Just another average day in occupied Palestine (via Haaretz): The state has confirmed that, acting without a court order, the army has barred Palestinian villagers from freely accessing their farmland for two years. The admission was made in the state’s response to a High Court petition filed last year by Beit Furik residents. The plots…
Showing all posts tagged Britain
No wonder much of the world thinks the West are hypocrites
It’s only terrorism if “they” do it. Here’s a classic case of the American system protecting officials who brazenly break laws and get away with it: American intelligence agencies including the CIA and the FBI have won a court ruling allowing them to withhold evidence from British MPs about suspected UK involvement in “extraordinary rendition”…
MSM desperate for cash and looking in all places
This is how a “liberal” newspaper works in the 21st century (well, one that still takes advertising). From a New York magazine feature on Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger: His paper is running out of money: It lost roughly $50 million last year, and though it’s subsidized by a nonprofit trust, at that rate it can…
Never forget; we helped Gaddafi because he was our man
Next time you hear Western governments talking about human rights, remember this case. The British and American authorities routinely lie. It’s what power does. Stunning investigation by the UK Guardian: Just when Fatima Bouchar thought it couldn’t get any worse, the Americans forced her to lie on a stretcher and began wrapping tape around her…
What privatisation does to the prisoner’s soul
The rise of privatised detention centres and prisons globally is an issue that receives far too little scrutiny in the media (yesterday’s Al Jazeera’s The Stream was a notable exception). The profit motive inevitably skews priorities. Here’s a great piece from this week’s New York Times by Thomas Gammeltoft-Hansen that asks the necessary questions: Immigration… control…
The lying liar behind Iraq war says he lied
No kidding: A man whose lies helped to make the case for invading Iraq – starting a nine-year war costing more than 100,000 lives and hundreds of billions of pounds – will come clean in his first British television interview tomorrow. “Curveball”, the Iraqi defector who fabricated claims about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, smiles…
One loaded British Tory who just happened to love Libyan rebels
This is how power works, a rare window into modern politics. If you thought the war in Libya was truly about liberating the Libyan people, 99% of players behind it had other ideas. Here’s the UK Telegraph: A major Tory donor whose oil firm was given government help to set up a supply deal in…
What serious media would have reported about Wikileaks (but did not)
So many stories and so much missed deliberately or wilfully ignored. Interesting extract from a new book, The phone hacking scandal: journalism on trial. This is by Justin Schlosberg and details how many key media outlets consistently fail to hold power to account (and no, it ain’t an accident): The performance of serious media in…
Sri Lanka’s killing fields – unpunished war crimes
The latest in a series of stunning Channel 4 documentaries about war crimes in Sri Lanka (here’s the first part from last year):
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…