Though I hate to say I told you so, this Thus post from August 2009 “Where’s Gordon Brown in the Libyan Desert Storm?” deals at length in customary erudite fashion with the extraordinary rehabilitation of Whacko Jacko Gadaffi, his socialite son Saif, erstwhile cocktail guest of both Mandelson and Osborne and the strange silence surrounding the [...]
Category Archives: Intifada
Afghan election update: Karzai rumoured to have won with an improbable majority
August 24, 2009 – 4:18 pm
It is rumoured in Kabul that the Independent Election Commission is under pressure to rush out election results in an effort to accustom public opinion to the legitimacy of a Karzai victory which some are already claiming could be greater than 70 percent. Unofficial reports (Press TV) claim that Karzai has won with 3,244,196 votes [...]
Afghan elections declared free but not fair by EU fudgepackers
August 23, 2009 – 11:54 am
While resisting the temptation to say ‘we told you so’ (Thus passim) – it is glaringly evident that, as predicted, the Afghan elections were neither free nor fair. Except that by an extraordinary contortion of logic and semantics, the EU monitors have declared that they were ‘generally fair but not free.’ Well, thanks for putting [...]
Israel lobby victorious as BBC refuses to help with humanitarian appeal
January 25, 2009 – 6:21 pm
In a display of lip-curling spinelessness, the BBC has refused to air the non-aligned Disasters Emergency Committee appeal for Humanitarian Aid to the victims of the Gaza conflict. Other UK (commercial) TV channels, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5, have agreed to air the appeal. Sky Television is considering its position. (UPDATE: unsurprisingly, Sky has [...]
Mission accomplished as Israel announces truce in Gaza
January 18, 2009 – 1:47 am
Having reached all ‘the goals of the war, and beyond’ Israeli President Olmert trumpeted a unilateral truce to commence at 00.00 am today, having been told to stop killing so many civilians by the US on Friday, ahead of Obama’s inauguration and with enough dead and wounded Palestinians to ensure election victory. The calculation [...]
Update: 3000 ton US arms shipment to Israel postponed/rerouted
January 13, 2009 – 8:25 pm
The carefully-worded caveats surrounding the veracity of our earlier piece were unnecessary: despite earlier prevarication, the Pentagon has confirmed that the US were sending 3000 tons of munitions in 25 containers from Greece to Israel, timed to arrive at the end of January. This volte face obviously had nothing to do with the leaking of [...]
Update: Hamas and Israel reject UN ceasefire resolution
January 9, 2009 – 1:25 pm
Despite the early optimism of UK Foreign Minister, David Miliband, who greeted last night’s UN Security Council Resolution for an immediate ceasefire as ‘the world speaking with one voice,’ the problem was – it wasn’t. Although the vote was carried 14-0, the US, as predicted (Thus passim) abstained. Israel, which doesn’t care much for the [...]
I know nothing at first hand about Gaza so I should stop commenting . . . . . . .
January 8, 2009 – 9:56 am
. . .and it would be a good idea if other people did the same. However, I do know a bit about media. It is pointless of Israel to complain about the possible bias of quoted ‘sources in Gaza’ from the world’s news gatherers if they employ totalitarian tactics (selectively used by the US in [...]