When Iraqi Kurdistan‘s oil minister announced an oil pipeline to Turkey, ‘one could feel the tectonic plates of Pipelineistan rippling all across the Middle East – and beyond’ [GALLO/GETTY] Hong Kong, China - Iraq has virtually disappeared from the news cycle – displaced by the Arab Spring/Winter seesaw and the ongoing tragedy in Syria. But when [...]
On May, 2012, the BBC published a photo showing several rows of dead Iraqi children to illustrate a recent massacre in the Syrian city of Houla. As the BBC came under fire for trying to sell a NATO-led attack on Syria, a BBC spokesman has shirked responsibility for checking the authenticity of the image saying [...]
Famous sycophant Tony Blair, now a $6-million-a-year consultant for JP Morgan, isn’t clear of his self-serving past just yet. During a supposedly secure hearing about his ties to the Murdoch scandal, a protester burst in to charge Blair with war crimes. And he is facing tough questions about newly revealed secret meetings with Libya‘s Gaddafi. [...]
Surprise interruption … David Lawley-Walkin burst in through a secure corridor.Photo: AP ‘This man should be arrested for war crimes!’: protester bursts into Leveson courtroom to confront Tony Blair Karen Kissane May 29, 2012 – 6:34AM Read later Former British prime minister Tony Blair has denied being too close to Rupert Murdoch, as the Leveson [...]
War With Iran Has Already Begun Bipartisan support for sanctions spells bloodshed to come by Nathan Fuller, May 24, 2012 Print This | Share This On Friday, 93% of the U.S. House of Representatives affirmed a resolution escalating America’s already aggressive position on Iran from “crippling” sanctions to a zero-tolerance policy on nuclear weapons. The Congressional Research [...]
A bulldozer dumps a load of trash into a burn pit just 300 yards from the runway at Bagram Airfield, January 2012. An Army memo from 2011 found the burn pit is associated with “long-term” health effects on soldiers at Bagram.Photo: U.S. Army Leaked Memo: Afghan ‘Burn Pit’ Could Wreck Troops’ Hearts, Lungs By Spencer [...]
A sign on a door labeled “Interrogation Booths” in both English and Arabic at Camp Honor military base in Baghdad’s Green Zone, taken before the government announced the prison was closed. (photo: Human Rights Watch) Rights Group: Iraq Torture Prison Still Open Human Rights Watch reports notorious Camp Honor prison still in use a year [...]
War Tribunal Finds Bush, Cheney Guilty of War Crimes Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal orders reparations be given to torture victims – Common Dreams staff Former US President George W Bush, his Vice-President Dick Cheney and six other members of his administration have been found guilty of war crimes by a tribunal in Malaysia. [...]
Colin Powell’s Tangled Web By David Swanson http://warisacrime.org/content/colin-powells-tangled-web “I get mad when bloggers accuse me of lying — of knowing the information was false. I didn’t.” — Colin Powell. Can you imagine having an opportunity to address the United Nations Security Council about a matter of great global importance, with all the world’s [...]
LAUREN BOOTH REPORTS FROM KUALA LUMPUR WAR CRIMES TRIBUNAL WEDNESDAY, MAY 9, 2012 AT 8:29AM GILAD ATZMON http://www.deliberation.info/ Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal Day 1 When authority entrusted to further truth and justice betrays that trust, two options remain: one is to throw up your hands in despair and [...]
US-Afghan Pact Won’t End War or Night Raids by Gareth Porter, May 03, 2012 Print This | Share This The optics surrounding the Barack Obama administration’s “Enduring Strategic Partnership” [.pdf] agreement with Afghanistan and the memorandums of understanding (MOU) accompanying it emphasize transition to Afghan responsibility and an end to U.S. war. [...]
Brewing a Conflict with China By Paul Craig Roberts May 01, 2012 “Information Clearing House” – Washington has pressured the Philippines, whose government it owns, into conducting joint military exercises in the South China Sea. Washington’s excuse is that China has territorial disputes with the Philippines, Indonesia, and other countries concerning island [...]
April 30, 2012 Retired analyst: Fiction fueled war By Joel PruettThe Norman Transcript NORMAN — Retired CIA analyst Ray McGovern said the war with Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. Rather, it was about misinformation and fossil fuels. The analyst, who has appeared on CNN, NewsHour and other news [...]
CAMPAIGN TO SUPPORT FREEDOM OF THE PRESS AND FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION IN IRAQ by the Iraqi Civil Society Solidarity Initiative Press Release – 26th April, 2012 Iraq’s Journalist Protection Law, approved in August 2011 by the Iraqi Parliament which was facing international pressure to reform its laws concerning the media, in fact constitutes [...]
Almost half of Iraqis rely on food aid to survive [GALLO/GETTY] Salina, KS - In February 2011, with grassroots uprisings having toppled the governments of Tunisia and Egypt, unrest was swelling in Iraq as well. In response, the government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki announced that it was postponing a planned purchase of F16 fighter planes from the [...]
