A journalist from the UK Independent writes about arriving in Guantanamo Bay for the trial of Omar Khadr. I like this quote from Clive Stafford Smith, legal director of the London-based human rights group Reprieve: I have met Omar at Guantanamo – he was a child and still had the scars from the injuries he…
Showing all posts tagged terrorism
When we back our own form of terrorism every day
When was the last time the Western press honestly discussed the real reasons behind terrorism?
Iranian leader pushes bogus September 11 claims
No “Zionists” were in the World Trade Centre on 9/11, according to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The man does himself no favours with such blatant untruths.
Releasing terrorists shows America’s moving forward
Washington finally comes to its senses: As part of its routine series of preparedness drills aimed at testing national security, the Department of Homeland Security announced Monday that it had set free the five most deadly foreign terrorists in U.S. custody. “Protecting the American people is our highest priority, so it is crucial that we…
Obama’s Bush mannerisms
The ACLU on Obama’s morphing into George W. Bush: In the eighteen months since the issuance of those executive orders, the administration’s record on issues related to civil liberties and national security has been, at best, mixed. Indeed, on a range of issues including accountability for torture, detention of terrorism suspects, and use of lethal…
Australia is increasingly owned by somebody else
My following article appears in Crikey today: The Crikey/ACIJ series on Australian companies profiting from the foreign aid budget is a welcome discussion of the rapid privatisation of services in Australia and overseas, an area largely ignored by the mainstream media. The market, lightly regulated or not, is simply accepted by most commentators as the…
Don’t even think about bombing Iran after Wikileaks release
Another angle of the Wikileaks information dump is the way in which it may be used to justify military action against Tehran. Foreign Policy’s Marc Lynch explains and refutes that bogus comparison (neo-cons and the Zionist lobby, are you listening?) Most of the response to the WikiLeaks Afghanistan document release thus far has focused on…
Wikileaks reveals the supposed trail of Bin Laden in Afghanistan (maybe)
Wired reveals yet another angle of the invaluable Wikileaks information dump: Most of the reports catalog counterinsurgency’s basics — weapons caches found, gun battles fought, village elders chatted up. But buried in the tens of thousands of U.S. military logs dropped Sunday night by WikiLeaks are incidents that are anything but routine: a suspected chemical…
Stealing people shows that we aren’t democracies at all
How many other countries, including Australia, have used rendition to deal with “terror” suspects? MI5 was directly involved in the rendition of a Moroccan national, illegally taken from a Belgian prison to work for Britain’s Security Services in London, an investigation by The Independent has discovered. The man, now aged 29 and who cannot be…
Sri Lanka gives Israel some fighting tips for killing
Sri Lanka is a rogue state that refuses to investigate its own crimes against the Tamil people. One would therefore think that endorsement of Israel’s “war on terror” is the last thing Tel Aviv would want. Then again, Sri Lanka’s new ambassador to Israel – a former chief of staff in Colombo’s army – is…