On the passing of Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez, much of the Western corporate press has echoed the distortions that has been the irrational yet predictable pattern of hatred towards a man and leader that dared to challenge the Western economic consensus. Here’s Tariq Ali in the Guardian with a thorough examination of the Chavez legacy:…
Showing all posts tagged United States
Wikileaks helps expose US-backed torture and death squads in Iraq
A cracking report that reveals the depravity of the US and Western mission in Iraq. And let’s not forget that Wikileaks provided the initial impetus to investigate: The Pentagon sent a US veteran of the “dirty wars” in Central America to oversee sectarian police commando units in… Iraq… that set up secret detention and… torture… centres to get information…
10 years on, Iraq is broken
Patrick Cockburn, one of the finest mainstream journalists around, writes for the UK Independent… from Iraq about the state of the nation we invaded and occupied in 2003: Iraq is disintegrating as a… country under the pressure of a mounting political, social and economic crisis, say Iraqi leaders. They add that 10 years after the US…
Sins of the Vatican
There’s a remarkable documentary by US Oscar-winning film-maker Alex Gibney called Mea Maxima Culpa: In the House of God. It’s about the role of the Catholic Church in America and globally in hiding sexual abuse for decades. Nobody is spared, and rightly so. Testimony is given by deaf men who were assaulted as boys. Their…
Why Bradley Manning is one of the great heroes of our time
By his admission this week of passing documents to Wikileaks for the simple reason that he believed the world had a right to know that Washington was lying about a litany of wars around the world, his stance is incredibly brave. The fact that Manning’s actions are so unique (and the corporate press was offered…
Britain finds novel way to strip citizens of rights before America drones them
Disturbing evidence in the Independent that reveals yet another way Western states find ways to capitulate to unaccountable American demands in the “war on terror”: The Government has secretly ramped up a controversial programme that strips people of their British citizenship on national security grounds – with two of the men subsequently killed by American…
Welcome to your future; a drone university near you
The joys: Touting unprecedented education “for the benefit of mankind,” Unmanned Vehicle University, America’s only school offering postgraduate engineering degrees in unmanned systems – ie: drones – is thriving. Since opening in Arizona in July with five students taking its largely online courses for an annual fee of $64,000, it now has 300 graduate drone…
Hands up who deserves a drone medal?
The Pentagon will be giving awards to drone pilots for killing all these awful terrorists. Or civilians. Cartoonist Matt Bors:
What Zionist lobby leaders ignore at their peril over Ben Zygier
Savvy piece by JJ Goldberg in Forward: Many community leaders view crises like the ones in Australia, Argentina and Washington as evidence of a new global anti-Semitism. Israel’s intelligence services conclude differently: that Israel’s continuing West Bank occupation and settlement expansion are fueling a rising frustration among Israel’s longtime friends, gradually morphing into hostility toward…
The travesty of “justice” at Guantanamo Bay
A new book by a Wall Street Journal journalist, Jess Bravin, features on Democracy Now! and explains the legal, ethical and moral black-hole that the Bush and Obama administrations have established on the Cuban prison island: