When we understand that wars come about as a result of lies, peddled to the British public and the American public and public all over Europe and other countries, then who are the war criminals? It is not just leaders, it is not just soldiers, it is journalists, journalists are war criminals. And Assange, interviewed…
Showing all posts tagged Libya
What legitimate civil disobedience against a war criminal looks like
Bravo: On Monday 26 September, three members of Veterans For Peace and a member of Code Pink confronted Donald Rumsfeld at a Boston stop of his book tour. I attempted to make a citizen’s arrest. Police hustled all four of us out, while a hostile rightwing crowd shouted and jeered. To get in, we had…
Memo to media; Tony Blair isn’t a Mid-East expert, he just loves making money
Indeed (via the Guardian): Tony Blair is facing calls for greater transparency in his role as Middle East peace envoy after it emerged that he visited Muammar Gaddafi in 2009 while JP Morgan, the investment bank that employs Blair as a …£2m-a-year adviser, sought to negotiate a multibillion-pound loan from Libya. Blair also championed two…
Anyone can make a revolution (or can they?)
The upcoming Festival of Dangerous Ideas is taking place at the Sydney Opera House in October. Feel threatened. I’m involved in the following event on 2 October at 6pm: In Egypt and Tunisia we have seen ordinary people come together to claim democracy and human rights in the face of oppressive regimes, with Twitter and…
Orwellian name of the week: Middle East Transitions office
Let me get this straight. Washington spends the last decades backing any dictator who could be bought or bribed. Its image in the Muslim world couldn’t be lower. And now it wants to “help” the move towards democracy (via The Cable)? The State Department has opened a brand-new office to manage U.S. policy toward countries…
What may happen to the Arab Spring?
The Middle East is in flux like rarely before. Only a fool would try to make accurate predictions but here’s one view by Hussein Agha and Robert Malley in the New York Review of Books: For all this uncertainty, there seems little doubt—as protesters tire and as the general public tires of them—in what direction…
The good mercenary life in Africa
Who said being a private security thug wasn’t profitable in the age of capitalism on crack (via South African paper The New Age)?: Thirty-five Special Forces-trained South Africans were responsible for this week’s audacious operation that spirited Muammar Gaddafi’s wife and three children from Libya to safety in Algeria. The “battle hardened Iraq veterans”, who…
Guess who was helping Gaddafi stay in power?
The role of Western companies helping repressive regimes monitoring their citizens is only getting worse, as I document in my book The Blogging Revolution. This week the Wall Street Journal secured a cracking exclusive about Libya and the fine, upstanding people helping Gaddafi remain thuggish: On the ground floor of a six-story building here, agents…