In this blog I write about world affairs, presenting a view of the world free from NATO propaganda.
Peace Anthropology and Development Anthropology and History are the tools with which I analyze international affairs, as part of a world-wide web of people working for peace through Transcend, UNIDIR and other agencies. Terrorism? This is largely political propaganda: my EPES Mandala Consulting group specialized in “terrorism” and far more people die each year from road accidents or from the flu, than from terror attacks. A lot of news is fear-mongering and most comes from a small number of corporate and government sources. Investigative journalists are a threatened species.
“I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it.”
Let it be clear that I am not in favor of chemical weapons, and I am shocked by the death of 1000 people in a suburb of Damascus – whether the sarin gas was used by Assad’s troops or by Al-Qaeda, it is appalling. But I am even more appalled by the deaths of 100,000 Syrians during the civil war of the past two years. How can killing more Syrians using Cruise Missiles, possibly help the situation?
Read MoreDavid Brooks draws (in his Op-Ed in the NYT) from this story a set of political conclusions that are unjustified by anything we know about Syria or the region we vaguely think of as the ‘Middle East’. The journalistic expression ‘Arab Spring’ is unhelpful. Libya’s bloody civil war is ‘Spring’? Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings against 80-year-old military dictators have warped our sense of reality. Syria has nothing in common with Tunisia… but it has a lot in common with Iraq next-door, teetering on the brink of civil war since the American invasion of 2003.
Read MoreTalal was shot by a terrorist armed by Saudis and Qataris. They are fanatics committed to establishing a radical, Salafist, Wahabbist Empire across Asia and Africa. They fund Al Qaeda in Mali, and Boko Haram in Nigeria, and they want to overthrow the Shia regime in Iraq. These ‘rebels’ do not want freedom: they want power. Do Secretary Hillary Clinton and Ambassador Susan Rice not understand this?
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