My own articles, published in various places
On Iraq, and Blair’s war crimes:
Blair’s propaganda line often goes that the death toll is not his responsibility, because it was the consequence of the sectarian civil war that followed the invasion. This is a total lie.
In fact, by now, we know that the sectarian civil war was instigated by the American occupiers of Iraq as a matter of early policy.
On rumours of an Egyptian “invasion” of Gaza:
After the Muslim Brotherhood, the spectre of Hamas has been been another primary boogie man for the generals. Pro-regime media outlets have relentlessly harped on with one farcical conspiracy theory after the next about Hamas – including the ridiculous claim that Morsi wanted to hand the Sinai over to Hamas.
With the Brotherhood dealt with, these latest Egyptian army threats do not come as a surprise.
Buoyed by a newly invigorated cult of personality centred around Sisi, the military dictatorship decided to shore up its power by staging an election to usher in a new constitution. It will free the army, police and intelligence services from civilian control, giving the coup a legalistic veneer.
Once, Saddam Hussein used to to claim 99 percent of Iraqis had voted for him. The dictator Mubarak and his party “won” rigged elections with 80-88 percent. Sisi decided to out do him.
On the shared values of shared colonialisms:
Regev’s reply was stark, but honest: “Yes, as the Americans did to the Indians.”
It was a clear statement of Israel’s really-existing ideology, intentions and practice. It is refreshing in the sense that at least she openly stated her racist animosity to Palestinians. It stands in contrast to liberal Zionism’s smokescreens about “peace,” while at the same time carrying out the same policies.
The only democracy in the universe:
More recently, Israel has hit on a new physiological torture technique on Palestinians – but it is one carried out on entire villages and neighbourhoods. It affects innocent men, women and children, who are not even accused of a crime. Israeli soldiers do this simply because they can.
They are calling them “training exercises” or “mock raids”. Soldiers invade Palestinian homes and make arrests without explaining what is going on. Lovingly-built homes are upended in apparent searches for weapons. Houses are surrounded with armed soldiers. Children are terrified.
On the Israel lobby’s cash-money vs. BDS:
It’s safe to say that only one of these salaries could fund entire pro-Palestinian organisations for several years and yet it is these under-funded groups that are winning more and more significant milestones in the struggle towards building the BDS counter-siege on Israel. No wonder Zionist organizations are worried. The infamous Reut Institute recommendations for Israel to “sabotage” pro-Palestinian justice groups rated BDS as much as a threat to Israel’s apartheid system as armed resistance. Reut dubbed the former a “delegitimisation network” and the latter the “resistance network”.
My latest MEMO column. The permanent counter-revolution continues:
This is the same man who boasts to the western press about Jordan, Palestine and Yemen being “under our hegemony,” with the rule of his chequebook. Put aside that hypocrisy, as well as the open sectarian agitation for the moment and note how brazen this alliance now is.
The Israeli and and Saudi regimes find themselves in the same trench across the region.
The ANC was a national liberation movement. In that era, revolutionary freedom fighters looked not to placating the west, but to each other as they built not only rhetorical, but very real material links.
Mandela visited the revolutionary leaders of Algeria in 1962, he built links with Fidel Castro’s Cuba, and with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
My latest MEMO column on the new Spinwatch report on the Israel lobby:
The Israel lobby often operates in the darkness, making it harder to expose. But this does also make it particularly susceptible to the light of scrutiny – such as the light shed by this report.
Understanding the way the Israel lobby works is most important. Do not be intimidated or despair. They are strong, but not all-pervasive as they would like us to think.
Probably the most controversial thing I have ever written (controversy generated by Israel’s propagandists generally being falsified). Alternative judgements rendered on Twitter: “Good,” “Brilliant,” “Spot-on” and (my favourite of the insults) “someone throwing up on their keyboard”:
But we can now say with confidence that none of these uprisings has constituted a revolution. Of course, the immense struggles and sacrifices that people have made may yet sow seeds for the future… To say Syria is now a disaster is a massive understatement. This is a sectarian civil war which could continue for a decade if the regime’s enemies, led by the brutal Saudi tyranny, continue to wage their proxy war on the country.
As usual, read the rest of this column over at MEMO.
UPDATE, 26/11: After pressure, MEMO has decided to to withdraw this article because they deemed it “offensive.” It has been deleted from their website and replaced with a note (although a copy was preserved on the Internet Archive).
I totally stand by the article, the full text of which is below. 28/11: Jacobin magazine has also now republished it on their site.
Syria: the revolution that never was
By Asa Winstanley
What has happened in the Arab world since Tunisian icon Muhammed Bouazizi burned himself to death in protest in December 2010?
A series of popular uprisings, each feeding off the next, swept the region. From Morocco to Oman, there were varying degrees of protest against ossified regimes, demanding everything from the downfall of the regime to more simple reforms.
But we can now say with confidence that none of these uprisings has constituted a revolution. Of course, the immense struggles and sacrifices that people have made may yet sow seeds for the future.
Pro-war Times columnist David Aaronovitch even told the veteran Palestinian journalist Abdel Bari Atwan on a BBC News panel discussion this weekend that he was talking “nonsense” to accuse Israel of doing it. And the third panellist dismissed it all as Arab “conspiracy theories.”But when such “evidential certainty” – laid out over a 108-page expert report – is dismissed out of hand as Arab conspiracy theory it’s time to question who are the real “conspiracy theorists”.
A long article published in last weekend’s New York Times revealed that Israel is a high-priority target for NSA spy operations. Scott Shane wrote of documents showing NSA’s “tracking of ‘high priority Israeli military targets,’ including drone aircraft and the Black Sparrow missile system”. It is the latest tantalizing glimpse into the complicated intelligence relationship between Israel and America