It was not pencils and pens – let alone ideas – that left Iraq, Gaza and Afghanistan shattered and hundreds of thousands of human beings dead. Not twelve. Hundreds of thousands. All with stories, with lives, with families. Tens of millions who have lost friends, family, homes and watched their country be torn apart.
The terrorist attack in France that took place at the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo was not about free speech. It was not about radical Islam. It did not illustrate the fictitious clash of civilizations. It was a harbinger of an emerging dystopia where the wretched of the earth, deprived of resources to survive, devoid of hope, brutally controlled, belittled and mocked by the privileged who live in the splendour and indolence of the industrial West, lash out in nihilistic fury.
Waheed Mozhdah, a well-known political analyst and author based in Kabul, echoed Muhammad’s account. “Bagram is worse than Guantanamo,” Mozdah told me, “and all the crimes, even the most cruel ones like the dog story, are well known here but most people prefer to not talk about it.”
It’s rare on TV when you see two former senior U.S. officials clashing angrily over something as significant as torture. Usually decorum prevails. But ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern wasn’t going to let the ex-House intelligence oversight chief get away with a bland defense of torture.
Deputy Head of the Left Party’s faction Sahra Wagenknecht sharply criticized Chancellor Angela Merkel’s policy toward Russia
Whatever the bloody horror, fragmentation, and chaos in the Middle East today, 40 years from now the fears and fantasies that led Washington into such repetitively destructive behavior will look no less foolish than the domino theory does today. If only, in a final thought experiment, we could simply skip those decades and instantly look back upon the present nightmare from the clearer light of a future day, perhaps the next predictable escalatory steps might be avoided. But don’t hold your breath, not with Washington chanting “Four more years!,” “Four more years!”
Lockheed Martin and BAE are just two of the arms companies that the Royal British Legion has co-opted to sponsor red poppy events.
Let’s tick them off: Iran (1980, 1987-1988), Libya (1981, 1986, 1989, 2011), Lebanon (1983), Kuwait (1991), Iraq (1991-2011, 2014-), Somalia (1992-1993, 2007-), Bosnia (1995), Saudi Arabia (1991, 1996), Afghanistan (1998, 2001-), Sudan (1998), Kosovo (1999), Yemen (2000, 2002-), Pakistan (2004-) and now Syria. Whew.
Just like the Fall of Saigon in April 1975, in which thousands of American personnel were scrambled out the country ahead of the Vietnamese victory, the retreat from Afghanistan this week signals another humiliating defeat for the warmongers in Washington.
Not only a humiliating defeat, but the end of a long and bloody chronicle of futile war. Thirteen years ago, the Americans invaded Afghanistan allegedly to topple a fundamentalist Taliban regime and eradicate an international source of terrorism led by Saudi al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden.
It is always stunning when a country that has brought violence and military force to numerous countries acts shocked and bewildered when someone brings a tiny faction of that violence back to that country. Regardless of one’s views on the justifiability of Canada’s lengthy military actions, it’s not the slightest bit surprising or difficult to understand why people who identify with those on the other end of Canadian bombs and bullets would decide to attack the military responsible for that violence.
As gruesome as the Islamic Front’s videotaped beheadings are, there is ambiguity over whether the U.S. government’s death-by-drone is any less horrific, with some victims crawling about with severed limbs and others just collateral damage
The glitzy NATO summit in Newport has not publicly announced major decisions but it is likely that they were taken in secret. To prevent Russia and China – but also India – from continuing their development, NATO can count on Terrorism from the Islamic Emirate which it pretends to condemn and fight.
