Just what the world needs; another privatised war with unaccountable players: Somalia’s transitional government is using private security firms and Arab governments to train and fund a paramilitary force to battle pirates in the region that have threatened international shipping. A lawyer representing Somalia’s Transitional Federal Government (TFG) said on Tuesday that a security contractor,…
Showing all posts tagged United States
Government and media are different?
For many corporate “journalists”, pleasing power is all in a day’s work. Glenn Greenwald is spot-on: It’s not news that establishment journalists identify with, are merged into, serve as spokespeople for, the political class:… that’s what makes them establishment journalists.… But even knowing that, it’s just amazing, to me at least, how so many of…
Karzai knows his pimp isn’t going anywhere, yet
How we all miss the good old days? Useful idiot dictator longs for an unquestioning, clueless Washington elite to prop up his regime (not that the Obama administration is much different): Longing for the early years of the Bush administration, Afghan President Hamid Karzai has been consumed by anti-U.S. conspiracy theories, convinced American officials are…
“In World War Two, journalists were patriots first”
Newt Gingrich reminds us that his vision for America is a dark, undemocratic nightmare: A fellow traveller, John Bolton, believes the US should lie its way to superiority. No wonder Washington’s image globally has never been worse:
Sarkozy doesn’t dislike Arabs all the time?
Putting aside the unworkability of a two-state solution, this shows growing international anger towards Israel. Next step is financial and diplomatic punishment for the Zionist state: Former French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner in January 2010 had already discussed with the US the idea of recognizing a Palestinian state regardless of the outcome of negotiations with…
CNN hearts Bush admin peeps over Wikileaks
This is a debate on CNN over Wikileaks that is deeply revealing. Note the strong sense that journalists should really not uncover information that could upset governments:
Wikileaks resonates in Mugabe’s gulag
The almost impossible role of an opposition leader in a brutal dictatorship: Zimbabwe is to investigate bringing treason charges against the prime minister, Morgan Tsvangirai, and other individuals over confidential talks with US diplomats revealed by WikiLeaks. Johannes Tomana, the attorney general, said he would appoint a commission of five lawyers to examine whether recent…
US had no issue with Israeli murder of Hamas leader
It’s only terrorism when “they” do it? On February 25, 2010, State Department spokesperson Philip Crowley lied when he told a press conference that he wasn’t aware of any request from Dubai for assistance in tracking the Mossad killers of Mahmoud al-Mabouh. … To those who say that Wikileaks hasn’t told us anything we didn’t already…
US on Russian justice: “lipstick on a political pig”
A brutal state assessed as such by the US, a nation not adverse to backing countries that display an authoritarian impulse in support of Washington: The trial of Russian oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky shows the Kremlin preserves a “cynical system where political enemies are eliminated with impunity”, US diplomats say in classified cables released by WikiLeaks…
Australia engaged in ugly business in Afghanistan
How much faith do we have in intelligence gathering in Afghanistan? Scores to be settled by locals? Frankly, somebody designated as an “enemy” by Western forces may not be anything of the sort, simply a legitimate resistance to foreign occupation. Besides, the West is in bed with a Kabul government backed and run by drug…