Another US failure in Afghanistan; poppy industry thriving

The country provides the vast majority of the world’s heroin. The longest war in US history has done nothing to arrest this. In fact, as I examined during my visit there last year and show in my forthcoming book, Profits of Doom, drug addiction is a major problem for men, women and children. Wired details…

The naked love affair between the CIA and #ZeroDarkThirty

The pro-torture, pro-US and pro-war on terror film… is given deeper meaning with the release, via Gawker, of a document that confirms what many of us suspected; the CIA wanted a propaganda film and the film-makers were apparently happy to comply: Kathryn Bigelow’s Osama bin Laden revenge-porn flick Zero Dark Thirty was the biggest publicity coup…

Israel desperate for regional war?

Savvy piece by Larry Derfner in +972 magazine. The lack of mainstream criticism over Israeli actions against Syria reveals the agenda; install a pliant thugocracy in Damascus. Good luck with that: People in this country [Israel] have been worried that the fighting in Syria is going to “spill over the border,” and now Israel, unprovoked,…

Why standing up for human rights, against the tide, matters

Salman Rushdie writes in the New York Times on 27 April: We… find it easier, in these confused times, to admire physical bravery than moral courage — the courage of the life of the mind, or of public figures. A man in a cowboy hat vaults a fence to help Boston bomb victims while others flee…

Dr Strangelove at the White House over Syria

This would be comical if the situation in Syria wasn’t so serious. This reporting, via the New York Times, shows the complete inability to understand that Washington isn’t the arbiter of what happens inside Syria. Nor should it be. This is ineptitude framed as serious policy. Besides, there are countless forces backing the “rebels” and…

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