of the “first-generation” immigrants from the subcontinent. In recent years, I’ve been depressed to discover that there are plenty of “second-generation” Muslim youths, born and…
Lest we forget who led coalition of fools into Iraq
Today, the 10 year anniversary of the disastrous Iraq invasion, is time for reflection, anger and honesty. Too many politicians, journalists and war mongers want to forget. We should not allow it. Medialens is right: What was truly shocking in March 2003 was that Blair was able to weave this obvious web of deceit and…