So after all the huffing and puffing and accusations, Wikileaks is only “guilty” of harming US interests? Surely questioning the rationale behind criminal American foreign policy is highly praise-worthy: No U.S. intelligence sources or practices were compromised by the posting of secret Afghan war logs by the WikiLeaks website, the Pentagon has concluded, but the…
Showing all posts tagged United States
Resistance vs terrorism is a complex beast; enter the Tamil Tigers
Post 9/11, finding nuance in the state view towards “terrorism” was rare, indeed. But here is a challenging example, questioning the idea that every form of resistance is somehow connected to al-Qaeda: More than three years after federal agents locked up a Sri Lankan immigrant they say was the top U.S. representative of the Tamil…
Wikileaks and avoiding September 11
A provocative question in the LA Times: If WikiLeaks had been around in 2001, could the events of 9/11 have been prevented? … Decisions to speak out inside or outside one’s chain of command — let alone to be seen as a whistle-blower or leaker of information — is fraught with ethical and legal questions…
How torture was freely used in a post 9/11 moral haze
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…
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.
Nobody said US Jews didn’t also want to exclude Palestinian rights
Sigh: An overwhelming majority of American Jews believe that the goal of the Arabs “is not the return of occupied territories but rather the destruction of Israel,” according to a recent poll released by the American Jewish Committee. Approximately 76% of respondents in the AJC’s fall 2010 Survey of American Jewish Opinion agreed with a…
Moving forward? Australia’s relationship with Israel is dire
My following lead essay appears in the Australian literary journal Kill Your Darlings: I first discovered the importance of the Israel/Palestine conflict in my early teens, in Melbourne. I remember sitting around the Sabbath table with my parents and cousins, discussing the events of the week as we consumed schnitzels, soggy vegetables and chicken soup.…
Because Ahmadinejad fits a necessary hole in the enemy gallery
Roger Cohen writes in the New York Times that the world (and Israel especially) needs to not frame Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the devil incarnate but that’s exactly what the Zionists must do; the new “Hitler” has arrived: Ahmadinejad is a one-trick pony. His thing is double standards. Ask about the Iranian nuclear program,…