The “war on terror” remains as murky as ever. Interesting post by Sheila Carapico for Middle East Research and Information Project: Senate hearings to confirm John Brennan as the Obama administration’s appointment to be director of the CIA… brought to light… a heretofore clandestine American military facility in Saudi Arabia near the kingdom’s border with Yemen. While…
Showing all posts tagged United States
If vulture capitalism could be defined at Florida Atlantic University…
The infiltration of corporations into every aspect of modern life is something that should be resisted, not least because the agenda of a private prison company is rather different to a university. Or should be. Over to you, New York Times: In recent years, where stadium naming rights could be sold, universities and professional sports…
Amy Goodman on what independent media looks like
Great interview of the Democracy Now! host on PBS and AOL in 2013:
So this is how the Iraq war could have started
A fascinating insight from the British mercenary Simon Mann in Vice magazine about what the Bush administration were really like; criminals on a war mission: Weren’t you also asked to help kick start the Iraq War in 2002? Yes. Someone who said he was friends with the American neocons asked me to come up with…
Prisoner x scandal should be wake-up call for myopic Zionist establishment
My following investigation appears in New Matilda: The death of Ben Zygier has exposed Israel’s repressive censorship over national security – and shown how closely Australia works with Israel on military intelligence, writes Antony Loewenstein The case of Australian and Israeli citizen Ben Zygier and his alleged suicide in an Israeli jail in December 2010…
The real Wikileaks and Julian Assange
Amidst all the (mostly) slamming coverage that occurs in the media against Julian Assange and Wikileaks, it’s a welcome relief to read this long interview of Assange by John Keane in The Conversation: Julian Assange could be described as the… Tom Paine… of the early 21st century. Drawing strength from distress, disgusted by the hypocrisy of governments,…
Bush tortured and Obama drones; discuss
Jane Mayer in the New Yorker teases out the issues: There are some disturbing similarities between the Obama white paper and the Bush torture memos. Both use slippery legal language to parse dark government programs. Both have been deliberately hidden from public and even congressional oversight. And both involve the blurring of C.I.A. and military…
Life today in blighted Iraq
Australian film-maker David Bradbury and Australian writer and activist Donna Mulhearn are currently in Iraq witnessing the devastation that the West has bought in the last decade. Here’s a message from Bradbury in the city of Fallujah: Met two very interesting women doctors today. Dr Samira is the doctor at the frontline of birth defects…
Don’t believe a word of Obama spin over Afghan war victory
Typically astute thoughts by the Afghanistan Analysts Network’s Kate Clark on the clusterfuck that the West is leaving in the country: Obama did indeed struggle to define victory in his state of the union address (read the text here). The US mission, he said, would achieve its mission by defeating ”˜the core al-Qaeda’ by the…
Reuters TV on prisoner x, Mossad spies and Israeli intelligence
Here’s my interview (it was much longer in reality but the magic of editing!) on Reuters TV (via the Guardian) talking about the unhealthily close relationship between Israel, America and Australia and the often illegal and covert activities in which they engage: