It’s only terrorism if “they” do it. Here’s a classic case of the American system protecting officials who brazenly break laws and get away with it: American intelligence agencies including the CIA and the FBI have won a court ruling allowing them to withhold evidence from British MPs about suspected UK involvement in “extraordinary rendition”…
Showing all posts tagged United States
MSM desperate for cash and looking in all places
This is how a “liberal” newspaper works in the 21st century (well, one that still takes advertising). From a New York magazine feature on Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger: His paper is running out of money: It lost roughly $50 million last year, and though it’s subsidized by a nonprofit trust, at that rate it can…
Never forget; we helped Gaddafi because he was our man
Next time you hear Western governments talking about human rights, remember this case. The British and American authorities routinely lie. It’s what power does. Stunning investigation by the UK Guardian: Just when Fatima Bouchar thought it couldn’t get any worse, the Americans forced her to lie on a stretcher and began wrapping tape around her…
Shhh, don’t mention the occupation in Ramallah
Let’s not be under any illusion. Israel bans a famous German, Gunter Grass, because it doesn’t like a poem he wrote. Seriously. Meanwhile, in Ramallah, a city far too many Westerners believe represents Palestine, which it does not, the illusion of peace is out in full force. Amira Hass in Haaretz explains: Billboards declaring “She…
Guess which Western nation has right to detain journalists and equipment without warrant?
The US of A. Salon’s Glenn Greenwald with a terrifying story that should concern any person who believes in the concept of free speech: One of the more extreme government abuses of the post-9/11 era targets U.S. citizens re-entering their own country, and it has received far too little attention. With no oversight or legal…
Hello, we’re America and we rather love torturing people
Strong New York Times editorial against the shameful “terror” trials held by the US in the “land of the free”: The Pentagon’s prosecutors formally charged Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and four other men last week with war crimes for planning and carrying out the murder of 2,976 people on Sept. 11, 2001, and referred their case…
Australians deserve truth about Afghanistan (and media and political complicity in the mess)
Australia is ruled by craven fools, desperate to shield the public from the reality of the war in Afghanistan. We lost years ago. The Sunday Age: Australian officials have rejected an expert report critical of conditions in Afghanistan, demanding that it be rewritten to match upbeat government claims of dramatic progress and improved security. The…
How to leave Afghanistan, and soon
Well, that’s one view about the war in Afghanistan, by Anatol Lieven in the New York Review of Books: The attempt by US-led NATO forces in 2001 and 2002 to create a strong Pashtun alternative to the Taliban from among former Mujahedin forces failed because so many had either disgraced themselves by their oppressive policies…
When America trains a terrorist organisation and Israel joins in
How Washington supports and trains an organisation that kills civilians and the Zionist state is along for the ride. There’s a word for this; terrorism. Cracking Seymour Hersh piece in the New Yorker: From the air, the terrain of the Department of Energy’s Nevada National Security Site, with its arid high plains and remote mountain…
What privatisation does to the prisoner’s soul
The rise of privatised detention centres and prisons globally is an issue that receives far too little scrutiny in the media (yesterday’s Al Jazeera’s The Stream was a notable exception). The profit motive inevitably skews priorities. Here’s a great piece from this week’s New York Times by Thomas Gammeltoft-Hansen that asks the necessary questions: Immigration… control…