Filed under: Asia, Middle East | Tags: 1979 Iranian Revolution, Afghanistan, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, Anglo-American, Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, Ayatollah Khomeini, Barak Obama, British Petroleum, Carter Administration, Central Asia, CIA, CIA coup, CIA Destablization Plan, Coup D'etat, Democracy, Egypt, Ex-Foreign Minister Yazidi, George Bush, Haiti, Hamas, Hezbollah, Hosni Mubarak, Iran Election 2009, Iran Guardian council, Iran Interior Minister, Iran June 12 Presidential Election, Iran Protests, Iran Ruling elite, Iran's Parliament, Iran's Prime Minister, Iranian, Iranian Street protests, Iranian workers, Jean-Bertrand Aristed, Jebhe Melli, Lebanon, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Mir Hussein Mousavi, Mohammed Javed Mozafar, Mohammed Mossadegh, Monarchy, National Front of Iran, NATO, Palestine, Pashto Radio, Protests, Republicanism, Reza Shah Pahlavi, Sadeq Mahsouli, Seymour Hersh, Soviet Union, Stolen Election, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Tehran, Tehran University, Theocratic State, Theodore Roosevelt, US Media, Venezuela, Wall Street Journal, Washington, Washington Post, White House
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18 June 2009
Source: Global Research
In the run-up to Iran’s June 12 presidential election, early indications suggested the media’s reaction if the wrong candidate won. On June 7, New York Times writer Robert Worth reported “a surge of energy (for) Mir Hussein Mousavi, a reformist who is the leading contender to defeat Mr. Ahmadinejad (and) a new unofficial poll (has him well ahead) with 54 percent of respondents saying they would vote for him compared with 39 percent for Mr. Ahmadinejad.” No mention of who conducted the poll, how it was done, what interests they represented, or if Mousavi winning might be the wrong result. More on that below.
Writing for the influential far right Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Fariborz Ghadar described the contest as “pit(ting) the hard-line Mahmoud Ahmadinejad against two relatively moderate and one conservative challenger.” In spite of one or more independent polls showing Ahmadinejad way ahead, he suggested that “the outcome (isn’t) (more…)
Filed under: Middle East | Tags: Egypt, Gaza, gaza Strip, guerilla warfare, Hamas, Hizballah, Hosni Mubarak, Iran, Israel, Lebanon, Muslim Brotherhood, Palestine, Palestinian, Rafah, Rafah Crossing, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, Syria, Zionism, Zionist
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11 January 2009
Source: Electronic Intifada
While Israel fervently attempts to terrorize the Palestinians into submission in Gaza, many observers have started to wonder why Hizballah has refrained from stepping in militarily to assist its brothers-in-arms, Hamas. Such musings fail to take account of the constraints on Hizballah’s room for action, as well as the circumstances under which Hizballah would ignore such constraints. The question that should be posed is not so much if Hizballah will act, but when.
As things currently stand, Hizballah is not in a position to directly help Hamas militarily by opening a new front with Israel. In the first place, Hizballah and its supporters have only recently recovered from the devastating impact of Israel’s war against them in July 2006. A Hizballah offensive against (more…)
Filed under: Middle East | Tags: 1967 Invasion, Arab Countries, Arab Intellecutals, Arab Monarchies, Arab Nationalism, Baghdad Pact, Bermuda Conference, Britain, China, Cold War, Colonialism, Denationalization, Egypt, European Colonization, France, Frantz Fanon, Gamal Abdul-Nasser, Gaza, Gaza Ghetto Uprising, gaza Strip, Gazans, Green Zone, Hamas, Hizbullah, Iran, Iranian Threat, Israel, Israel's Arab Allies, Israeli Intelligence, Isreali Massacre, Jordanian Army, Lebanon Invasion 1982, Mahmoud Abas, Moroccan dictatorship, Muslims, Nasser, Nasserism, Nazi, Nazi Genocide, Nazi-Occupied Europe, Neoliberal Arab Intellectuals, Oil Money, Omani Dictatorship, Oslo Agreement, Palestine, Palestinian Bantustans, Palestinian Liberation Organization, Palestinian People, PLO, Racism, Racist, Ramallah, Saudi Media Outlets, Settler-Colony, Soviet Union, Szmul Zygielbojm, the Bund, Third World Revolutionism, Tzipi Livni, US, US Aid, US Dictatorial Allies, Warsaw Ghetto, White Supremacy, Zionism, Zionist, Zionist Entity
4 January 2009
Source: Electronic Intifada
One is often baffled by the ironies of international relations and the alliances they foster. Take for example the Israeli colonial settlement that had declared war on the Palestinian people and several Arab countries since its inception while at the same time it built alliances with many Arab regimes and with Palestinian leaders.