Few men have spent more time at the intersection of nuclear weapons and international politics than Swedish diplomat Hans Blix. As the former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and then chief United Nations weapons inspector, Blix was at the centre of events when he publicly contradicted claims from the administration of former US [...]
YouTube/NCPCF2010 Attorney Stephen Downs speaks at a news conference in March organized by the National Coalition to Protect Civil Freedoms in Washington, D.C. Every week, Truthdig recognizes an individual or group of people who spoke truth to power, blew the whistle or stood up in the face of injustice. See past winners here, and nominate [...]
Torture on Trial Legal and Humane Frameworks for Opposing Torture by: David Swanson Published in the May / June 2012 Humanist http://thehumanist.org/may-june-2012/torture-on-trial-legal-and-humane-frameworks-for-opposing-torture/ Cases come in by the thousands from all over the world. A man was beaten and whipped. A woman was beaten and raped. A boy was hooded with three empty sand [...]
Chomsky: U.S. security requires something approaching absolute global control By Gaius Publius on 4/19/2012 09:15:00 AM I’m approaching a short trip, so posting will be light. But I want to put this up before I head out. Not that this — the headline statement — is surprising, but that it’s said out loud. [...]
Wait a minute: that’s the WikiLeaks “Collateral Murder” video! The gunsight view of an Apache helicopter opening fire from half a mile high on a crowd of Iraqis — a few armed men, but mostly unarmed civilians, including a couple of Reuters employees — as they unsuspectingly walked the streets of a Baghdad [...]
Update On War Crime Those Laboratory Mice Were Children By Karlos Zurutuza April 15, 2012 “Information Clearing House” — FALLUJAH, Iraq, Apr 13, 2012 (IPS) – At Fallujah hospital they cannot offer any statistics on children born with birth defects – there are just too many. Parents don’t want to talk. “Families bury their [...]
Global Peace and Wars: America at War with Itself By Mahboob A. Khawaja, PhD Built on lies and political deception, the on-going wars were suppose to create a new culture of FEAR amongst the American and European common masses, enabling the ruling elite to sustain their grip over the powerhouses for [...]
Iraq: Massacre of a Country By Felicity Arbuthnot‘How can you make a war on terror when you are actually the terrorist?’ – (Unknown.) America’s 2003 assault on Iraq, already devastated by thirteen years of sanctions, infrastructure destruction consequently unrepaired from the 1991 bombing was, in the ridiculous annals of names the [...]
Author Hooman Majd says Iran will not capitulate [Ken Browar] In a recent New York Times op-ed, Iranian-American journalist Hooman Majd wrote that sanctions against Iran are “turning into a form of collective punishment” and are unlikely to bring about the change western governments are after. Western nations have increased bilateral sanctions in recent years as Iran forges [...]
Scott Nelson/ Focus/ DER SPIEGEL When the US toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003, few people imagined that it would take another decade before the Iraqi oil industry was rebuilt. Now, progress is finally being made, and the country’s massive reserves could bring untold wealth. But before that happens, Baghdad needs to improve security and get corruption under [...]
“To forbid the use of military bases on our territory” By davidswanson - Posted on 09 April 2012 U.S. Military Bases in Germany and a Brief History of Protests Against Them By Elsa Rassbach On September 25, 2009, U.S. and NATO commanders emblematically chose Ramstein Air Base in Germany to announce the request [...]
Israel Afraid of Iraq’s US-Provided Warplanes That Israel feels threatened by Iraq – America’s intended client – is a monument to the failure of the Iraq war by John Glaser, April 09, 2012 Print This | Share This Recent U.S. military aid and arms sales to Iraq are fueling concern in Israel amid intelligence reports that Baghdad is increasingly [...]
Why Do They Hate George Galloway So Much? by PATRICK COCKBURN The ferocity of the attacks on George Galloway by the British commentariat is one of the most revealing outcomes of his victory in the Bradford West by-election. News presenters saw no problem in conducting interviews with the newly elected [...]
Tomgram: Peter Van Buren, Joining The Whistleblowers’ Club Posted by Peter Van Buren at 5:19pm, April 8, 2012. The world can be a luckless place, but every now and then serendipity just knocks you off a cliff. In what passed for my real life before TomDispatch intervened, I was (and remain, on a part-time basis) a [...]
Memo: Bush Made Intel Fit Iraq Policy By WARREN P. STROBEL and JOHN WALCOTT 05/06/05 “Knight Ridder” - – WASHINGTON - A highly classified British memo, leaked in the midst of Britain’s just-concluded election campaign, indicates that President Bush decided to overthrow Iraqi President Saddam Hussein by summer 2002 and was determined to [...]
