You have to laugh. How many nations are so keen to be close with Washington and will send troops to their pointless wars to prove the point? President Obama, hosting a visit by the French president, January 10, 2011: “We don’t have a stronger friend and stronger ally than Nicolas Sarkozy, and the French people.”…
Showing all posts tagged Britain
Would you trust an arms dealer with your personal information?
Neither would I: The UK Census 2011 is being held on March 27, and everyone is expected to have their details recorded and sent back to the government for processing. Except it won’t, because it is not the job of the government to do the processing – and that is the key to why I…
Westerners who enjoy largesse from our thugs or theirs
The depravity of bought intellectuals, not unlike many journalists who get wined and dined by US forces in Iraq or Afghanistan or in the halls of Washington, Canberra or London. Power can be appealing but it also corrupts: A trip to Libya in 2006 by Anthony Giddens, the former London School of Economics director and…
Britain’s Murdochcracy (just got worse)
Money buys power, again: Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation empire was yesterday given Government approval to take full control of BSkyB, a decision that was derided as a “whitewash” by media rivals and “cavalier” by political opponents. Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt had previously said he was minded to refer the proposed …£8bn deal to the competition…
Hello London and Washington; please just stay at home
Seumas Milne writes in the Guardian that the West should just politely bugger off from the Arab world and realise its influence is waning. Fat chance: The “responsibility to protect” invoked by those demanding intervention in Libya is applied so selectively that the word hypocrisy doesn’t do it justice. And the idea that states which…
Hypocrisy trumps policy in Western alliance with Libya
My following article appears today on ABC’s The Drum: The latest BBC interview with Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, situated in a fancy restaurant on the Mediterranean, was painful to watch. Clearly delusional and blaming drug-addled youth and al-Qaeda for the ongoing revolution in his country (which he claimed he didn’t lead, the “masses” were in…
TehelkaTV interview on Israel/Palestine and changing Jewish views
During my recent appearance at the Jaipur Literature Festival in India I was interviewed by TehelkaTV, one of the country’s leading current affairs magazines (my recent article with them about the Egyptian uprising is here). We talked about the Middle East, why the Tunisian revolution would spread and the rise of dissenting Jewish voices:
Somebody tell David Cameron; Kuwait isn’t a democracy
Oh dear: Opponents of Britain’s arms trade are “completely at odds with reality”, David Cameron said, as he hit out critics of his three-day visit to the Gulf. In a staunch defence of Britain’s arms exports, as he tours the region with a group of senior defence manufacturers, Cameron said it was wrong to leave…
Britain suddenly discovers that democracy is a jolly good idea?
Sure, British Prime Minister David Cameron is traveling the Middle East selling weapons of death and yet he’s also giving this curious speech about allegedly backing democracy. So I presume he’ll be calling for immediate engagement with Hamas and Hizbollah, then? Britain has been guilty of a prejudice bordering on racism for believing that Muslims…
Just another day in British democracy (by selling weapons to thugs)
And the West wonders why the Arab world regards its calls for democracy as hollow as Netanyahu’s love of freedom for Palestinians: David Cameron‘s efforts to promote democracy in the Middle East by becoming the first foreign leader to visit Cairo were overshadowed as it emerged that he will spend the next three days touring…