Washington’s footprint in Iraq will continue for years to come

Wired explains that the American occupation of Iraq isn’t ending, despite what Barack Obama preaches: President Obama announced on Friday that all 41,000 U.S. troops currently in Iraq will return home by December 31. “That is how America’s military efforts in Iraq will end,” he said. Don’t believe him. Now: it’s a big deal that…

Mocking Europe, neo-liberals, shouldn’t make you feel good

Guy Rundle explains in Melbourne’s Sunday Age: For the right in the US and here, ”Europe” is more than a continent. It is a condition – one of failure and stagnation, a cautionary tale. With Greece in flames and Italy and Spain in serious difficulty, there has been plenty of scope to make that case…

Who wants to make heaps of money in Afghanistan?

So what does this really mean? Private security firms, both local and foreign, will make increasingly high profits: A fully fledged Afghan national security force, including army and police, will cost about $5 billion a year after international combat forces pull out in 2014, the Afghanistan defence minister told reporters on Tuesday. The price tag…

Who really needs a transparent legal system anyway?

Welcome to Britain: Secret justice looks set to be a regular feature of British courts and tribunals when the intelligence services want to protect their sources of information. Civil courts, immigration panels and even coroner’s inquests would go into secret session if the Government rules that hearing evidence in public could be a threat to…

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