In their book Manufacturing Consent, Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky distinguished between two kinds of victims: the worthy victims and the unworthy victims. The “worthy victims” are the victims (real and alleged) of leaders on the U.S. enemies list, such as Bashar al-Assad. The “unworthy victims” are those of the U.S. and its client states,…
The Hezbollah-run “Al-Manar” TV that misreported the Russian Ambassador to Lebanon’s scandalous anti-missile remarks through a crucial omission of his clarifying caveat might have deliberately done so as part of an Iranian “infowar” operation geared towards provoking further US-Russian tensions, which Iran may have thought would force Russia to side with the “Resistance” in response…
The current US tour of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, known as MbS, is a triumph of multi-million-dollar post-truth public relations. The fact that MbS also happens to be destroying Yemen is just a minor glitch. Smooth PR is always able to secure the maxim that not all dictators, Arab or otherwise, are equal; after…
It’s exceptionally rare for Russia and the US to agree on just about anything at all nowadays, which makes it all the more remarkable that they’re on the exact same page in condemning the Houthi’s missile strike on Saudi Arabia. The War on Yemen has been going on for over three years already, and while…
There are few countries on earth more oppressive than Saudi Arabia, an absolute monarchy shaped by Sunni theocracy. It stones adulterers and hurls gay men off buildings by judicial decision. The State Department routinely, matter of factly, reports widespread human rights abuses in the country. International human rights organizations use Saudi Arabia as the poster…
Fifteen years ago, “Shock and Awe” was unleashed over Baghdad as the preferred method of bombing Mesopotamia into “democracy” – thus fashioning what would later be hailed as the birth pangs of a New Middle East. I tried, in a report for Asia Times in 2003, to explain the geopolitical power play behind the US invasion of…
