My following article appears in the Sydney Morning Herald today: Last year’s cessation of hostilities between the Sri Lankan government and the Tamil Tigers, after up to 40,000 Tamil civilians were murdered in the last months of the conflict, has heralded a Beijing-led invasion of the island. The authoritarian Rajapaksa regime was assisted by Chinese…
Showing all posts tagged Iraq
Mearsheimer/Walt enter the best-seller list via Franzen
Great post by MJ Rosenberg on Jonathan Franzen’s new best-seller Freedom and its deep message about the Zionist lobby: I just want to comment on a minor stream that runs through the book: it is that neo-conservatives are loathsome, that they joined up with war profiteers to get us into Iraq, and that they were…
Why on earth would America want to help the people they’ve invaded?
While reading this story about a new British documentary explaining the decision of the Iraqi insurgency to stop fighting the Americans and battle al-Qaeda instead in the years after the 2003 invasion, this quote is astounding: As General Jack Keane, the former vice chief of staff of the US Army, admitted in an interview at…
Here’s what Iraqis need; iTunes
Here’s a plan. Invade a country. Destroy the infrastructure. Refuse to compensate. Remain an occupier. Computer anybody? The shipment of laptop computers that arrived in Iraq’s main seaport in February was a small but important part of the American military’s mission here to win hearts and minds. What happened afterward is a tale of good…
America wants faceless men to kill its enemies
The largely secret war now being fought by unaccountable private firms. This is how the West fights battles: More private contractors than soldiers were killed in Iraq and Afghanistan in recent months, the first time in history that corporate casualties have outweighed military losses on America’s battlefields. More than 250 civilians working under U.S. contracts…
Petraeus believes in forever conflict
Just in case it wasn’t clear, America’s “war on terror” in Afghanistan may last, well, for decades. Here’s Gen. David H. Petraeus, head of U.S. Central Command, quoted in Bob Woodward’s new book: You have to recognize also that I don’t think you win this war. I think you keep fighting. It’s a little bit…
Revisiting an op-ed that raised the prospect of US crimes
What an interesting idea. The New York Times interviews Joseph Wilson, seven years after writing his incendiary column on Bush lies over Iraq.
Private contractor Serco escapes scrutiny in the detention debate
My following piece appears today in Crikey: I visited Villawood on Sunday”‰—”‰alongside a delegation of union leaders and Greens Senator-elect Lee Rhiannon”‰—”‰and met several asylum seekers subsequently involved in the protest that ended peacefully last night with the arrival of UNHCR officials. We spent hours conversing with men in their 20s and up from Iraq,…
How the Arab music world can see our noble soldiers in war
Waad Argoub – Shadha Hassoun Uploaded by dawebni. – Watch more music videos, in HD! This fascinating video, by Iraqi singer Shadha Hassoun, has caused a sensation in the Middle East: The raging questions about America’s role in Iraq came to a boil earlier this year with “Arqoub’s Promise,” a controversial music video which captured…
Asylum seekers all over the news but Serco’s role remains covered
From this morning’s ABC AM: TONY EASTLEY: A police investigation will continue today into the death of a Fijian man at the Villawood Immigration detention centre in Sydney. The 36-year-old, who jumped to his death yesterday morning, was due to be deported back to Fiji. Overnight, tensions remained high at the centre when a group…