Iraq

The Logic of the Imperial Security State

The United States, too, took the opportunity to effect a silent coup at home, starting with the Patriot Act, and moving gradually forward to change the US from a democracy to a security state and to destroy, unopposed by a frightened domestic population, pieces of the world, one inconvenient country at a time. It’s a way of doing WW III without anybody but the victims noticing.

Why the rise of fascism is again the issue

The rulers of the world want Ukraine not only as a missile base; they want its economy. Kiev’s new Finance Minister, Nataliwe Jaresko, is a former senior US State Department official in charge of US overseas “investment”. She was hurriedly given Ukrainian citizenship. They want Ukraine for its abundant gas; Vice President Joe Biden’s son is on the board of Ukraine’s biggest oil, gas and fracking company. The manufacturers of GM seeds, companies such as the infamous Monsanto, want Ukraine’s rich farming soil.

HRW Claims US ‘Most Powerful Proponent of Human Rights’?

The quote above is from a January 4, 2015 article by Ken Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch (HRW). Imagine what the families of at least half million Iraqis killed as a result of the USA’s illegal invasion would say of that statement. Such crimes, when acknowledged at all, are downgraded to “faults” or “mistakes” by liberal elites like Ken Roth.

Killing Ragheads for Jesus

The innate barbarity that war and violence breed is justified by a saccharine sentimentality about the nation, the flag and a perverted Christianity that blesses its armed crusaders. This sentimentality, as Baldwin wrote, masks a terrifying numbness. It fosters an unchecked narcissism. Facts and historical truths, when they do not fit into the mythic vision of the nation and the tribe, are discarded. Dissent becomes treason. All opponents are godless and subhuman. “American Sniper” caters to a deep sickness rippling through our society. It holds up the dangerous belief that we can recover our equilibrium and our lost glory by embracing an American fascism.

Charlie Hebdo And The War For Civilisation

Like the rest of the media, the Guardian protests passionately when ‘bad guys’ commit an atrocity against ‘us’, but emotive defences of free speech are in short supply when ‘good guys’ bomb Serb and Libyan TV, or threaten the life of progressive US filmmakers. Far fewer tears are shed for Serb, Libyan or Palestinian journalists in US-UK corporate media offices.

Charlie Hebdo and the hypocrisy of pencils

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.

A Message From the Dispossessed

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.

Why the war on ISIS will fail

But it’s not just Turkey. Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar and Kuwait have all been heavily implicated in the past – according to the CIA’s own classified assessments – in financing the most virulent extremist elements of the Islamist rebel groups in Syria. Yet they did this under a covert operations programme to destabilise the Assad regime that was coordinated primarily by the US and UK.

Weasel Words

The former Foreign Secretary said: “At all times I was scrupulous in seeking to carry out my duties in accordance with the law. I hope to be able to say more about this at an appropriate stage in the future.”

I hope so too, and I hope that the appropriate time is either at the Old Bailey or The Hague.

Clashing Face-to-Face on Torture

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.