Leading American investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill has spent years reporting on the actions of private military contractor Blackwater and the privatisation of war across the world: Here’s his latest: Democracy Now! exclusive report from Jeremy Scahill about a nine year old boy, shot in the head and killed by Blackwater in the infamous Nisour Squre…
Showing all posts tagged Iraq
Donna Mulhearn’s “Ordinary Courage”
I’m honoured to be launching Donna Mulhearn’s first book, Ordinary Courage, which primarily examines her role as a human shield in Iraq in 2003: Murdoch Books and The Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at The University of Sydney are delighted to invite you to the launch of Donna Mulhearn’s first book, Ordinary Courage To…
Why protesting Petraeus is so important
I mentioned here recently the protest at Georgetown University against visiting speaker General David Petraeus. Soon after I received the following email from a participant of the action: I am writing to thank you for mentioning last week’s protest of General Petraeus on Georgetown’s campus in your blog. As one of the students involved, it…
Why our commentator class love to love war
Salon’s Glenn Greenwald rightly concludes that the responsibility-free media class that advocates “for more wars that never touch their lives” should be treated with the contempt they deserve (while, in contrast, somebody like Howard Zinn, who opposed wars, is side-lined or even ignored by the mainstream): I’m periodically criticized for an… “angry” tone in my writing,…
Tony Blair will always be remembered for supporting colonial wars
The evidence given by Tony Blair to the Chilcot inquiry in London over his decision to invade Iraq showed a man utterly incapable or unwilling to understand the gravity of the decision. The hundreds of thousands killed, the lies told in the service of war and the criminality of the entire enterprise. Many in the…
Every leader that invaded Iraq will face a court hearing one day
Fascinating evidence in London about the criminality of the Iraq war (though this begs the question: why didn’t more senior officials resign before the invasion?) The invasion of Iraq was illegal, a senior government lawyer told the Chilcot inquiry into the war today. Sir Michael Wood, legal adviser to the Foreign Office in the run-up…
Christ loves Washington’s terror victims
I’m sure the victims of American “freedom bombs” will be pleased that they’ve been blessed by Jesus: ABC News revealed that Trijicon, the company that provides high-powered rifle sights to the U.S. military, inscribes the sights with coded references to biblical texts about Jesus Christ. The company inscribes the codes immediately after the model number,…
Iraq is still under occupation and virtually forgotten in the West
What’s the latest in Iraq? Dahr Jamail reports.
Please explain the real reason we back Mubarak’s Egypt
Seumas Milne writes in the Guardian that Western support for a terror state such as Egypt merely inflames anti-Western anger everywhere: Decades of oil-hungry backing for despots, from Iran to Oman, Egypt to Saudi Arabia, along with the failure of Arab nationalism to complete the decolonisation of the region, fuelled first the rise of Islamism…
What the Australian/American alliance really means
Scott Burchill and Kristian Lewis, The Age, 8 January: The only rationale left for our involvement in Afghanistan is to restore Washington’s military credibility, which was badly tarnished in Iraq. As John Howard said recently, a withdrawal from Afghanistan would be “an enormous blow to American prestige”. For the same reasons it bombed Serbia in…