Here’s what Iraqis need; iTunes

Here’s a plan. Invade a country. Destroy the infrastructure. Refuse to compensate. Remain an occupier. Computer anybody? The shipment of laptop computers that arrived in Iraq’s main seaport in February was a small but important part of the American military’s mission here to win hearts and minds. What happened afterward is a tale of good…

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…

Selling every public asset isn’t a pretty prospect

Praying to the privatisation religion is a global trend, largely unquestioned and hopelessly mixed in result. Here’s the latest debate in New York city: In the face of drastic cuts in the Metropolitan Transit Authority’s bus service, the Bloomberg administration recently decided to allow private vans to carry passengers along several routes in Brooklyn and…

Please don’t listen to King Abdullah on, well, anything

This is rather depressing. Here’s Jordan’s King Abdullah talking to Jon Stewart’s Daily Show about how “moderate” he is and the “extremists” are upsetting the Middle East. Yes, because running a US-backed police state completely makes you “moderate”. His country’s influence is decreasing, not least because he so slavishly follows US foreign policy in the…

America wants faceless men to kill its enemies

The largely secret war now being fought by unaccountable private firms. This is how the West fights battles: More private contractors than soldiers were killed in Iraq and Afghanistan in recent months, the first time in history that corporate casualties have outweighed military losses on America’s battlefields. More than 250 civilians working under U.S. contracts…

Obama recognises demography in Mid-East but refuses to heed lessons

This is thoroughly depressing. Here’s Barack Obama speaking to the UN on the Israel/Palestine conflict, lacking imagination and foresight and repeating all the mistakes of the last two decades. Washington is utterly incapable and unwilling to imagine a region free from Zionist oppression and occupation. And demography is only going in the Palestinian’s favour: U.S.…

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