What the Bush administration stood for and remember how little Barack Obama has changed this mindset: In 2002, as the Bush administration was turning to torture and other brutal techniques for interrogating “war on terror” detainees, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz loosened rules against human experimentation, an apparent recognition of legal problems regarding the novel…
Showing all posts tagged terrorism
Assange; the importance of making powerful enemies
In the annual “50 People Who Matter 2010” for New Statesman, John Pilger endorses Julian Assange and Wikileaks; guts that matters and so necessary: The arrival of WikiLeaks is one of the most exciting developments in the enduring struggle of ordinary people for the right to call secret power to account. This is what journalism…
A terrorist because we say so
“Yes We Can” imprison people indefinitely under the “war on terror”: When Judge Henry Kennedy Jr. ordered the release of a Guantánamo Bay detainee last spring, the case appeared to be a routine setback for an Obama administration that has lost a string of such cases. But there turns out to be nothing ordinary about…
They don’t hate us for our freedoms
News flash! The prime cause of suicide bombing globally is foreign, military occupation.
Platitudes over Afghanistan were already irrelevant in 2001 post 9/11
What happens when a compliant corporate journalist simply reprints what a military man tells him? Welcome the Sydney Morning Herald’s Peter Hartcher, repeating pro Afghan war propaganda with no contrary views. This is what embedding “journalism” is all about: The Australian officer in charge of the Afghanistan deployment has told Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott…
Bombing will continue as long as we continue bombing
Glenn Greenwald: Bombing Muslims more and more causes more and more Muslims to want to bomb the countries responsible.… That, of course, has long been the perverse “logic” driving the War on Terror.… The very idea that we’re going to reduce Terrorism by more intensively bombing more Muslim countries is one of the most patently…
How to source more drones for killing is a full time job
What’s the best way the US can worsen its image in the Muslim world, kill more civilians and utterly condemn itself to further defeats against a rag-tag army of Taliban fighters? More murder from the air: The U.S. military is secretly diverting aerial drones and weaponry from the Afghan battlefront to significantly expand the CIA’s…
Private armies are out and looking for business
Private mercenaries have never have it so good. Business is booming as governments increasingly rely on them to do the dirty work they no longer want to do: Insurers have drawn up plans for the world’s first private navy to try to turn the tide against Somali pirates who continue to plague the global shipping…
It is your patriotic duty to provide weapons of death to the state
The privatisation of war is an ugly business, pushed by governments keen to pursue a “war on terror” with no end in sight and virtually no accountability: The CIA is implicated in a court case in which it’s claimed it used an illegal, inaccurate software “hack” to direct secret assassination drones in central Asia. The…
Obama’s covert killing squads in Afghanistan
The book, Obama’s Wars, by Court Reporter Bob Woodward, is about to be released, examining American’s deepening involvement in Afghanistan. Expect mountains of coverage in the coming weeks, but here’s a preview: Beyond the internal battles, the book offers fresh disclosures on the nation’s continuing battle with terrorists. It reports that the C.I.A. has a…