By Larry Derfner, Mideast Watch
Aside from Israel and moderate Arab leaders, the other target of popular Muslim resentment over the war in Gaza is the United States. The Jordan Times depicts the war as the Bush administration's last hurrah:
The slow reaction of the international community should not come as a surprise, but is nevertheless appalling.
These, one would hope, are the violent death throes of the neocons, under whose iron-fist ideology the world, in particular this part of the world, has suffered dramatically for the past eight years. That the neocons in Washington should choose to lash out through their proxy in Israel is sad and cowardly, but entirely par for the course.
The Iran Daily chastises incoming President-elect Barack Obama for keeping silent:
Barack Hussein Obama will hopefully not join hands with corrupt American politicians and their minions willing to sacrifice US dignity at the altar of Israeli interests. Israel's crimes against humanity have long undermined world peace and stability, as they triggered 9/11 and continue to fuel the terror machine.
An analysis in al Jazeera of U.S. media coverage of the war argues that Americans are getting a skewed picture of what's happening in Gaza and Israel:
Major US television channels also adopted the equal time approach, despite the reality that Palestinian casualties exceeded Israeli ones by a hundred fold.
Arab audiences saw a different picture altogether. Rather than mulling Israel's dilemma, the Arab news networks captured the air assault in chilling detail from the perspective of its victims. The divide in coverage was staggering.
Iran Bases Government Budget on $37.50 Oil
With everyone wondering where the price of oil will go over the next year, the government in Tehran is making an interesting assumption in calculating its new budget, using the figure of $37.50 for the likely price of a barrel of oil, according to a report carried by the Tehran Times. As the second largest producer in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, Iran appears to be conceding that the current economic crisis means that a return to the days of high oil prices is not on the immediate horizon:
"The government and the parliament have agreed on setting an oil price of $37.5 a barrel in the next year's budget bill," Gholam-Hossein Nozari said on Sunday. The next Iranian calendar year begins on March 21, 2009.
"This price has been set in view of the oil market fluctuations. We should also be careful not to lose our main customers," he continued.
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sandy of CA 2:29PM January 14, 2009
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