West has no moral case for military actions in Arab world

Roger Cohen in the New York Times is spot-on but mark my words; most journalists, think-tankers, commentators and politicians have deliberately short memories. In time they’ll simply say: “Our complicity in Arab horrors? Oh but it’s so complicated…”: Hearings should be held in the U.S. Congress and throughout Western legislatures on these questions: How did…

Libya isn’t a Western plaything

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…

Gaddafi admires Zionist killing in Gaza

Oh my. Israel must be so pleased that Libyan dictator Gaddafi is citing its massacre of Palestnians in a positive light: Long-time Libyan leader Muammar Gadhafi said Monday in an interview with TV network France 24 that his violent crackdown on opposition protesters is akin to Israel’s efforts to defend itself from extremism during its…

Why aren’t these bought Orientalist hacks stripped of legitimacy?

Further evidence of the moral and political bankruptcy of the intellectual and commentator class. How many whores were willing to work spruiking Mubarak’s brutal regime? And now this: In February 2007 Harvard professor Joseph Nye Jr., who developed the concept of “soft power,” visited Libya and sipped tea for three hours with Muammar Qaddafi. Months…

Westerners who enjoy largesse from our thugs or theirs

The depravity of bought intellectuals, not unlike many journalists who get wined and dined by US forces in Iraq or Afghanistan or in the halls of Washington, Canberra or London. Power can be appealing but it also corrupts: A trip to Libya in 2006 by Anthony Giddens, the former London School of Economics director and…

We miss Gaddafi’s power already!

How many of these firms have been making money in a repressive state on the backs of poorly paid migrant workers? A group of U.S. companies that do business in Libya is asking the Treasury Department to take measures to protect them despite wide-ranging sanctions announced by President Barack Obama last week. National Foreign Trade…

Hello London and Washington; please just stay at home

Seumas Milne writes in the Guardian that the West should just politely bugger off from the Arab world and realise its influence is waning. Fat chance: The “responsibility to protect” invoked by those demanding intervention in Libya is applied so selectively that the word hypocrisy doesn’t do it justice. And the idea that states which…

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