Politics

Water Cannons

The Metropolitan Police Service want their water cannon; they want it by this summer. Previously only employed on the streets of Northern Ireland, the introduction of water cannons is keenly supported by London Mayor, Boris Johnson, to apparently combat a repeat of the 2011 riots

Tory Priotities Writ Large

On the same day that the government announced it was scrapping the £180-million-a-year Social Fund for the destitute, a new survey showed that the big US internet companies operating in Britain have increased their UK sales last year by 18 per cent but paid even less tax to the Treasury than the year before.

Stealing J. Edgar Hoover’s Secrets

On March 8, 1971, a group of eight Vietnam War protestors broke into a Federal Bureau of Investigation field office in Media, Pennsylvania and stole hundreds of government documents that shocked a nation.

The stolen memos, reports and internal correspondence provided the first tangible evidence that J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI was systematically targeting and harassing hundreds of American citizens then known collectively as “the New Left.”

PJ Harvey’s Today edit – what’s in it for the BBC

The row over Harvey’s edition of Today is likely, of course, to be little more than a brief storm in a media teacup. Yet it comes as a sharp reminder that what was once a normal left-of-centre agenda in Britain has now become so exotic that people react to its presence on Radio 4 with various degrees of shock. Most of the points made by Harvey’s contributors may have been accurate, truthful and based on fact. But, in terms of contemporary British political debate, they nonetheless remain marginal, because they are not part of the dominant grand narrative of our time, which requires constant deference to the priorities of rich so-called “wealth creators”, and a rapid refocusing of any popular anger towards other vulnerable groups, such as this New Year’s imaginary tidal wave of new migrants from Romania and Bulgaria.

Edward Snowden’s Heroic Work: Our Media Must Match His Courage

As citizens, the questions we face become more broad and cut to the very core of what it means to live in a democracy: What is the impact to businesses when Internet traffic and private networks are breached or they’re required to provide backdoors or hackable vulnerabilities in their products? What will become of our relationship to technology if no one trusts the platforms we use all day long? What is the impact on personal relationships when NSA employees are able to monitor loved ones’, co-workers’ or enemies’ Internet traffic? What are we condoning?

‘The Only Thing We Have to Fear…’ is the CIA

Fifty years ago, exactly one month after John Kennedy was killed, the Washington Post published an op-ed titled “Limit CIA Role to Intelligence.” The first sentence of that op-ed on Dec. 22, 1963, read, “I think it has become necessary to take another look at the purpose and operations of our Central Intelligence Agency.”

Why is Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe not a Hero?

When these leaders started to shift allegiance, the heroes soon became villains. We all know how Osama, Saddam, Gaddafi fell from grace. BBC wrote glowing reports on Mugabe for 25 years up until the time Mugabe started introducing land reforms. Thereafter the white media started to promote Morgan Tsangvirai’s MDC party after the West started to pumping cash. MDC was no different to South African ANC – both ready to allow the whites to continue the economic hold on their respective countries.

The US Imperil State Successful in Stopping the Betterment of the World’s People

One devastated country after the other has made it clear that any country which pursues independent sovereign policies and attempts to better its own position and the state of its people becomes a target for the US Empire. According to Dr. Michael Parenti, in an interview with the Voice of Russia; “… any leader who uses the resources, and labor, and substance of his country for the well-being and self-development in that country is seen as someone who is evil, has a hidden agenda, hostile toward America and is hostile toward the West.”

China vs US ‘Sea-to-shining-sea’

Let’s say China is now in the stage of creating facts on the sea. For the moment, a kind of uneasy accommodation seems to prevail involving the Americans and also the Japanese. Beijing knows that the US Navy and the Japanese navy have better training – and more experience – than the Chinese navy. Once again, for now.

The Abdication of Iran

While the media applaud the agreement reached between the P5+1 and Iran, Thierry Meyssan, a personal friend of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, sees in it an abdication by the new Iranian government. As far as he is concerned, it is absurd to pretend that the two parties have solved a misunderstanding supposedly maintained for eight years by the aggressiveness of President Ahmadinejad. The truth is that Iran gave up its nuclear research and began to dismantle it without receiving anything in return except the gradual lifting of illegitimate sanctions. In other words, the country, brought to its knees, has surrendered.