Eli Lake in The Daily Beast interviews the usually elusive head of Blackwater, Erik Prince, and details the fact that the private mercenary force was and may well remain an invaluable extension of the CIA: Founded in 1997 by Erik Prince, heir to an auto-parts family fortune, Blackwater had proved especially useful to the CIA…
Category General
Lockheed Martin goes seabed mining; what could go wrong?
There’s a new frontier soon to open in the endless search for resources, deep under the water at a time with little regulation or environmental protection. Papua New Guinea may soon be moving forward with untested technology, exactly the country that can least afford it, after being shafted by multinationals for decades (something I examine…
What mainstream media deliberately ignores over Hugo Chavez
Almost on queue, the mainstream press coverage of the passing of Hugo Chavez followed a predictable pattern. The underlying agenda is that any leader who seriously challenges US hegemony will receive abuse from less than independent thinking journalists and commentators. Medialens examines the record: Following the death of Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez on March 5,…
Debating ethics and journalism over US drone victim Anwar al-Awlaki
Yet another example of why Democracy Now! is one of the finest news shows in the world:
New poll finds most Americans not keen on being droned to death
Satirist… Andy Borowitz has the exclusive results in the New Yorker: In a possible setback for the Administration’s controversial drone policy, a new poll conducted by the University of Minnesota shows that a broad majority of Americans are opposed to being killed by a drone strike on U.S. soil. The poll, which has a margin of…
Will the real Hugo Chavez please stand up?
On the passing of Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez, much of the Western corporate press has echoed the distortions that has been the irrational yet predictable pattern of hatred towards a man and leader that dared to challenge the Western economic consensus. Here’s Tariq Ali in the Guardian with a thorough examination of the Chavez legacy:…
Wikileaks helps expose US-backed torture and death squads in Iraq
A cracking report that reveals the depravity of the US and Western mission in Iraq. And let’s not forget that Wikileaks provided the initial impetus to investigate: The Pentagon sent a US veteran of the “dirty wars” in Central America to oversee sectarian police commando units in… Iraq… that set up secret detention and… torture… centres to get information…