It was an illusion, built on seemingly endless Western aid and no plan to end the Zionist occupation on Palestinian land: For years, Fayyad’s soft talk and cheery dedication enabled policymakers throughout the world to ignore the brewing crisis. And this may be where Fayyad, despite his impressive management skills, did Palestinians a disservice. In…
Showing all posts tagged Barack Obama
Understanding cyber warfare from the other side
The US is unsurprisingly worried about cyber attacks from hackers, Russia, China or even a friendly nation. The future of warfare may well be fought in a different space altogether. But this report proves how unprepared America is for the inevitable attempts to understand its inner workings. The problem lies in how hackers are viewed.…
US “intelligence” acknowledge that Arab Spring has left them clueless
A rather startling Newsweek feature that shows just how shallow the US understanding of the Middle East has been for decades. Working with tyrants and torturers and murderers, in the name of fighting “terrorism”, has meant that the overthrow of such figures in the last six months has resulted in US eyes and ears becoming…
Peace activists are clearly terrorists
Barack Obama’s America: FBI agents took box after box of address books, family calendars, artwork and personal letters in their 10-hour raid in September of the century-old house shared by Stephanie Weiner and her husband. The agents seemed keenly interested in Weiner’s home-based business, the Revolutionary Lemonade Stand, which sells silkscreened baby outfits and other…
Global dissidents may not want US openly backing them
Promoting web freedom is a noble idea, especially since so many autocratic regimes and Western multinationals are working together to stop citizens accessing the glories of information on the internet. But this idea is full of potential problems (via the New York Times), not least because Washington has a shocking record of supporting dictatorships at…
Making a forture in war-ravaged Iraq
Who said the Iraqis were loving being “liberated”? The multinational corporations are making a killing: As Congress launches… a bipartisan PR campaign to stay in Iraq forever, the White House throws… a corporate looting party FIRST LOOK: WALL STREET IN IRAQ? – Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Deputy Secretary Tom Nides (formerly chief administrative officer at…
Murdoch logic; backers of war should receive a peace prize
Noam Chomsky has won the 2011 Sydney Peace Prize over his legendary support for human rights and challenging power it all its forms. That makes him an enemy of a Murdoch empire that spends its entire time wanting to be intimate with government and business. The poor dears can’t understand why a man who opposes…
America’s role in the Arab world should be finished
Robert Fisk is right: This month, in the Middle East, has seen the unmaking of the President of the United States. More than that, it has witnessed the lowest prestige of America in the region since Roosevelt met King Abdul Aziz on the USS Quincy in the Great Bitter Lake in 1945. While Barack Obama…