The Washington Post recently published this fascinating report on Washington’s huge reliance on private contractors in Africa for a range of unaccountable tasks. 21st century war: Four small, white passenger planes sit outside a hangar here under a blazing sun, with no exterior markings save for U.S. registration numbers painted on the tails. A few…
Showing all posts tagged United States
Come to the West Bank and shoot Ayrab “terrorists”
Celebrating colonisation, demonising Arabs and making money in the process? Welcome to Israel 2012 (via Ynet): Like a frozen turkey plunged into boiling oil, a group of American tourists descend from an air-conditioned van into the scorching heat of the West Bank. Flashing smiles all around, they march into Caliber 3, a local shooting range.…
How Obama maintained torture and rendition, clearly inspired by Bush’s legacy
A startling if unsurprising extract from a new book by James Mann, The Obamians: The Struggle Inside the White House to Redefine American Power: On December 9, little more than a month after Election Day, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency gave President-elect Barack Obama a rather astonishing demonstration. The CIA director, a bald-headed,…
Fanatical Zionist group in US calls for Obama to bomb Iran
The Emergency Committee for Israel once again shows that it’s keen to define Judaism and Zionism solely being about unleashing war:
America’s drone war is both counter-productive and brutal
My following article appears in Lebanon’s Al Akhbar: America’s drone war has countless silent victims. Since President Barack Obama massively expanded his reliance on the weapon from 2009, the number of civilians killed in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Somalia and Yemen have sky-rocketed, but we rarely hear about these murders. The Western corporate media is content rehashing…
ABCTV News24’s The Drum on refugees, #LeftTurn and Obama’s “kill list”
I appeared last night on ABC TV News24’s The Drum (video here) alongside ABC’s Stephen Long and The Australian’s… Adam Creighton. We talked about asylum seekers – I argued that keeping refugees for longer in detention will only benefit the private contractor Serco and worsen the mental health of both staff and detainees. Regarding austerity in…
Saudis can show talent (but without music, women or soul)
America must be so proud of its dutiful client state, Saudi Arabia (via Yahoo! News): A… Saudi city… known for its ultra-conservatism has created its own version of the “Arabs Got Talent”… television reality… show, but with no music and women banned from taking part. Instead, competitors will be permitted to perform religious chants, recite poems and engage in…
Canberra not exactly building a Blackwater army (is it?)
This is an interesting story in Melbourne’s Herald Sun but is the Australian government really hiring foreign mercenaries, men who operate beyond the law? Australia is boosting its ranks with foreign soldiers by offering cash bonuses of up to $200,000 and fast-tracked citizenship. Veterans have hit out at hiring “mercenaries” from countries such as America,…
Is following officials into the toilet too close for reporters to go to get the “story”?
Since 9/11, and certainly long before, there’s been a dangerous tendency for many in the corporate media to be psychologically embedded with governments to report sympathetically on matters of war. It’s an issue I discuss in #LeftTurn. There’s a great column by Salon’s Glenn Greenwald in the Guardian that highlights similar questions: Over the past…
America’s drone war is all about creating illusion of global power
Patrick Cockburn in the Independent: As the US and its allies ponder what to do about Syria, one suggestion advanced by the protagonists of armed intervention is to use unmanned drones to attack Syrian government targets. The proposal is a measure of the extraordinary success of the White House, CIA and Defense Department in selling…