These were the good old days; 2005: As it struggles to combat Islamic terrorist networks, the Bush administration has quietly built an intelligence alliance with Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi, a onetime bitter enemy the U.S. had tried for years to isolate, topple or kill. Kadafi has helped the U.S. pursue Al Qaeda’s network in North…
Showing all posts tagged terrorism
Obama administration keen to maintain money to Egyptian torturers
Washington is extremely happy to be funding and arming an Egyptian elite that routinely tortures its own citizens and terror suspects sent from the US: U.S. military aid to Egypt has been of “incalculable value,” helping its armed forces become a capable, professional body, the top U.S. military officer told Congress Wednesday. Admiral Mike Mullen,…
Sensible American writer who doesn’t loathe political Islam
Roger Cohen in a very powerful column today in the New York Times: Perhaps the most effective antidote to 9/11 will prove to be 2/11, the day Hosni Mubarak conceded the game was up with his 30-year-old dictatorship and left town under military escort for the beach. We’ve tried invasions of Muslim lands. We’ve tried…
Never trust American “security” experts on democracy
This Washington Post article is precisely why so much of American corporate media is failing. Here’s the story; find men, only men, to speak about “security” and terrorism. Ignore the democratic aspirations of the Arab people and focus on what America/Israel may lose. The implication is clear; we’d much rather Cairo torture and murder people…
Exclusive: Mamdouh Habib interview on new US/Israeli Egyptian pet Omar Suleiman
Australian citizen Mamdouh Habib was captured and tortured in the years after September 11 in both Egypt and Guantanamo Bay. For years, “war on terror” supporters defamed Habib and claimed he was lying about his allegations of mistreatment. However last year in just one case against the Australian Murdoch press, he won a small victory:…
Israel doesn’t believe in Egyptian democracy
My following article appears in today’s edition of Crikey: While the Egyptian masses are uprising in unprecedented ways across the country against a Western-backed dictator, Israel fears the worst. The country’s President Shimon Peres said last week that, “no matter what they say, we owe Mubarak true gratitude for being as steadfast as a rock…
Blackwater helping us save the world
Look at what our world has created; mercenaries with government backing: Erik Prince, the founder of the international security giant Blackwater Worldwide, is backing an effort by a controversial South African mercenary firm to insert itself into Somalia’s bloody civil war by protecting government leaders, training Somali troops, and battling pirates and Islamic militants there,…
What I discovered in Jaipur part 1 on insurgency
After the first day at the Jaipur Literature Festival here in India, one of the highlights for me was hearing New Yorker journalist John Lee Anderson talk about the politics of insurgency. Listening to Orhan Pamuk (Nobel Prize winner) and Jung Chang and Jon Halliday (author of the recent book on Mao) was fascinating but…
Galle Literary Festival appeal to not ignore human rights
I was recently asked to sign the following statement about the upcoming Galle Literary Festival in Sri Lanka. I am honoured to appear in such company to highlight the ongoing abuses taking place in a supposedly terror-free country: Reporters Without Borders and Journalists for Democracy in Sri Lanka (JDS), a network of exiled Sri Lankan…
Hersh on who really controls the world
Honesty is such a rare beast in journalism. Perhaps that’s why it takes a master who doesn’t fear a corporate overlord to silence/intimidate (ignore the petty intro): DOHA, Qatar—David Remnick, call your office. In a speech billed as a discussion of the Bush and Obama eras, New Yorker journalist Seymour Hersh delivered a rambling, conspiracy-laden…