The following post is by Phil Gomes on one of Australia’s most popular blog sites Larvatus Prodeo: In The Blogging Revolution Antony Loewenstein takes us on a personal journey through some of the more difficult places in the world to blog. Iran, Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Cuba and China. It’s a timely book on the…
Showing all posts tagged Iraq
How to buy friends and make them hate you
The United States, protector of the civilised world: The Bush administration is pushing through a broad array of foreign weapons deals as it seeks to rearm Iraq, Afghanistan, contain North Korea and Iran, and solidify ties with onetime Russian allies. and From tanks, helicopters and fighter jets to missiles, remotely piloted aircraft and even warships,…
Squandering 9/11
Chris Toensing, Bitterlemons International, September 11: Bob Woodward’s four books chronicling the wars of President George W. Bush are sensitive barometers of conventional wisdom in Washington. Whereas the first volume, published in 2002 at the height of the self-righteous nationalism gripping the capital after the September 11, 2001 attacks, hailed Bush’s self-confidence in acting to…
The softer side of a war reporter
Arguably the finest Western journalist to write from Iraq since 2003 (and years before that), Patrick Cockburn, writes about the discovery of his grown son being schizophrenic.
White-washing our crimes
How can the Iraqi government turn the infamous Abu Ghraib prison into a museum and not include the crimes committed there by the Americans since 2003?
The calculating chameleon
My following book review appears in today’s Weekend Australian newspaper: The Man Who Pushed America to War By Aram Roston Nation Books, 400pp, $49.95 Ahmed Chalabi, the chameleon-like Iraqi exile who fed bogus intelligence about weapons of mass destruction to the Bush administration and to willing media, told Britain’s The Daily Telegraph in 2004 that…
Not the familiar Iraq
Iraq remains a fractured society and far more complex than the vast majority of Western media allows us to see. So what of the country away from the headlines?
The Iranian perspective
Sadegh Zibakalam, Bitterlemons International, August 28: Iranian support for the newly established Iraqi regime was quite reasonable and to be expected. The Iranians fought eight long years to witness a Shi’ite-dominated government in Iraq. Iran lost a million of its people in that war, its economy was shattered and the Islamic republic lost nearly all…
Bombing. Iran. Never. Makes. Sense
The Lowy Interpreter is the blog for one of Australia’s leading think-tanks, the Lowy Institute. Following a post last week that discussed Israel’s supposed fears of Iran’s nuclear facilities – strongly suggesting that an Israeli military strike was not unlikely and even understandable because the Zionist state feared destruction – I wrote a response that…
Just what the US needs
Joseph Biden is Barack Obama’s Vice-Presidential pick. Hold the excitement. Biden will supposedly provide foreign policy “experience” and gravitas to Obama’s youthful exuberance (or so the mainstream media likes to call it, in typically meaningless bluster.) Counterpunch’s Alexander Cockburn tells it like it is: His [Biden’s] “experience” in foreign affairs consists in absolute fidelity to…