My following article is published today on US website Mondoweiss: “The future of relations with the Muslim world” was the UN-sponsored event hosted at the New York Times building in central Manhattan on 21 July. Filled with journalists from Egypt, China and Turkey and the foreign policy establishment, roughly 150 people came to hear Roger…
Showing all posts tagged Iraq
America is staying in Iraq for a very long time
Being here in America one barely hears about Iraq. War? What war? Washington is drawing down troops next year, the public is told, so the conflict is basically over. Shame about the ongoing violence. And continuing occupation, under a new name: Can diplomats field their own army? The State Department is laying plans to do…
Investigating intelligence takes real intelligence
This week’s Washington Post story on the outsourcing of intelligence continues to reverberate. One of the co-writers of the series, Bill Arkin, is interviewed on Democracy Now! A shadowy world of massive privatised madness since 9/11. More than half a trillion dollars is being spent annually on services that even many elements within government don’t…
Why didn’t these people slam the Iraq war before it happened?
A litany of voices are now pouring out to claim the Iraq war was a mistake and a disaster. Would these same establishment figures be so honest if Iraq hadn’t become such a basket-case? British and U.S. intelligence had no credible evidence of a link between Saddam Hussein and the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on…
Book event at New York’s Revolution Books
Next Sunday, 25 July, I’ll be appearing at one of New York’s leading independent bookshops, Revolution Books, for an event that can’t be missed! Palestine and Iraq — 2 Occupations Brunch roundtable discussion with authors Michael Otterman (Erasing Iraq: The Human Costs of Carnage) and Antony Loewenstein (My Israel Question and The Blogging Revolution). On…
Twitter won’t really help America be more liked
A very revealing essay in today’s New York Times Magazine on the US State Department’s major use of the web, Twitter, Facebook and online tools to push Washington’s agenda globally. The article is curious for its almost complete lack of discussion about whether Obama administration policies are in fact useful or productive but instead focuses…
How is the Iraqi nation gaining intelligence?
This is what Iraq has become; a police state relying on taxi drivers: Taxi drivers the world over are renowned as a bountiful source of gossip, sometimes dubious, sometimes not, gathered in large part via what they overhear from passengers. And in Baghdad, afflicted by a deadly insurgency and deep political instability, there is a…
Kurds and pro-war Americans clean up
Who says the Iraq war was a disaster? The American corporate world and some Kurds are making a killing.
More journalists must take risks, says Wikileaks head
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange in the Guardian: There has been an unconscionable failure to protect sources. It is those sources who take all the risks. I was at a journalism conference a few months ago, and there were posters up saying a thousand journalists had been killed since 1944. That’s outrageous. How many policemen have…
The hype against Saddam was false, part 8642
This story isn’t old news and remains key to understanding any possible military strike against Iran: Former UK diplomat Carne Ross claimed that the [British] Government ”intentionally and substantially” exaggerated its assessment of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in public documents. ”Most of the unanswered questions derived from discrepancies in Iraq’s accounting for its…