The similarity between Barack Obama and George W. Bush in their prosecution of the “war on terror” is increasingly clear. Just in case it isn’t obvious how deep this illegality goes, here’s Michael Hayden, Mr. Bush’s last CIA director, talking to the Washington Times: You’ve got state secrets, targeted killings, indefinite detention, renditions, the opposition…
Showing all posts tagged United States
Fidel visits a dolphin show and reflects on his legacy
Credit where it’s due. The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg may have spread propaganda about Saddam, Iran and Israel, but he can write and his latest dispatch about meeting Fidel Castro (here’s the first) is fascinating: There were many odd things about my recent Havana stopover (apart from the dolphin show, which I’ll get to shortly), but…
America, the same old torturing nation as under Bush
This is Obama’s America, siding with those who torture, use rendition and want to keep it secret: A federal appeals court on Wednesday ruled that former prisoners of the C.I.A. could not sue over their alleged torture in overseas prisons because such a lawsuit might expose secret government information. The sharply divided ruling was a…
US-led “peace talks” going the way Israel hopes (ie. nowhere)
My following article appears today on ABC Unleashed: The resumption of self-described peace talks between Israel, Washington and the Palestinian Authority produced headlines across the world last week. The public was told that each side was pessimistic about the prospects of finally sealing a deal after decades of stop-start negotiations. The stated goal was a…
Washington has reason to smear Wikileaks
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange says his website has “two reliable intelligence sources that state that Swedish intelligence was approached last month by the United States and told that Sweden must not be a safe haven for WikiLeaks”.
We’re supposed to believe Zionist groups care about Islamophobia?
When the Jewish press in the US writes that Jewish groups there are working to combat anti-Muslim sentiment, it’s hard to take it seriously. The amount of Zionist racism and violence directed at Palestinians and Arabs in general is largely ignored, if not supported, by the Zionist lobby. Hypocrisy is their middle name.
Decency to the stranger hasn’t gone out of fashion
On the one hand, many of us are compassionate: A third of the world’s population has given money to charity in the past month, the largest study ever carried out into global social conscience reveals today. The “World Giving Index” used Gallup surveys of 195,000 people in 153 nations and asked people whether they had…
John Mearsheimer and co on the futile “peace process”
Only Al-Jazeera English would host a discussion on the Middle East that actually tells things how they are. Unafraid to discuss the power of the Zionist lobby, Israeli colonisation and Greater Israel:
“Warrior pundits” are always wrong so ignore them
TomDispatch reminds us of the faces we constantly see in our media, pontificating about the glories of war: Pentagon foreign policy is regularly seconded by a growing cadre of what might be called military intellectuals at think tanks scattered around Washington.… Such figures, many of them qualifying as “warrior pundits” and “warrior journalists,” include: Michael…
Do we want the bio-terror threat managed by faceless men?
A cracking story and an important warning against the privatisation of the most delicate of tasks: Fears about bioterrorism have prompted new efforts by corporations and governments worldwide to build defenses against germ attacks. But some of these arrangements themselves raise security issues. Consider the spirited global contest to corner the franchise on providing halal…