 |
|
Nazia Jilali
It was only four months ago that the George W Bush embarked on an historic state visit to London, where the world once again witnessed superpowers taking upon themselves the self-proclaimed moral duty of ridding the world of WMD. They announced themselves as guardians and defenders of ‘innocent people everywhere’. But having unleashed a lethal onslaught of destruction against the people of Iraq in the name of guaranteeing security for the world, it has since transpired that no weapons of mass destruction have been found at all. The burning question has therefore become, was the attack legally justified? Is ‘intelligence’ a truly a sound basis for just war or simply a tool used to justify political objectives? And what criteria should be used to dictate who has the right to own weapons of mass destruction?
Keith Jones
The US-led international “stabilization” force that descended on Haiti after Washington engineered a coup against the Caribbean-island country?s elected president has begun moving aggressively into urban areas loyal to deposed president Jean-Bertrand Aristide. The force?s stated aim is to restore order by disarming both pro-and anti-Aristide groups. But its targeting of the slums of Port-au-Prince underscores that the principal goal of the stabilization force is to quell popular opposition to Haiti?s new US-installed regime. The force?s intrusion into the poorer neighborhoods of Port-au-Prince stands in sharp contrast to the hands off approach toward the rebel army that the Bush administration and Haiti?s self-styled democratic opposition used to topple Aristide.
John Pilger
The invasion of Iraq, which began one year ago today, was “organised with lies”, says the new Spanish Prime Minister. Does anyone doubt this any more? Set the carnage of the war and occupation in Iraq against the Madrid atrocity. Terrible though that act of terrorism was, it was small compared with the terrorism of the American-led “coalition”. Yes, terrorism. How strange it reads when it describes the actions of “our” governments. So saturated are we in the West in the devilry of Third World tyrants (most of them the products of Western imperialism) that we have lost all sense of the enormous crime committed in our name.
Rima Merriman
The lack of access to medical services resulting from the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories is having devastating effects on the population, a conference held at the University of Illinois in Chicago on March 7 concluded. Heightened maternity deaths, increasing numbers of traumatized patients suffering from lack of treatment, emergency services unable to come to the rescue of the injured, acute malnutrition, anaemia and stunting among Palestinian children are but a few of the dramatic consequences of the occupation since the outbreak of the second Intifada.
Ashraf Fahim
If the House of Saud held out any hope that the post-September 11, 2001, demonization of their kingdom was finally waning, then someone in Riyadh should pick up a copy of a recently published neo-conservative roadmap for “winning” the “war on terror”. In it, David Frum, an ex-speechwriter for President George W Bush (and inventor of the term “axis of evil"), and Richard Perle, the eminence grise of the neo-con fraternity, suggest that the United States should bring Saudi Arabia to heel by threatening to support independence for the country’s Eastern Province, where much of Saudi Arabia’s minority Shi’ite population and, coincidentally, most of its oil is situated.
David Edwards
Well, I’m still sneezing heavily with this bout of influenza, and don’t feel up to doing anything much on the web site at the moment. Please check back this weekend (March 6th - 7th), by which time I may or may not have recovered enough to come back to work proper. In the meantime, why not read this excellent article, which discusses the profound problems of identity that advanced capitalist societies face, and which I couldn’t not publish.
Jonathan Cook, February 2014.
It was a momentous week for the Jewish state. The Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics published the latest census figures for the year 2013 showing that the Arab population in Greater Israel was the smallest ever at just 687,000 compared to a Jewish population of a fraction over eight million. Who could have imagined 10 years ago that only a decade later the demographic time bomb would have been so completely defused? Looking at copies of Ha’aretz and Maariv 10 years back, one finds hysterical headlines warning that one in four children inside Israel (that’s when the Jewish state did not officially include the West Bank and Gaza) was Muslim. Now the figure across the whole of Greater Israel is less than 10 per cent.
Ewen MacAskill
The United Nations spying row widened on Friday when its former weapons inspector, Hans Blix, told reporters that he suspected both his UN office and his home in New York were bugged in the run-up to the Iraq war. Blix said he expected to be bugged by the Iraqis, but to be spied upon by the USA was a different matter. He described such behaviour as “disgusting”, adding: “It feels like an intrusion into your integrity in a situation when you are actually on the same side.” Blix’s darkest fears were reinforced when he was shown a set of photographs by a senior member of the Bush administration which he insists could only have been obtained through underhand means.
Neil Elliott
The first democratic government of Haiti appears to be in its death throes. To add vicious insult to continuing injury, the American mainstream media continue to present Haitian affairs as the sorry result of the dismal leadership of one man, President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, despite the best efforts of the United States. The headlines that grace the mass media would be laughably absurd if the reality they obscured were not so dreadful. One doesn’t have to wander far from the Associated Press wires to find abundant information about the USA’s enthusiastic long-term “intervention” in Haiti. The so-called “democratic convergence” that has dogged Aristide’s elected government is, in fact, a tiny group of malcontents who are working with elements of the Bush administration to turn Haiti into one vast sweatshop zone.
 |
 |
Get free membership of the World Crisis Web, entitling you to post your own views on the articles published here, and to receive email summaries of the best articles on the site, as well as analysis and comment from other key sites.
Your privacy will always be fully respected. No-one's details will ever be given, sold, or otherwise traded to anyone else.
The World Crisis Web gives you automatically updated RSS news feeds for desktop newsreaders, or to add to your web site.
Amnesty International - Global Justice Gap Condemns Millions to Abuse
The PA's Disingenuous Boycott Campaign
A Shameful War: Israel in the Dock
Somalia: Bad Policies of Strange Bedfellows
The End of Hypocrisy: Crime's Gleeful Abandon in Gaza
Contact the editor without having to bother with e-mail.