Imperialism

UK warns Afghanistan of delaying security deal

What does it say about the discipline of UK / US troops when their continued presence in a theatre of war is contingent on the occupied country granting immunity for crimes yet to be committed? Try to imagine a foreign occupying army demanding such legal concessions from our own government following an invasion of our homeland.

Blair earns so much from deaths of so many in Iraq

It means that democracy is a kind of theatre, in which the public is allowed to play a limited role, like the audience in Who Wants to Be a Millionaire or Strictly Come Dancing, and press a buzzer for this party or that party, but it cannot be privy to the backrooms where politicians and civil servants take decisions without consultation and without explanation

Britain’s Noxious History of Imperial Warfare

At Westminster senior politicians from both the Conservative Party and the Labour Party happily proclaim that the British Empire was a good thing and the time for apologizing is over. These same politicians are still absolutely addicted to intervening in other people’s countries, with Afghanistan and Iraq now having been joined by Libya and Mali.

The Chilcot Inquiry Sinks into the Sand

There is no more serious decision that a government can take than a declaration of war, and there is no more serious test of a democracy than the ability to hold its leaders to account over why and how such decisions are taken, especially when a war is declared on false pretences and results in a tragic and bloody disaster of the magnitude of the Iraq War.

Corporate power and demand culture – rushing us towards oblivion

Corporations now call all the key shots, with the political class acting as gun-toting bodyguards. Despite the fig-leaf of parliamentary appearances, corporations have a malleable political elite in their boardroom-suited pockets. Political ‘participation’ is a wholesale pretence, the cartel of political parties just more corporate-type brands, And, while a corporate media helps keep the whole charade ideologically intact, corporate surveillance maintains a beady panoptic over the entire social and cultural landscape.

10 Corporations Control Almost Everything You Buy

Ten mega corporations control the output of almost everything you buy; from household products to pet food to jeans.
And it’s not just the products you buy and consume, either. In recent decades, the very news and information that you get has bundled together: 90% of the media is now controlled by just six companies, down from 50 in 1983, according to a Frugal Dad infographic from last year.

Glenn Greenwald: Spying not about terror

“What we revealed is that this spying system is devoted not to terrorists, but is directed to innocent people around the world,” Greenwald told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour in an interview that aired Monday. “None of this has anything to do with terrorism. Is Angela Merkel a terrorist?”

Perpetual War

On January 21, 2013, Barack Obama was inaugurated for his second term as president of the United States. Just as he had promised when he began his first campaign for president six years earlier, he pledged again to turn the page on history and take U.S. foreign policy in a different direction. “A decade of war is now ending,” Obama declared. “We, the people, still believe that enduring security and lasting peace do not require perpetual war.”

Global wealth inequality: top 1% own 41%; top 10% own 86%; bottom half own just 1%

All class societies have generated extremes of inequality in wealth and income. That is the point of a rich elite (whether feudal landlords, Asiatic warlords, Incan and Egyptian religious castes, Roman slave owners etc) usurping control of the surplus produced by labour. But past class societies considered that normal and ‘god-given’. Capitalism on the other hand talks about free markets, equal exchange and equality of opportunity. But the reality is no different from previous class societies.