One: The US and Australia schemed unsuccessfully in 2005 to block Mohamed ElBaradei’s election to a third term as head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), a newly leaked US diplomatic cable shows. Both countries were unhappy with Mr ElBaradei’s “unhelpful” response to Iran’s nuclear program, but the bid to prevent his re-election to…
Showing all posts tagged Iran
New Wikileaks cables on Israel/US/Palestinians that show Arabs aren’t liked
2008: Yadlin replied that the Palestinians are only Israel’s number four threat in the IDI’s assessment, following Iran, Syria, and Hizballah. Although the Palestinians are not the IDI’s top concern, Yadlin said he would answer the question by noting that it will take time to marry Netanyahu’s approach to Fayyad’s. If the parties attempt to…
Iran’s insecure mullahs attempt to cut off country from the web
Insane, unworkable and signs of autocrats who fear freedom of expression and their own citizens: Communication and information technology minister Reza Taqipour Anvari announced at the start of July that the first phase of a “National Internet,” also called “Clean Internet,” will get under way at the end of August, offering an 8 Mbps speed…
What US occupation looks like on the ground
My following lead book review appeared in Saturday’s Sydney Morning Herald: INFERNAL TRIANGLE Paul McGeough Allen & Unwin, $32.99 This unblinking collection of dispatches separates the rhetoric from the reality of the post-September 11 battlefields. The new US Defence Secretary and former CIA director, Leon Panetta, recently told journalists the Obama administration was ”within reach”…
Ahmadinejad’s Iran looking to isolate itself bit by bit
What a paranoid and fundamentalist regime looks like: Iran has stepped up online censorship by upgrading the filtering system that enables the Islamic regime to block access to thousands of websites it deems inappropriate for Iranian users. The move comes one month after the United States announced plans to launch new services facilitating internet access…
Hands up who knows the enemies in the false “war on error”?
Robert Fisk on the “terrorists” so needed by the West to assist them in their own “war on terror”: If you held a mirror up to the vast “anti-terrorism” conference in Tehran this weekend – the anti-Iranian version of terrorism, of course – you would see three men sitting down in private to discuss what…
Some question and answers about responsibility of writers
Following my essay in the latest edition of literary journal Overland on cultural boycotts, politics, Palestine and Sri Lanka, the magazine interviewed me on various matters: Passionate and outspoken about Israel/Palestine, among other things, Antony Loewenstein is a freelance independent journalist based in Sydney. Author of My Israel Question and The Blogging Revolution, he is…
We buy oil from Saudi regime and they hate women
Our addiction to the black gold has made us morally complicit in horrific discrimination. Farzaneh Milani writes in the New York Times: The Arab Spring is inching its way into Saudi Arabia — in the cars of fully veiled drivers. On the surface, when a group of Saudi women used Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to…