Showing all posts tagged United States
Just how close is Google to the US government?
Newly released documents from Wikileaks suggest that the internet giant has an agenda rather different to just a very fast search engine (via Al Akhbar): Top Google execs, including the company’s CEO and one of Barack Obama’s major presidential campaign donors Eric Schmidt, informed the intelligence agency Stratfor about Google’s activities and internal communication regarding…
State of the Taliban 2012
Fascinating insights, published by Matthieu Atkins in GQ: This month’s issue of… GQ… contains an… exclusive account of the 20-hour assault on the U.S. embassy in Kabul last September. As the article shows, the attack—though militarily unsuccessful—was a public relations victory for the Taliban. In February,… excerpts from a classified NATO report were leaked… in the press that further undermined…
Memo to media; US massacre in Afghanistan is about Afghans not US military
Another tragedy in Afghanistan. And what do most of the corporate media focus on? How will this affect NATO strategy? What will US troops do? Will Obama’s supposed counter-insurgency tactics be derailed? What about wondering about the Afghans themselves? Here’s FAIR: The news that a U.S. Army sergeant killed 16 civilians, most of them children,…
Pre 9/11, Pakistan knew a thing or two about private occupation
What a fascinating piece of history, via the Washington Post, and an indication that mercenaries and private contractors have been part of war well before the “war on terror”: As U.S.-funded Afghan jihadists battled the Soviets in the late 1980s, the unassuming American-run bar in this ancient frontier city bulged with gossiping foreigners. Today, with…
False lure of mining riches in Papua New Guinea
My following investigation appears in New Matilda today: Papua New Guinea has a new leader but the country’s relationship to mining remains complex. Locals who aren’t happy about the growth of the industry are left with few options, reports Antony Loewenstein from Port Moresby At Port Moresby international airport in Papua New Guinea sits piles…
That rare beast; Palestinians talking freely on mainstream US TV
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Please remember to close the door behind you in Afghanistan
“The country is in a state of slow decline”, says… Jennifer Rowell, advocacy coordinator for CARE in Afghanistan, in the New York Times. The country’s reliance on foreign aid has made the situation dire and as security deteriorates it appears many programs will disappear. Relying on mercenaries to protect civilian work creates a whole range of…
MSM has duty not to replay Iraq 2003 with Iran 2012
While some in the corporate media, such as this article in the LA Times, question how the US has any idea about Iran’s actual nuclear program, the bigger question is how journalists report the information given by military and government sources. Do they become, like in Iraq in 2002 and 2003, propagandists for war? The…