My following article appears today on ABC’s The Drum: The latest BBC interview with Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, situated in a fancy restaurant on the Mediterranean, was painful to watch. Clearly delusional and blaming drug-addled youth and al-Qaeda for the ongoing revolution in his country (which he claimed he didn’t lead, the “masses” were in…
Showing all posts tagged war on terror
Abusing David Hicks is seemingly acceptable on our ABC
Here’s a shameful interview yesterday on ABC Melbourne radio with former Guantanamo Bay captive David Hicks. For the record, Hicks may have pleaded guilty to terrorism charges but he did so to simply get out of the US gulag: David Hicks: I don’t think you’ve read my book, that’s correct? Jon Faine: No, I’ve not…
Private armies living like kings in “war on terror” fantasies
What does it take for mercenaries to stop getting contracts in occupied nations? More than a year has passed since the State Department decided to drop its contract [1] with the security firm protecting the US embassy in Kabul, following an international scandal featuring drunken debauchery [2] fit for a Van Wilder flick. But the…
What the West saw in Gaddafi was oil and torture
The US had no issue with Gaddafi’s brutality and corruption as long as the oil kept flowing. Fossil fuel hunger has turned us into leeches: After New Year’s Day 2009, Western media reported that Seif al-Islam el-Qaddafi, a son of the Libyan leader Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, had paid Mariah Carey $1 million to sing just…
West has rather liked Gaddafi for quite some time
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…
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,…
What New Delhi can learn from Cairo
My following article is published by leading Indian magazine Tehelka: The Middle East is the region where global empires lavishly exercise their chequebook. Since the Second World War, America has bribed, cajoled and backed autocratic regimes in the name of stability. Israel, self-described as the only democracy in the area, has been insulated from the…
No peace treaty ever told Egypt to banish Arabs
Ali Abunimah is spot on: On many minds — especially Israeli and American ones — has been the question of whether a new democratic Egyptian government will tear up the 1979 peace treaty with Israel. That of course, is up to the Egyptian people, although the transitional military government confirmed in its fourth statement Egypt’s…