by Jeremy Salt In his 1964 book The Lucky Country, Donald Horne wrote: ’Australia is a lucky country run by second-rate people who share its luck.’ The phrase was picked up by politicians and used in smug ways Horne never intended. What he meant was that while others had to work hard to get ahead,…
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 26 2014 (IPS) – When U.S. President Barack Obama addressed the U.N. General Assembly Wednesday, he was outspoken in his criticism of Russia for bullying Ukraine, Syria for its brutality towards its own people, and terrorists of all political stripes for the death and destruction plaguing Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Somalia. But as…
By Fawaz Gerges With ISIL moving towards urban warfare, serious questions regarding the efficacy of the US-led strategy remain. Before and after images of air strikes in Syria during a briefing at the Pentagon [AFP] In the past few weeks, air strikes by US forces have been targeting the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant…
By Ronnie Kasrils Russell Tribunal on Palestine finds that Gaza is on the brink of a genocidal apartheid. Israel and its accomplices must not be allowed to get away with the extermination of a people, writes Kasrils [EPA] Nelson Mandela frequently declared that “Palestine was the greatest moral issue of our time”. After we toppled the…
Palestinian president, speaking at UN General Assembly, vows to pursue Israeli leaders for war crimes. Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas has accused Israel of waging a “war of genocide” in Gaza and vowed to pursue its leaders for war crimes. The latest war in Gaza in July and August – the third war in…
By Philip Giraldi September 18, 2014 “ICH” – “Unz Review” – – Those of us who believe that the Israeli government has finally gone too far in its slaughter of Gazan civilians because the whole world, including most Americans, finally recognize something called ethnic cleansing at a level approaching genocide when they see it, should be…
By Noam Chomsky The way the system is set up, there is virtually nothing people can do anyway to influence the real world. The following is a short excerpt from a classic from Noam Chomsky’s many published works, The Chomsky Reader, which offers a unique insight on a question worth asking — how is it…
By JAMES BAMFORD WASHINGTON — IN Moscow this summer, while reporting a story for Wired magazine, I had the rare opportunity to hang out for three days with Edward J. Snowden. It gave me a chance to get a deeper understanding of who he is and why, as a National Security Agency contractor, he took the…
Credit Otto Dettmer WASHINGTON — IN Moscow this summer, while reporting a story for Wired magazine, I had the rare opportunity to hang out for three days with Edward J. Snowden. It gave me a chance to get a deeper understanding of who he is and why, as a National Security Agency contractor, he took…
By Patrick Cockburn September 15, 2014 “ICH” – “The Independent” – The reasons for this are political as well as military. The five or six million Sunni Arabs who live in areas controlled by Isis in Iraq and Syria may not be happy with the brutality, bigotry and violence of their new rulers. But they are…