While Hashemite-Zionist relations and Maronite Church-Zionist relations have always been known and documented, there has been less documentation of the services that Israel has provided and continues to provide to Arab regimes over the decades. It is now recognized that Israel’s 1967 invasion of Egypt aimed successfully to destroy (more…)
Filed under: Middle East | Tags: al-Arish, al-Badeel, Arab Foreign Ministers, Arab League, Cairo University, Daily News Egypt, Downtown Cairo, Egypt, Egyptian President, Egyptian Protests, Egyptians, Exports to Israel, Fatah, Gaza, Gaza Stirp, gaza Strip, Hamas, Hosni Mubarak, IDF, Israel, Israeli Ambassador, Israeli Massacre, Israeli War, Isreali Military, Liberation of Palestine, Mahmoud Abbas, Muslim Brotherhood, Natural Gas, Palestine, Palestinian Authority, Palestinian resistance, Palestinians, PIGS, Police Repression, Racism, Racist, Rafah border, Riot Police, Sinai, State Repression, Tagammu Party, Tahrir Square, White Supremacy, Zionism, Zionist, Zionist State, Zionist Terror
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5 January 2009
Source: Electronic Intifada
Thousands of Egyptians have taken to the streets to protest the continuing Israeli aggression against Gaza and the participation of the Egyptian regime in the isolation of its population. Last Wednesday, the state responded with a major crackdown in which tens of protestors and journalists were assaulted and arrested.
Around the Arab world, the Egyptian regime has been a target of severe criticism for its continuing role in the ongoing siege of the Gaza Strip and its silence in the face of intense Israeli bombardment of the enclave. Last Tuesday, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak responded to the criticism by announcing in a televised speech that the Rafah border crossing will remain closed until the Palestinian Authority led by president Mahmoud Abbas regains control of the Gaza strip — a statement that only strengthened the impression that Mubarak approves of the (more…)
Filed under: Middle East | Tags: Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, Ankara, Assualt on Gaza, Bush, China, Egypt, European Union, Fatah, fundamentalism, Gaza, gaza Strip, General Shlomo Gazit, Geneva, Hamas, IDF, Islamic Jihad, Islamists, Ismail Abu Shanab, Israel, Israeli Military Intelligence, Lebanon, London Review of Books, Mubarak dictatorship, Muslim communitites, NATO, Neve Gordon, Obama, Oslo Accords, Palestine, Palestine Authority, Palestinian Ghettoes, Palestinians, PLO, Russia, Sara Roy, Taba, UN Security Council, Washington
Source: Guardian
( 31 December, 2008 ) — The assault on Gaza, planned over six months and executed with perfect timing, was designed largely, as Neve Gordon has rightly observed, to help the incumbent parties triumph in the forthcoming Israeli elections. The dead Palestinians are little more than election fodder in a cynical contest between the right and the far right in Israel. Washington and its EU allies, perfectly aware that Gaza was about to be assaulted, as in the case of Lebanon in 2006, sit back and watch.
Washington, as is its wont, blames the (more…)
Filed under: Middle East | Tags: Afghanistan, Arab Regimes, Arab States, Barack Obama, Bush Administration, Chechnya, Collective Punishment, Colonial Power, Colonialism, Dispossession, Egypt, Ethic Cleansing, Euro-Supremacy, Fatah, Gaza, gaza Strip, Hamas, Hilary Clinton, Hosani Mubarak, Imperialism, Iraq, Israel, Israeli Apartheid, Jerusalem, Jews, Joe Biden, Jordan, Lebanon, Logic, Mahmoud Darwish, Muslim, Muslim World, National Liberation, Native Americans, Nazi Germany, Palestinain Liberation Organization, Palestine, Palestinians, Qassem al-Mughrabi, Racism, Shiite Iraqi, Somalia, State Terror, Syria, Tawfiq Jaber, Terrorism, United Nations, White Supremacy, Yemen, Zionism, Zionist
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31 December 2008
Source: Guardian – Comment Is Free
I have spent most of the Bush administration’s tenure reporting from Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Somalia and other conflicts. I have been published by most major publications. I have been interviewed by most major networks and I have even testified before the senate foreign relations committee. The Bush administration began its tenure with Palestinians being massacred and it ends with Israel committing one of its largest massacres yet in a 60-year history of occupying Palestinian land. Bush’s final visit to the country he chose to occupy ended with (more…)
Filed under: Middle East | Tags: Barack Obama, Colonialism, Egypt, Ehud Barak, European Union, gaza Strip, Hamas, Imperialism, Israel's 9/11, Israeli Apartheid, Israeli Civil Defence Official, Israeli Defence Minister, Israeli War Planes, Mahmoud Abbas, Matan Vilnai, Ofer Shmerling, Racism, Refugees, Settler-Colonialism, United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, US-Dominated Quartet, Western-Backed Palestinian Authority, White Supremacy
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December 29, 2008
“I will play music and celebrate what the Israeli air force is doing.” Those chilling words were spoken on al-Jazeera on Saturday by Ofer Shmerling, an Israeli civil defence official in the Sderot area adjacent to the Gaza Strip. For days Israeli planes have bombed Gaza. Almost 300 Palestinians have been killed and a thousand injured, the majority civilians, including women and children. Israel claims most of the dead were Hamas “terrorists”. In fact, the targets were police stations in dense residential areas, and the dead included many police officers and other civilians. Under international law, police officers are civilians, and targeting them is no less a war crime than aiming at other civilians.
Palestinians are at a loss to describe this new catastrophe. Is it our 9/11, or is it a taste of the “bigger shoah” Matan Vilnai, the deputy defence minister, threatened in February, after the last round of mass killings?
Israel says it is acting in “retaliation” for rockets fired with increasing intensity ever since a six-month truce expired on 19 December. But the bombs dropped on Gaza are only a variation in Israel’s method of killing Palestinians. In recent months they died mostly (more…)
