Disturbing post from Freedom of the Press Foundation (great new group, support them) on the serious threats from the Obama administration to transparency and democracy in America: A… disturbing report in Saturday’s Washington Post describes… an FBI investigation of a large number of government officials suspected of leaking classified information to the press, engulfing an unknown group…
Category General
US military will arm and train any old thugs
Steve Coll in the New Yorker: The Pentagon has yet to meet a military in a desperately poor or hopelessly corrupt country that it does not believe it can train and equip to a professional standard. Pentagon training has in fact strengthened and stabilized professional militaries in many developing countries. Yet some of the militaries…
Ongoing Wall Street criminality is key Obama failing
Fascinating documentary by PBS Frontline that outlines the far-too-cosy relationship, along with gutlessness, between Wall Street and the Obama administration. No Wall Street executives have done jail time for the massive fraud uncovered during the global financial crisis. This is as much a scandal as Washington’s drone war in the far-reaches of the world. Unaccountable…
More on Dirty Wars and covert US wars ignored by corporate press
Jeremy Scahill and Rick Rowley speak to Huffington Post Live:
Mali shows that West understands little about failures of “war on terror”
History repeats. Leaders learn nothing or don’t want to. Countless media hacks repeat the talking points about fighting “terrorism” and ask few questions. The “war on terror” has been a catastrophic debacle from day one. If you ask the civilians who suffer under its wrath, which most reporters don’t, you’ll know that. Seumas Milne in…
How the crimes in Vietnam echo to this day
Kill Anything that Moves is a new book by Nick Turse that uncovers the reality of American brutality during the Vietnam war. There were countless My-Lai type massacres. Here he writes about the legacy of that war and its relevance to (virtual) media silence over the human cost of US-led wars since 9/11: Leaving aside…
We suffer the terrorism that we help create
Powerful column by Yasmin Alibhai Brown in The Independent: Western power merchants – particularly British and Americans – in contrast, use each such tragedy to engender discord. They strut the world stage, issue threats and remind us who is boss. When will they see themselves as others see them, or try to empathise with the…
How Barack Obama defames memory of Martin Luther King Jr
Brilliant oratory by Dr Cornel West, a challenge to supposed liberals who ignore the US President’s policies and can only see the colour of his skin: