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…
Showing all posts tagged Iran
Being Jewish in Iran
Iranian anti-Semitic Bloggers: From Mickey Mouse’s Plot to Gaddafi’s Jewishness.
Who did we go to war for, Daddy?
Staggering (if true): Defense Department counterintelligence investigators suspected that Iranian exiles who provided dubious intelligence on Iraq and Iran to a small group of Pentagon officials might have “been used as agents of a foreign intelligence service … to reach into and influence the highest levels of the U.S. government,” a Senate Intelligence Committee report…
Solidarity or expulsion
This is how leading Zionist lobby AIPAC deals with open debate at this week’s conference (namely, if you aren’t talking about killing Iranians or Palestinians, please shut up):
The decider’s gut feeling
Guess who? “I know people are saying we should have left things the way they were, but I changed after 9/11. I had to act. I don’t care if it created more enemies. I had to act.” “I think the election of Hamas was a good thing. It proved to [Mahmoud] Abbas he was failing.…
They don’t speak for all
What the hardline Zionist lobby offers the Middle East (war, occupation and terror.) (When will the mainstream Jewish community reject these extremist views publicly, considering a majority of Americans, according to a new Gallop Poll, believe in engagement with Washington’s “enemies”?)
An insignificant Iraq withdrawal
My following article appears in today’s ABC Unleashed: Retired Lieutenant General Ricardo S. Sanchez, the onetime commander of US troops in Iraq, has recently released a book about his time in the country. In Wiser in Battle: A Soldier’s Story, he recalls a teleconference with US President George W. Bush soon after four contractors were…
Names do matter
In recent years, Iranians have launched a relatively successful digital campaign against the renaming of the Persian Gulf as the Arabic Gulf. Iranian online activism is alive.
Bombing right now
Former German foreign minister Joschka Fischer writes that, “the Middle East is drifting toward a new great confrontation in 2008. Iran must understand that without a diplomatic solution in the coming months, a dangerous military conflict is very likely to erupt. It is high time for serious negotiations to begin.” Who says war against the…
Not taking it anymore
Despotic regimes in the Middle East, many of which are backed by the West, should never tolerate abuses against journalists. And the media is fighting back: Journalists’ unions in membership of the International Federation of Journalists from 12 countries across the Arab World and Iran have launched a comprehensive programme of work focused on safety,…