Stop idealising the war journalist

Robert Fisk is typically provocative (and accurate) in today’s Independent column: It took a lot of courage to get into Homs; Sky News, then the BBC, then a few brave men and women who went to tell the world of the city’s anguish and, in at least two cases, suffered themselves. I could only reflect…

When in trouble with the truth, Zionists, dredge up Hitler (or related)

This never ceases to amaze me. While Israel’s occupation deepens every day and racism towards Arabs grows – see this “fury” over religious Zionist politicians demanding an Arab judge recite the Zionist national anthem – the mostly old and crusty Jewish spokespeople globally just want the world to better understand poor little Israel. In today’s…

Please, Washington, keep those conflicts bubbling along for our bottom line

The “war on terror” has been a lovely earner for many Western corporations. For them, wars winding down in Iraq and Afghanistan could be bad for business. Here’s Walter Pincus in the Washington Post: The U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command on Feb.… 1 approved a $330… million five-month extension on a five-year contract. That contract now…

How vulture capitalism in the “war on terror” really works

I’m on a number of global email lists that discuss privatised security post 9/11. This is from an anonymous retired navy captain: Somebody’s civilian friends or benefactors have always been making money on our wars. The funny twist is how the “military industrial complex” of years gone by has evolved into a “personnel support complex”…

America wants “human terrain” to whitewash occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan

Years after 9/11, the US military believed that counter-insurgency meant learning about the countries you were invading and occupying. Sensible decision but nothing could alter the fact that America was conducting a brutal occupation of Muslim lands. Resistance rightly followed. “Human Terrain Systems” were employed – anthropologists, social scientists and others – to be the…

Remember MSM role over war; what the state says we report

Post 9/11, it was Afghanistan. Then Iraq. Then drones over Pakistan. Bombs against Gaza. Counter-terrorism in Somalia and Yemen. Now the main target is Iran. The vast majority of corporate media hacks in the West hear a statement from Israel and America and simply report it without question. That’s called stenography. Salon’s Glenn Greenwald writes:…

Murdoch thuggery in America; his paper calls for war against Iran

This is how Rupert and friends roll (via the New York Post editorial). Because Murdoch’s support for the Iraq war hasn’t already caused enough mayhem: How’s this for astonishing: NBC News is reporting that Israeli spies have been involved in the assassinations of five Iranian nuclear scientists. So far, not so bad. We’d say the…

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