My following book review appeared in Saturday’s Sydney Morning Herald: THE NET DELUSION Evgeny Morozov Allen Lane, 408pp, $29.95 As people in the Middle East have been protesting in the streets against Western-backed dictators and using social media to connect and circumvent state repression, it would be easy to dismiss The Net Delusion as almost…
Showing all posts tagged Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia desperate to keep West addicted to its deadly oil
There’s nothing like continuing to fund, arm and support one of the most brutal regimes on earth so we can drive and fly and fight wars.
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…
Britain happy to train Saudi thugs for crowd control
The real face of London’s foreign policy posture: Britain is training Saudi Arabia‘s national guard – the elite security force deployed during the recent protests in Bahrain – in public order enforcement measures and the use of sniper rifles. The revelation has outraged human rights groups, which point out that the Foreign Office recognises that…
Washington strongly backs brutal Saudi regime
Because selling deadly weapons is the best way to show America’s real commitment to democracy in the Arab world: On the same day President Obama pressed again for peace in the Middle East, the Associated Press reminded us that the United States cannot help itself from flooding the region with the instruments of war, reporting…
Fisk on what Obama should say about the Middle East (but won’t)
Spot on: OK, so here’s what President Barack Obama should say today about the Middle East. We will leave Afghanistan tomorrow. We will leave Iraq tomorrow. We will stop giving unconditional, craven support to Israel. Americans will force the Israelis – and the European Union – to end their siege of Gaza. We will withhold…
What US foreign policy does to terrorism (hint; raises the chances)
No kidding: US military support for foreign governments encourages terrorist groups to attack Americans, demonstrates a new study from the London School of Economics and Political Science and the University of Essex. Terrorist attacks on Americans are more likely to come from countries where the US provides military aid, stations troops and sells arms finds…
So much for that grand “coalition” for Libya invasion
Welcome to the world of Western foreign policy; only certain kinds of repression are troubling. Pepe Escobar in Asia Times: You invade Bahrain. We take out Muammar Gaddafi in Libya. This, in short, is the essence of a deal struck between the Barack Obama administration and the House of Saud. Two diplomatic sources at the…
American firms happy to assist with Arab dictatorships
Middle East brutality brought to you by good old capitalism: As Middle East regimes try to stifle dissent by censoring the Internet, the U.S. faces an uncomfortable reality: American companies provide much of the technology used to block websites. McAfee Inc., acquired last month by Intel Corp., has provided content-filtering software used by Internet-service providers…