Just how close is Google to the US government?
Newly released documents from Wikileaks suggest that the internet giant has an agenda rather different to just a very fast search engine (via Al Akhbar): Top Google execs, including the company’s CEO and one of Barack Obama’s major presidential campaign donors Eric Schmidt, informed the intelligence agency Stratfor about Google’s activities and internal communication regarding…
Musings on daily life for Gazans
Amira Hass writes in Haaretz about the grim reality for those caught between Palestinian rockets and Israeli bombardment: On the first day of the cease-fire between Israel and the Palestinians, children in the Gaza Strip went to school – as they did throughout the most recent exchange of fire. “There were two days I didn’t…
State of the Taliban 2012
Fascinating insights, published by Matthieu Atkins in GQ: This month’s issue of… GQ… contains an… exclusive account of the 20-hour assault on the U.S. embassy in Kabul last September. As the article shows, the attack—though militarily unsuccessful—was a public relations victory for the Taliban. In February,… excerpts from a classified NATO report were leaked… in the press that further undermined…
Australia inspired by the best…Guantanamo Bay
Having spent extensive time in Australian detention centres across the country, this news, via the Sydney Morning Herald, is sadly predictable but shows the utter contempt by authorities towards a free press. Following America’s lead in Gitmo for media? What cretins. And what role, if any, has British multinational Serco played in these restrictions? The…
Corporate media admit; we’re far too close to power
This speaks for itself (via the Guardian): Politicians and journalists have had an unhealthily close relationship to one another, according to… Chris Blackhurst, editor of… The Independent He told a Bath literature festival audience that MPs and reporters formed “a giant club” at Westminster. Successive governments had courted newspaper proprietors, said Blackhurst, and told of his time…
The sorry state of Israeli propaganda
Here’s some free advice to the Zionist state; placing Shimon Peres, the father of the colonies and defender of anti-democratic moves inside Israel, in a woeful video talking about “peace” will be about as effective as Assad in Syria riffing about non-violent resistance:
Memo to media; US massacre in Afghanistan is about Afghans not US military
Another tragedy in Afghanistan. And what do most of the corporate media focus on? How will this affect NATO strategy? What will US troops do? Will Obama’s supposed counter-insurgency tactics be derailed? What about wondering about the Afghans themselves? Here’s FAIR: The news that a U.S. Army sergeant killed 16 civilians, most of them children,…
Pre 9/11, Pakistan knew a thing or two about private occupation
What a fascinating piece of history, via the Washington Post, and an indication that mercenaries and private contractors have been part of war well before the “war on terror”: As U.S.-funded Afghan jihadists battled the Soviets in the late 1980s, the unassuming American-run bar in this ancient frontier city bulged with gossiping foreigners. Today, with…