Jane Mayer in the New Yorker teases out the issues: There are some disturbing similarities between the Obama white paper and the Bush torture memos. Both use slippery legal language to parse dark government programs. Both have been deliberately hidden from public and even congressional oversight. And both involve the blurring of C.I.A. and military…
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Life today in blighted Iraq
Australian film-maker David Bradbury and Australian writer and activist Donna Mulhearn are currently in Iraq witnessing the devastation that the West has bought in the last decade. Here’s a message from Bradbury in the city of Fallujah: Met two very interesting women doctors today. Dr Samira is the doctor at the frontline of birth defects…
Don’t believe a word of Obama spin over Afghan war victory
Typically astute thoughts by the Afghanistan Analysts Network’s Kate Clark on the clusterfuck that the West is leaving in the country: Obama did indeed struggle to define victory in his state of the union address (read the text here). The US mission, he said, would achieve its mission by defeating ”˜the core al-Qaeda’ by the…
Reuters TV on prisoner x, Mossad spies and Israeli intelligence
Here’s my interview (it was much longer in reality but the magic of editing!) on Reuters TV (via the Guardian) talking about the unhealthily close relationship between Israel, America and Australia and the often illegal and covert activities in which they engage:
Countless CIA prisoners still missing
The Obama administration may talk about resetting America’s behaviour after the extremism of the Bush years but there’s copious evidence to the contrary. Take this from Pro Publica: In one of President Barack Obama first acts in the White House, he ordered the closure of the CIA’s so-called “black-site” prisons, where terror suspects had been…
How war language has infected Afghanistan
Moving story by Habib Zahori, a reporter for The New York Times’s Kabul bureau. During my visit to the country last year I constantly heard how the war consumed the lives of most Afghans, though I deeply respected the individuals who tried and not let it control their lives: It is a cliché anymore to…
Omar Barghouti on BDS and holding Israel to account
Compelling interview with leading Palestinian activist Omar Barghouti speaking this month in America with Democracy Now!’s Amy Goodman:
“Cultural breakthrough” in showing nefarious role of Zionist lobby in US
This brilliant Saturday Night Live skit didn’t go to air (there’s a few possible reasons for this) but the clip has gone viral, causing Andrew Sullivan to write: After being banished from earnest Washington discussion for decades by various press gate-keepers, the absurdly overblown power of the Greater Israel lobby is now seeping into the…
Resisting America’s endless war should be key task of the Left
The general failure of the Left to oppose Barack Obama’s endless war policies, including the use of drones, shows how tribal and fickle much of the progressive side of politics really is. MSNBC’s Chris Hayes is a notable exception: Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy So is The Nation’s…
Judith Butler on the importance and eloquence of BDS
Following a hysterical campaign by Zionists and wannabe censors against an event about BDS at Brooklyn University last week with Omar Barghouti and Judith Butler, it went off without a hitch but received heaps of coverage. Thanks Israel supporters. It’s worth reading Butler’s entire speech but here’s an extract: The Boycott Divestment and Sanctions movement…