Next time you hear Western governments talking about human rights, remember this case. The British and American authorities routinely lie. It’s what power does. Stunning investigation by the UK Guardian: Just when Fatima Bouchar thought it couldn’t get any worse, the Americans forced her to lie on a stretcher and began wrapping tape around her…
Showing all posts tagged war on terror
Guess which Western nation has right to detain journalists and equipment without warrant?
The US of A. Salon’s Glenn Greenwald with a terrifying story that should concern any person who believes in the concept of free speech: One of the more extreme government abuses of the post-9/11 era targets U.S. citizens re-entering their own country, and it has received far too little attention. With no oversight or legal…
Hello, we’re America and we rather love torturing people
Strong New York Times editorial against the shameful “terror” trials held by the US in the “land of the free”: The Pentagon’s prosecutors formally charged Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and four other men last week with war crimes for planning and carrying out the murder of 2,976 people on Sept. 11, 2001, and referred their case…
How to leave Afghanistan, and soon
Well, that’s one view about the war in Afghanistan, by Anatol Lieven in the New York Review of Books: The attempt by US-led NATO forces in 2001 and 2002 to create a strong Pashtun alternative to the Taliban from among former Mujahedin forces failed because so many had either disgraced themselves by their oppressive policies…
When America trains a terrorist organisation and Israel joins in
How Washington supports and trains an organisation that kills civilians and the Zionist state is along for the ride. There’s a word for this; terrorism. Cracking Seymour Hersh piece in the New Yorker: From the air, the terrain of the Department of Energy’s Nevada National Security Site, with its arid high plains and remote mountain…
Big Brother isn’t in the future, it’s here today
Via the New York Times: Law enforcement tracking of cellphones, once the province mainly of federal agents, has become a powerful and widely used surveillance tool for local police officials, with hundreds of departments, large and small, often using it aggressively with little or no court oversight, documents show. The practice has become big business…
Disaster capitalism in Pakistan
I’ve just visited Pakistan investigating disaster capitalism for a forthcoming book and documentary. Amazing country. Beautiful, troubled, scary, complicated and centre of the world since 9/11 for (mostly) the wrong reasons. And private security is rampant. Stories coming but in the meantime here’s photos; Islamabad/Rawalpindi/Peshawar… and Karachi.
What we do to Afghans every week is terrorism
Michael Hastings: They say [the shooter] has a traumatic brain injury. But what we see on a weekly basis is”¦Afghans being killed. It happens because we have 100,000 troops in Khandahar who know that we’re leaving”¦ If he’s insane, he’s a symptom of an insane policy.
Australia inspired by the best…Guantanamo Bay
Having spent extensive time in Australian detention centres across the country, this news, via the Sydney Morning Herald, is sadly predictable but shows the utter contempt by authorities towards a free press. Following America’s lead in Gitmo for media? What cretins. And what role, if any, has British multinational Serco played in these restrictions? The…