While parts of Libya begin to imagine a life without Gaddafi – wonderful quote in this typically incisive Anthony Shadid piece in the New York Times: “There is no call for the overthrow of the government; only Colonel Qaddafi is mentioned, as lackey, tyrant and the man with really bad hair” – Western powers are…
Showing all posts tagged Islam
Drugging at Gitmo clear way to liberate Muslims
Don’t you get the feeling that we’ll be reading these kinds of stories for years as it becomes clear Washington treated terror suspects little better than stray dogs? The Defense Department has claimed it took the unprecedented step of forcing all “war on terror” detainees sent to Guantanamo in 2002 to take a high dosage…
Hillary Clinton: “Al Jazeera is winning” message war
Almost comical. Like the Israelis, the Americans think that they can simply communicate better and use Twitter and the Muslim world will start to appreciate their dictator-friendly and Zionist occupation loving policies. Here’s Hillary Clinton mumbling about not winning the information war. As if they ever will (or should): “Let’s talk straight realpolitik,” Clinton said.…
Don’t let Facebook infect Afghanistan!
So says this clearly scared Muslim leader: Burhanuddin Rabani, a leading Islamic cleric who also leads President Hamid Karzai’s peace council — formed to make peace with the Taliban — have warned Afghanistan’s conservative religious community against increasing influence of Afghanistan’s new generation that he described as “facebook kids”. No doubt if the Ulema (Islamic…
Leave the Middle East to itself; ditch the Western think-tank “experts”
The Economist, 24 February: The lesson from the Arab awakening is an uplifting one. Hard-headed students of realpolitik like to think that only they see the world as it truly is, and that those who pursue human rights and democracy have their heads in the clouds. In their world, the Middle East was not ready…
Australian Jewish petition against the political manipulation of Islamophobia
The following statement is written by Ned Curthoys, a Research Fellow at the Australian National University, and is being circulated around Australia: As progressive Jewish Australians we are deeply disturbed by the recent outbreak of politically motivated attacks on asylum seeks and Muslims. As Jews we know that most of the criticisms being directed at…
NSW Greens don’t see their job as solely defending brutish Israel
The decision of Sydney’s Marrickville council and the NSW Greens to back BDS against apartheid Israel continues to generate predictable hysteria from the Murdoch tabloids (and that’s to say nothing of the racist, anti-Muslim diatribes being circulated by many Jews and bigots across Australia): The Greens have threatened a trade boycott against the world’s second-largest…
Why did most Western elites not want to see Arab anger?
Al-Jazeera’s director general Wadah Khanfar on the Arab revolution that most in the West simply didn’t expect. Why? Because we fear Islamists, because we hate the idea that Arabs may vote for parties we don’t like and because we fear that poor little undemocratic Israel may be challenged. Times are changing: Indeed, it should surprise…
What the West fears is true independence in the Arab world
The following article by Kate Ausburn appears in Green Left Weekly: Popular uprisings in the Arab world have challenged a political landscape dominated by undemocratic regimes and fronted by dictators, a panel of academics and journalists said at a Sydney University forum on February 15. Speakers discussed the regional and international ramifications of the uprisings…