Last week Secretary of State Hillary Clinton testified before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and I had the opportunity to raise some of my concerns regarding U.S. foreign policy and the costs of our interventionism around the world. Many observers claim that the recent overthrow of governments in northern Africa and the Middle East will …
Continue reading “Buying Friends Creates More Enemies”
Can anyone doubt that Israel and its American friends direct U.S. Middle East policy? Do senior members of the administration ever dispute the axiom that Israel’s enemies must be America’s enemies? Does Congress or the corporate media ever question the huge financial, military, and diplomatic support Israel receives? Every year witnesses the shameful spectacle of …
Continue reading “America in the Middle East: US Policy Fails Its Purchasers”
“Why don’t the masses stream to the square here, too, and throw Bibi out?” my taxi driver exclaimed when we were passing Rabin Square. The wide expanse was almost empty, with only a few mothers and their children enjoying the mild winter sun. The masses will not stream to the square, and Benjamin Netanyahu can …
Continue reading “A Crazy Prophet”
RAFAH – It was easy enough to rename Mubarak Children’s Hospital the Al Tahrir Hospital in Gaza. Not so easy is the task of managing patients who need to cross over to the Egyptian side for treatment, or come back in. Crossing the border, even for medical treatment, has always been an arduous task. Through …
Continue reading “Mubarak’s Name Easier to Erase Than His Legacy”
Over the past three weeks the Israeli media has been extremely interested in Egypt. During the climatic days of the unprecedented demonstrations, television news programs spent most of their airtime covering the protests, while the daily papers dedicated half the news and opinion pages to the unfolding events. Rather than excitement at watching history in …
Continue reading “Israeli Media ‘Fears’ the New Egypt”
So the Five Eyes‘ daisy chain is alive and well. I encountered this at first hand with my own application under Canada’s Access to Information Act (ATIA), submitted in December 2006 and documented elsewhere. In summary, after a hideous delay not countenanced by the framers of the Act, I got 73 pages of redacted rubbish. …
Continue reading “The Five Eyes’ Daisy Chain”
The revolutionary wave sweeping through the Middle East promises to topple sclerotic Arab regimes throughout the region, but there is a marked difference between, say, Egypt and Iran – and the difference is the nationalist factor. In Egypt, the people rose up against a US-supported dictatorship which had ridden on their backs for 30 years. …
Continue reading “Nationalism, Democracy, and the Arab Awakening”
This is a story right out of 1,001 Nights. The genie escaped from the bottle, and no power on earth can put it back. When it happened in Tunisia, it could have been said: OK, an Arab country, but a minor one. It was always a bit more progressive than the others. Just an isolated …
Continue reading “The Genie Is Out of the Bottle”
CAIRO – Egypt’s armed forces, the de facto rulers of the country since last week’s ouster of President Hosni Mubarak, have already met several longstanding demands of the opposition, including the suspension of the constitution and dissolution of parliament. Some critics, however, say more must be done if the Mubarak regime’s authoritarian structure is to …
Continue reading “Egyptian Military Under Mubarak’s Shadow”
Norman Solomon on fickle US foreign policy
