Here’s how the New York Times explains the role of the White House in backing a no-fly zone over Libya. Cute how the paper completely ignores all wider context for intervention; energy resources and oil in the country. All completely irrelevant, of course: In a Paris hotel room on Tuesday night, Secretary of State Hillary…
Showing all posts tagged New York Times
Obama very happy to change little in the Middle East
The New York Times clarifies what the Obama administration is really thinking about the Arab world. “Pragmatism” is the key word. In other words, backing autocrats who do the dirty work of Israel and America. Anybody still in love with the supposedly grand visions of Barack Obama? In the Middle East crisis, as on other…
West has no moral case for military actions in Arab world
Roger Cohen in the New York Times is spot-on but mark my words; most journalists, think-tankers, commentators and politicians have deliberately short memories. In time they’ll simply say: “Our complicity in Arab horrors? Oh but it’s so complicated…”: Hearings should be held in the U.S. Congress and throughout Western legislatures on these questions: How did…
Libya isn’t a Western plaything
While parts of Libya begin to imagine a life without Gaddafi – wonderful quote in this typically incisive Anthony Shadid piece in the New York Times: “There is no call for the overthrow of the government; only Colonel Qaddafi is mentioned, as lackey, tyrant and the man with really bad hair” – Western powers are…
Hypocrisy trumps policy in Western alliance with Libya
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…
NYTimes reporter blames Wikileaks for govt not giving her more information
Elisabeth Bumiller, Pentagon correspondent with The New York Times, spoke recently at Brigham Young University and seemed to blame Wikileaks for the lack of transparency at her workplace. This is a curious defence of reporters who simply can’t get information without it being passed by compliant officials. It’s not as if the Pentagon was this…
What makes anybody sane think US will be on right side of new Arab history?
Nicholas Kristof, writing from Bahrain, is optimistic: We were late to side with “people power” in Tunisia and Egypt, but Bahrainis are thrilled that President Obama called the king after he began shooting his people — and they note that the shooting subsequently stopped (at least for now). The upshot is real gratitude toward the…
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…
A welcome marriage between liberalism and Islam?
Anthony Shadid writes for the New York Times from Cairo: There is a fear in the West, one rarely echoed here, that Egypt’s revolution could go the way of Iran’s, when radical Islamists ultimately commandeered a movement that began with a far broader base. But the two are very different countries. In Egypt, the uprising…
New Assange interview on Australian TV
Here’s the interview on SBS Dateline just aired in Australia. And here’s the gist of what Julian Assange said: Wikileaks founder Julian Assange says the whistleblowing website’s influence on events in Tunisia was the “example” for the political upheaval in Egypt. The material leaked by WikiLeaks which was then published through a Lebanese newspaper, Al…