During a recent talk at New York’s Revolution Bookstore, writer Raymond Lotta made the following astounding comment: The US military…is one of the world’s largest polluters. If the war in Iraq were actually ranked as a country, in terms of carbon emissions, the war emitted more CO2 each year – that is more carbon dioxide…
Showing all posts tagged Iraq
Melanie Philips, unplugged
A very helpful “digested read” in the Guardian of the latest work by Melanie Philips: This book arose from a sense of perplexity that almost everyone in the world thought I was clinically mad. Everywhere I looked there were people who believed boarding a humanitarian aid convoy in international waters and murdering nine people was…
Afghans don’t want foreign troops, ever
How many corporate journalists in the West bought Washington’s spin over recent “successes” in Afghanistan? The embedded mindset is a killer: Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal confronts the specter of a collapse of U.S. political support for the war in Afghanistan in coming months comparable to the one that occurred in the Iraq War in late…
The war against Wikileaks
I’ve long admired Wikileaks, a clearing house for classified information (the “reasons” often used by Western governments to kill “liberated” Iraqis, Afghans etc). This news is therefore intriguing, not least because it shows that there is one (and probably more) people within the US government keen to tell the world about the “war on terror”…
What the Pixies think may be catching
A piece in today’s Murdoch Australian highlights the almost unstoppable movement towards isolating Israel until it recognises the error of its occupying ways. Not much evidence that many Israelis do believe that, but give them time: The piece is by Michael Shaik: “MICHAEL, she’s dead.” It was March 16, 2003. The huge anti-war protests of…
Blair suddenly shows some care for Gaza
Tony Blair, the man behind the Iraq war, Lebanon war and Gaza war, now calls for the lifting of the siege on Gaza. But these comments are simply delusional. Hope left Gaza many years ago: What is important is that we don’t end up with people [in Gaza] losing hope for the future, alienating young…
Why are so many reporters so keen to use the language of the US military?
Robert Fisk gave the following speech at the Al-Jazeera annual forum in Doha a few days ago: Power and the media are not just about cosy relationships between journalists and political leaders, between editors and presidents. They are not just about the parasitic-osmotic relationship between supposedly honourable reporters and the nexus of power that runs…
A “gay” Saddam was still Saddam
This would have been just a little cheaper in lives and treasure than destroying a country: A little-noticed blog post by a veteran intelligence reporter averred Tuesday that the CIA’s Iraq Operations Group weighed a plan prior to the 2003 Iraq invasion that sought to discredit Saddam Hussein by portraying him as gay. According to…
Washington and the Muslim world, a testy relationship
Views from across the Arab world: We are now approaching the first anniversary of President Barack Obama’s June 4, 2009 speech in Cairo, which offered Arabs and Muslims around the world a new “engagement” with the United States. A year later, how do Arab publics see the results of that effort–and how much do their…
America, land of the cyber warrior
Who trusts Washington to keep the internet free? The US military has appointed its first senior general to direct cyber warfare – despite fears that the move marks another stage in the militarisation of cyberspace. The newly promoted four-star general, Keith Alexander, takes charge of the Pentagon’s ambitious and controversial new Cyber Command, designed to…