The horrific attack on the Westgate shopping centre in Nairobi continues to generate headlines around the world. But what’s the background to the attacks, who are Somalia’s Al-Shabab terror group and what’s been the position of US and Kenyan intervention in the region? Jeremy Scahill, author of the recent book Dirty Wars, tells Democracy Now!…
Showing all posts tagged United States
Why #Hashtag love is the worst way to run your online life
Sheer genius: Jimmy Fallon & Justin Timberlake show you what a Twitter conversation sounds like in real life.
Guardian editor on how Orwell would be turning in his grave over NSA spying
A sad state of affairs that a serious media (which most of the corporate press is not, too keen to wine and dine with the powerful) would vehemently oppose (via the Guardian): The potential of the… surveillance… state goes way beyond anything in George Orwell‘s 1984,… Alan Rusbridger,… the Guardian‘s editor-in-chief, told an audience in New York on Monday.…
How much $ are US prison profiteers making?
Image compliments of Top Criminal Justice Degrees More here from Top Criminal Justice Degrees.
ABC Radio Triple J's Sunday Night Safran interview on Profits of Doom
This was enjoyable. On Sunday an extended interview with John Safran and Father Bob, hosts of Triple J’s Sunday Night Safran, was aired and we discussed detention centres, Serco, Palestine, Haiti, Afghanistan, private war, BDS, democracy and human rights:
US soldiers weep in Afghanistan at loss of KFC
With the war thoroughly lost years ago, American troops had to entertain themselves in the time-honoured, imperial tradition of completely ignoring local customs. Good story by McClatchy: There is nothing quite like coming off a patrol, your body-armor-shaped sweat stains still drying and ears ringing from grenades, only to have the hostess at T.G.I. Friday’s…
Congratulations America; you just love imprisoning your citizens by the millions
That’s quite a record (via Alternet): The United States imprisons almost three times as many Black people than were jailed in South Africa during Apartheid,… Rep. Spencer Bachus said Thursday… [3]… during a subcommittee oversight hearing on the Federal Bureau of Prisons. While games of comparison are rarely productive, the American prison industrial complex has seen cries of…
The Bourdain/CNN take on Israel/Palestine
Surely a healthy sign of the mainstreaming of Palestine. US chef Anthony Bourdain takes his TV show to Israel and Palestine (including the West Bank and Gaza) and shows humanity in Palestine and crass extremism of Zionist settlers:
In conversation with indy journo and Manning trial stalwart Alexa O'Brien
The wonderful US independent journalist Alexa O’Brien is currently in Australia (she appeared this week at the Sydney Opera House with Julian Assange, Glenn Greenwald and others). I spoke to her at a public event in Sydney about her coverage of the Chelsea Manning trial, dissent in America, Barack Obama’s war on whistle-blowers and threats…
Calling US Middle East "peace process" the farce that it is
Great piece by Bill Van Esveld, a Middle East researcher at Human Rights Watch based in Jerusalem, published in The Hill: Twenty years ago, Israeli and Palestinian leaders signed the Oslo accords on the White House lawn, opening the “peace process” that the US is trying to reinvigorate. Yet the Obama administration has failed to…