Noam Chomsky, on Iran’s Press TV last week, talks about Iraq and the role of foreign forces in the country: It is interesting, the way everything is blamed on Iran. And that’s a rather striking reflection of how deep-seated the imperial mentality is in the West, so for example when Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice…
Showing all posts tagged Bush administration
Bombing them will do
A new report from Amnesty International highlights the disaster of the Iraq war: Iraq remains one of the most dangerous places in the world. Its refugee crisis is worsening. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), since the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, an estimated 4.7 million have been displaced…
War is easier
According to a former Bush official, when George W. Bush entered the White House in 2000, he regarded Bill Clinton as “Satan’s finger on earth…” and chose to ignore the Israel/Palestine conflict.
The future is like the present
John McCain and George W. Bush. Two men with the same “vision” (endless, privatised war):
The war inside
Last night at the Sydney Film Festival I saw Errol Morris’ documentary on Abu Ghraib, Standard Operating Procedure: It is a powerful and eerie collection of interviews with the major interrogators at the Iraqi prison. It’s clear that these men and women were in above their heads, unsure what to do, what was right, what…
Quick easy steps to help terrorism
Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid on the disastrous effects of the Bush administration’s “war on terror” policies. Democracy Now!, June 10: And now you have huge efforts by al-Qaeda to train European Muslims, to train white European converts to Islam. They’ve set up training camps now with language facilities. That means if you’re a German Muslim,…
The disaster that opened the door
My following article appears in the Amnesty International Australia’s Uncensor campaign about human rights in China: Once small freedoms are granted in China, they are not easily reversed, writes Antony Loewenstein The Sichuan earthquake may have largely fallen off the Western media’s radar but the Chinese people remain focused on the disaster. A number of…
No such thing as humanitarian intervention
My latest New Matilda column is about the myth of “humanitarian intervention”: Last week’s Australian withdrawal of combat troops from Iraq saw a flurry of establishment commentary on the rights and wrongs of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s decision. Former Foreign Minister Alexander Downer wrote that, “despite the problems” in the war-torn country, “Australians should be…
How we deal with dictators
The essential website Wikileaks releases yet another coup: During the 2007 Presidential election campaigns in Kenya, an international furore developed around the existence of a “secret” Memorandum of Understanding signed by Raila Odinga (now Prime Minister of Kenya) and the National Muslim Leaders’ Forum. A forged version of this Memorandum of Understanding was in email…