The last days of empire are carnivals of folly. We are in the midst of our own, plunging forward as our leaders court willful economic and environmental self-destruction. Sumer and Rome went down like this. So did the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires. Men and women of stunning mediocrity and depravity led the monarchies of Europe and Russia on the eve of World War I. And America has, in its own decline, offered up its share of weaklings, dolts and morons to steer it to destruction.
‘The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.’
‘National security is the first duty of government. We will remain a first-rate military power.’
All citizens of the World Community have both the right and the duty under public international law to sit in judgment over a gross and consistent pattern of violations of the most fundamental norms of international criminal law committed by any member state of that same World Community.
In March 2013, reports of a hunger strike at Guantánamo Bay, the US detention camp in Cuba, began to surface. Details were sketchy and were contradicted by statements from the US military. Now, using testimony from five detainees, this animated film reveals the daily brutality of life inside Guantánamo. Today there are 17 prisoners still on hunger strike, 16 of whom are being force-fed. Two are in hospital
Massive quantities of heavily contaminated water are pouring into the Pacific Ocean, dousing workers along the way. Huge, flimsy tanks are leaking untold tons of highly radioactive fluids.
Indigenous organizations protest in Brasilia, against the proposed Constitutional Reform PEC 215 to put the fate of Amazonian Forests in the hands of Congress; this motion was promoted by “Bancada Ruralista”, the Agribusiness’ lobby many years ago and it is being discussed now
“They thought red meat put hair on their chest and made them more manly. And I said, guys, no. It doesn’t. What it does is it puts plaque in your arteries and it makes you less of a man. The canary in the coal mine, when it comes to heart disease, the first sign is an under-performing penis.” ― Rip Esselstyn, former firefighter and triathlete
In its first report on press freedom in the United States, the Committee to Protect Journalists warns President Obama has ushered in a paralyzing climate of fear for both reporters and their government sources.
In MEDIASTAN, an undercover team of journalists drives across the central Asian republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and into US occupied Afghanistan, before continuing its journey into the west; regrouping in Julian Assange’s kitchen, ambushing the editor of the Guardian, and obtaining candid footage of the New York Times editor and its publisher Arthur Sulzberger speaking about Obama.
Everybody now knows that shadow master Bandar bin Sultan, aka Bandar Bush, has been fully in charge of the war on Syria since he was appointed Director of National Intelligence by his uncle, Saudi King Abdullah.
Bandar is taking no prisoners. First he eliminated Qatar – the major financier of the so-called Free Syrian Army (FSA) – from the picture, after having a helping hand in Qatar’s emir, Sheikh Hamad, deposing himself to the benefit of his son, Sheikh Tamin, in late June.
As the baton travels around that notional ‘family’ of two billion people, starting in Delhi, it would be great to have a country-by-country account of Britain’s conquests, wars and plundering, past and present.
We could even have the historian Mark Curtis, author of Unpeople and Secret Affairs: Britain’s Collusion with Radical Islam, on-hand to help chart the ten million deaths that Britain is complicit in since 1945 alone.
Among IT security professionals, it has been long understood that the public disclosure of vulnerabilities is the only consistent way to improve security. That’s why researchers publish information about vulnerabilities in computer software and operating systems, cryptographic algorithms, and consumer products like implantable medical devices, cars, and CCTV cameras.
