Through all the difficulties in Iraq, people look now to Iran, not the U.S., for a better life. Why? The average house in Baquba, capital of Diyala province north of Baghdad, has less than 12 hours of electricity a day. “I cannot exclude electricity from my thinking; when I think of making any plans, I…
Showing all posts tagged Bush administration
The mainstream Jewish position
John Pilger, The Guardian, August 6: There is only one rampant nuclear power in the Middle East and that is Israel. The heroic Mordechai Vanunu tried to warn the world in 1986 when he smuggled out evidence that Israel was building as many as 200 nuclear warheads. In defiance of UN resolutions, Israel is today…
Chaos limited
So, the Iraq war was launched by the Bush administration thanks to a forged letter (according to a new book in the US.) And now, due to Wikileaks, more essential background: “The legal basis for the war itself was, and still is, controversial. There is a military need, at least, at the outset of operations…
One day closer to freedom (from us)
A day in the life of an Iraqi: So, who is really running Iraq (and it’s not the Americans)?
Where is the US heading?
Andrew Sullivan, August 2: …Jane Mayer’s “The Dark Side” stayed with me. It’s the most important book yet written about the Bush presidency. Perhaps it was seeing “The Dark Knight” at the same time, but if you read that book, absorb what is tells us about what has happened to this country these past seven…
Zionists (mainly) to blame
US Jewish blogger Phil Weiss hears leading Palestinian speaker Rami Khouri talk about the (welcome) shifts in the Middle East since 9/11: I wondered how long it would take him to get to the Arab-Israeli issue. It was about 30 minutes. From then on it was all that anyone could talk about. He did not…
Confusion through the Beijing smog
My following article appears in the Amnesty International Australia’s Uncensor campaign about human rights in China: Western critics of Beijing should be careful what they wish for during the Games, writes Antony Loewenstein Amnesty International’s latest report on China’s human rights record makes for depressing reading. “We’ve seen a deterioration in human rights because of…
Tell us what you really think
David Kilcullen is an Australian who has spent the last years working with the Bush administration in its fights against “terror.” Rupert Murdoch’s Australian newspaper wrote this about him in late 2006: Meet David Kilcullen, a 40-year-old former Australian infantry commander who likes nothing more than getting dirt on his boots as he switches between…
Who really controls Iraq
My following review is about the book by The Independent’s Patrick Cockburn, Muqtada Al-Sadr and the Fall of Iraq: Kristofer Shawn Goldsmith was a former army sergeant in the US army. He enlisted in late 2003 at age eighteen and believed then, “under the influence of the media and its terrorism paranoia”, that Saddam Hussein…