One year ago today, Israel launched “Operation Cast Lead”, a murderous full-scale military assault on the small, densely populated, and defenseless Gaza Strip. The operation resulted in the massacre of over 1,300 Palestinians, the vast majority civilians, including hundreds of children. This includes only those killed directly by military attacks.…
In a New York Times op-ed this week that advocates bombing Iran, the author, Alan J. Kuperman, director of the Nuclear Proliferation Prevention Program at the University of Texas at Austin, begins by suggesting that President Barack Obama should “sigh in relief that Iran has rejected his nuclear deal”. In…
New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman repeats the myth: We had a civil war in America in the mid-19th century because we had a lot of people who believed bad things — namely that you could enslave people because of the color of their skin. The implication is that…
Earlier this month, the Taliban offered what was essentially a guarantee to prevent the return of Al Qaeda to Afghanistan in return for a withdraw of foreign troops. As Anand Gopal reported in the Wall Street Journal: The Taliban said in a statement Saturday they would provide a “legal guarantee”…
A headline in today’s London Times: Iran condemned by Western leaders over test of long-range missile There was, unsurprisingly, no similar headline in the West reading anything like: Israel condemned by Western leaders over test of long-range UAV But a headline in the Jerusalem Post just a few days ago…
The Guardian reported this week that: A British court issued an arrest warrant for Israel’s former foreign minister over war crimes allegedly committed in Gaza this year – only to withdraw it when it was discovered that she was not in the UK, it emerged today. Tzipi Livni, a member…
Says the New York Times about Britain’s ongoing Iraq war inquiry: So it is little surprise that the inquiry’s first three weeks of hearings have unfolded in ways that have done little to blunt a common view in Britain that the war, conducted on the governing Labour Party’s watch, was…
President Obama met today with Lebanese President Sleiman. In his comments, Sleiman said: We ask President Obama and the United States to exert further pressure on Israel to implement Resolution 1701 and to withdraw from Israeli occupied — Lebanese occupied territories namely from the village of Ghajar, Kfar Shouba, and…
Reports the London Times: Tens of thousands of Palestinians turned out today in a huge show of support for Hamas, as the Islamist movement marked its 22 anniversary with defiant speeches and denunciations of Israel almost a year after a deadly offensive against Gaza. The article includes this standard narrative:…
The Washington Post has a story today on how the U.S. and Afghan government’s plan to lure fighters away from insurgency is a miserable failure. Lured to quit the insurgency by the government’s promise of a job, land for his family and an end to the misery of fighting, Mohammed…
The London Times claims to have obtained documents showing Iranian work on nuclear weapons. Iran’s “nuclear diplomacy”, the Times states, is “one lie after another”, and calls the 2007 U.S. National Intelligence Estimate that stated that Iran had ended its (alleged) nuclear weapons program “worthless”. The supposed smoking gun in…
From the Jerusalem Post: Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz, who voted in favor of the West Bank construction moratorium in the security cabinet on November 25, said Sunday night that he would soon demand a revote if the Palestinian Authority continues to reject negotiations. … “If the Palestinian side, instead of…
Outlining his rationale for the decision to send yet more troops to Afghanistan, President Barack Obama on Tuesday began with a familiar refrain: “We did not ask for this fight. On September 11, 2001, 19 men hijacked four airplanes and used them to murder nearly 3,000 people.” “Al Qaeda’s base…
The U.S. House of Representatives will vote on Tuesday on a resolution calling on President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton “to oppose unequivocally any endorsement or further consideration of the ‘Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict’ in multilateral fora.” Headed by…
Iranian officials have accused the U.S. and British governments of involvement in a terrorist attack on Sunday that killed or injured dozens. Five commanders of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) were included among the dead in the suicide bombing, responsibility for which was claimed by the Baluchi terrorist group…
With a general election in Iraq scheduled for January 2010, the U.S. is encouraging the Iraqi legislature to pass the requisite election law, while international oil corporations continue to compete for contracts to exploit Iraq’s natural energy resources. After a meeting at the White House on Tuesday with Iraqi Prime…
Aspects of the Quràn by Syed Zahoor Ahmad sets out to “clear some of the misconceptions surrounding Islam and present it in its true colors” by presenting nine aspects of Islam that are commonly misrepresented in the West. The author’s means of doing so, for better or for worse, is…
The politicians, pundits, and intelligentsia are up in arms about the revelation that Iran has been developing a new nuclear facility that will house centrifuges to enrich uranium. A look at why Iran is regarded as deserving condemnation over this reveals quite a bit about the intellectual culture of political…
An eye-catching headline: “A U.S. Envoy Makes the Case for the U.N.” In his speech, Mr. Churkin noted sardonically that just a few months ago, on the subject of Darfur in Sudan, he had been lectured about how war crimes charges should never be sacrificed for political reasons, according to…
The New York Times is putting out its standard fare on Iran’s nuclear program as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) releases its latest report. Under the headline “Atomic Agency is Pressed on Iran Records”, the Times reported last week that the U.S. is “pressing” the IAEA “to make public…
Jeremy R. Hammond is an independent political analyst and a recipient of the Project Censored Award for Outstanding Investigative Journalism. He is the founding editor of Foreign Policy Journal (www.foreignpolicyjournal.com) and can also be found on the web at JeremyRHammond.com. His new book, "Ron Paul vs. Paul Krugman: Austrian vs. Keynesian economics in the financial crisis", is now available at Amazon.com.
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