Global powers rarely learn from history. Instead, they look to find ways to influence others with a range of sticks and carrots. Hello, weapons manufacturers, stop smiling. Michael Klare in TomDispatch: Did Washington just give Israel the green light for a future attack on Iran via an arms deal?… Did Russia just signal its further…
Showing all posts tagged Syria
The last thing Syria needs, or the Middle East, is more Western “engagement”
Stunning Simon Jenkins piece in The Guardian that explains why Western imperialists, of the liberal and conservative kind, just need to butt out of the Middle East: There could no more dreadful idea than to pour more armaments into the sectarian war now consuming Syria.… Yet that is precisely what Britain’s coalition government wants to do.…
I’m looking at you, liberal/imperial interventionists
Handy lessons that should be observed by all before advocating the bombing of Iran/Syria/Libya/anywhere. Foreign Policy’s Steve Walt: #1:… You frequently find yourself advocating that the United States send troops, drones, weapons, Special Forces, or combat air patrols to some country that you have never visited, whose language(s) you don’t speak, and that you never paid…
Obama’s war on terror could last for decades
The open-ended nature of this “war”, plus a plethora of global targets, should make us concerned. Resistance is vital. Here’s Charlie Savage in the New York Times: A top Pentagon official said Thursday that the evolving war against… Al Qaeda… was likely to continue “at least 10 to 20 years” and urged Congress not to modify the…
Our online tolerance for brutality in war
Barely a day passes when another horrific video doesn’t emerge from Syria, showing either the “rebels” or government forces engaged in some act of terrorism/death/flesh eating. The New Yorker’s Jon Lee Anderson: I first heard about the Syrian rebel who was supposed to have eaten a heart on Monday, when a friend who lives in…
Lessons in real journalism from Jeremy Scahill
The author of the New York Times best-seller Dirty Wars explains to PBS’s Tavis Smiley on what important journalism means and why it’s far too rare: Tavis:… Let me start before I get into the text, just as we’re talking about this, where it is that this commitment to being a truth-teller comes from. What in…
20th century Middle East is disappearing but what replaces it?
Astute Patrick Cockburn in Counterpunch on how the new imperial powers are intent on creating a new reality that may ignore the majority of the populations: In the aftermath of the First World War, Britain and France famously created the modern Middle East by carving up what had been the Ottoman Empire. The borders of…
While BDS surges globally, Murdoch’s organ in Australia fiddles
While Israel continues daily to brutalise Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, and Stephen Hawking’s decision to back BDS causes waves around the world, it’s comical to read Rupert Murdoch’s Australian desperately hoping that the Zionist state would just get some love. After praising Israel for singing lullabies to Palestinians recently, today’s editorial merely…
Israel desperate for regional war?
Savvy piece by Larry Derfner in +972 magazine. The lack of mainstream criticism over Israeli actions against Syria reveals the agenda; install a pliant thugocracy in Damascus. Good luck with that: People in this country [Israel] have been worried that the fighting in Syria is going to “spill over the border,” and now Israel, unprovoked,…