US President Barack Obama’s business-like meeting with Russian leader Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of the G20 summit at the weekend belies a spate of bellicose comments made by the Pentagon towards Moscow. So, who is in control: Obama or the generals?
Of course we should grieve for the victims, but there is something far more important at stake than mere human lives, which are, deplorably, becoming cheaper with each passing year. We should grieve for the truth.
In transmitting President Richard Nixon’s orders for a “massive” bombing of Cambodia in 1969, Henry Kissinger said, “Anything that flies on everything that moves”. As Barack Obama wages his seventh war against the Muslim world since he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, and Francois Hollande promises a “merciless” attack on that ruined country, the orchestrated hysteria and lies make […]
Sometimes things happen and it’s best to keep your disagreements to yourself. People who you cannot countenance not having on your side; people who you turn to for help, to think things through, start adopting a form of behaviour that you find alien. So alien to the high regard you hold them in, that you want to do the equivalent […]
Another terrorist outrage – this one in Paris – is spreading fear and fury across Europe. Which makes this a key moment for President Obama to finally level with the American people about how U.S. “allies” — such as Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar — have been aiding and abetting extremists, reports Robert Parry.
The more important story is that British governments, both Labour and Conservative, have, in pursuing the so-called national interest’ abroad, colluded for decades with radical Islamic forces, including terrorist organisations. They have connived with them, worked alongside them and sometimes trained and financed them, in order to promote specific foreign policy objectives. Governments have done so in often desperate attempts to maintain Britain’s global power in the face of increasing weakness in key regions of the world, being unable to unilaterally impose their will and lacking other local allies.
Since 2001 the U.S. has expended enormous efforts to kill a handful of men — bin Laden, al-Zarqawi, al-Awlaki, and this weekend, Jihadi John. Others, many without names, were killed outside of media attention, or were tortured to death, or are still rotting in the offshore penal colony of Guantanamo, or the dark hell of the Salt Pit in Afghanistan.
And it has not worked, and Paris this weekend, and the next one somewhere else sometime soon, are the proof.
Anyone else think it’s time our governments stopped colluding with radical Islam? Stopped arming, training and financing these crazed psychopaths? Imposed sanctions on their ideological sponsors, Qatar, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia? No? Ok, fuck it, its just me then!
A Spanish court has found Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and six other senior officials guilty of crimes against humanity for their role in the 2010 raid on Gaza-bound aid ship, Mavi Marmara.
Nine activists were killed, including one Turkish-American, and dozens injured when Israeli commandos boarded the lead ship of a Gaza-bound flotilla, Mavi Marmara, when it attempted to breach the blockade of the Palestinian territory. Spanish activists were also on board the ships.
We know why, and it isn’t an epic struggle of liberal democracies against extremist Islam. Rather, it the battle of state-sanctioned sociopathic violence versus radical groups such ISIL and al-Qaida and their particular brand of sociopathic violence. We are simply viewing different sides of the same fucked up coin. As always, the tragic casualties of the power struggle are innocent civilians, both in Europe and the Middle East.
If the people of France want to strike hard at those responsible for repeated terrorist attacks within their borders, they can start with those who knew of the attacks and did nothing to stop them, who are also, coincidentally, the same people who helped give rise to ISIS and help perpetuate it to this very day.
Among other things, the attack took down the French mobile data network and blinded police surveillance The attack was not a straightforward DDOS attack but a sophisticated attack that targeted a weakness in infrastructure hardware.
Such an attack is beyond the capability of most organizations and requires capability that is unlikely to be in ISIL’s arsenal. An attack on this scale is difficult to pull off without authorities getting wind of it. The coordination required suggests state involvement.
