One of my first assignments as a young reporter in Sydney was to go to the airport and ask famous people arriving from overseas what they thought of Australia. There was a checklist; our beer and beaches were near the top, followed
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Tony Blair's heroic peacemaking is not as it seems. Take the Middle East. When Blair welcomed Yasser Arafat to Downing Street following September 11, it was widely reported that Britain was backing justice for the Palestinians.
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LONDON — Since September 11, the "war on terrorism" has provided a pretext for the rich countries, led by the United States, to further their dominance over world affairs. By spreading "fear and respect", as a Washington Post
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LONDON — Polite society's bombers may not have to wait long for round two. The US vice-president, Dick Cheney, warned last week that America could take action against "40 to 50 countries". Somalia, allegedly a "haven" for al Qaeda,
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LONDON, November 16 — There is no victory in Afghanistan's tribal war, only the exchange of one group of killers for another. The difference is that President Bush calls the latest occupiers of Kabul "our friends". However
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LONDON — The war against terrorism is a fraud. After three weeks' bombing, not a single terrorist implicated in the attacks on America has been caught or killed in Afghanistan. Instead, one of the poorest, most stricken nations has
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LONDON — If people were not being killed and beginning to starve, the American attack on Afghanistan might seem farcical. But there is a logic to what they are doing. Read between the lines and it is clear that they are not bombing
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LONDON — The Anglo-American attack on Afghanistan crosses new boundaries. It means that America's economic wars are now backed by the perpetual threat of military attack on any country, without legal pretence. It is also the first
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LONDON — If the attacks on the United States have their source in the Islamic world, who can really be surprised? Two days earlier, eight people were killed in southern Iraq when British and US planes bombed civilian areas. To my
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LONDON — As George Bush escalates the new Cold War begun by his father, the attention of his planners is moving to the Middle East. Stories about the threat of Iraq's "weapons of mass destruction" are again appearing in the US
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The other day, I attended a conference at the University of Sussex on the "new imperialism". What was extraordinary was that it took place at all. Julian Saurin, who teaches in the school of African and Asian studies at Sussex, said
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LONDON — Royal Air Force pilots have protested for the first time about their role in the bombing of Iraq. Pilots patrolling the so-called no-fly zone in the north of the country have spoken angrily about how they have been ordered