What ‘not’ to say about Iran’s nuclear topic 05 April 2012 The subject of Iran’s nuclear ambitions has returned to the spotlight in the past few days following an absence of a few weeks, due to the world’s preoccupation with the developments in Syria as well as the various tours made by [...]
Leaked Video Shows US Contractors Randomly Killing Civilians Employees of the US military contracting group Academi (formerly Xe, Blackwater USA and Blackwater Worldwide) are seen in new leaked video shooting their machine guns at random while driving through the streets of Baghdad, crashing into other cars and even running over [...]
In Bid for Iraqi Crude, Oil Corporations Play Politics Exxon, Shell, and BP tread lightly over Iraq‘s political sectarianism to reign supreme in Iraqi oil production by John Glaser, April 05, 2012 antiwar.com Print This | Share This Major oil companies like Exxon Mobil and Shell are playing politics in Iraq, juggling the autonomous Kurdish north with the [...]
SOURCE: AP/Steve Ruark John R. Bolton, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, speaks to the Baltimore Council on Foreign Affairs in May 2006. By Eric Alterman | April 5, 2012 link http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2012/04/ta_040512.html In a front-page story in Sunday’s New York Times dealing with the specter of corrupted pre-Iraq invasion intelligence and its potential influence on the debate over whether the [...]
Man Whose WMD Lies Led to Iraq War Confesses All Defector tells how US officials ‘sexed up’ his fictions to make the case for 2003 invasion By Jonathan Owen April 01, 2012 “The Independent” – -A man whose lies helped to make the case for invading Iraq – starting [...]
This article deals with a ‘doctrine’ that has and still does affect the indigenous people of Australia. While some view the Australian attitude to the indigenous as “paternal” that word carries with it some concept of actually caring for and being concerned about the peoples being made the subject of some or any [...]
A medic talks to an Iraqi civilian with help from a translator. (Photo: Jametiks) A young Iraqi interpreter named Ali was riding with members of the United States Army 1st Armored Division on a 2003 midnight raid outside of Baghdad when the driver made a mistake in the darkness and their armored Bradley vehicle flipped into [...]
The Bradford Spring: Atoning for Invasion by Abby Zimet An upset victory in a U.K. special election has gone to George Galloway, a fierce critic of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars who has led aid convoys to Gaza and who blasted the mainstream parties as “three cheeks of the same backside. They support the same things, the same wars, [...]
GETTY IMAGES 4 MONTHS AGONEW YORK, NY – NOVEMBER 02: Members of the New York City chapter of Iraq Veterans Against the War and dozens of other uniformed veterans known as ‘Veterans of the 99%’ prepare to march from VietnamVeterans Plaza to Zucotti Park where the Occupy Wall Street movement is centered on November 2, 2011 in New York City. The [...]
War porn: The new safe sex By Pepe Escobar (This is the much-abridged version of a conference at the XII Seminar of Political Solidarity at the University of Zaragoza, Spain, March 27, 2012.) The early 21st century is addicted to war porn, a prime spectator sport consumed by global couch and digital potatoes. War porn [...]
Tony Blair meets British soldiers in Iraq in 2006. He repeatedly blamed the French president for failure to get a second UN resolution backing an invasion. Photograph: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images Foreign Office fights order to disclose ‘key phone call’ between Bush and Blair Conversation days before Iraq invasion believed to relate to whether France would [...]
Bombing for Ethnic Cleansing and Hegemony Rights by Edward S. Herman / March 28th, 2012 In this post-Orwell and post-Kafka age, Israel can threaten to bomb Iran to preserve Israel’s ethnic cleansing rights in Palestine, and the United States can put “all options on the table” in dealing with that dire Iranian threat in order [...]
Great empires, such as the Roman and British, were extractive. The empires succeeded, because the value of the resources and wealth extracted from conquered lands exceeded the value of conquest and governance. The reason Rome did not extend its empire east into Germany was not the military prowess of Germanic tribes but Rome’s calculation [...]
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Tehran on February 11 2010, when he announced a ‘first stock’ of 20 percent-enriched uranium. Photograph: Atta Kenare/AFP/Getty Bomb Iran and it will surely decide to pursue nuclear arms If Israel’s 1981 bombing of Iraqi nuclear facilities teaches us anything, it’s that the quickest way to help the Iranians make up their [...]
“A war is no picnic” … Israel‘s Defence Minister Ehud Barak. Photo: AFP Take a bite out of Iran at your peril Paul McGeough March 25, 2012OPINION You’d have thought the reality of Afghanistan and Iraq might act as a break on the instinctive lunge by hawks to compare apples with oranges as they try to [...]
Afghanistan Crimes: Absolving Higher-Ups By Stephen Lendman - Posted on 25 March 2012 Afghanistan Crimes: Absolving Higher-Ups by Stephen Lendman Murder anywhere is bad enough. Nuremberg chief prosecutor Robert Jackson called preemptive aggressive war killing “the supreme international crime against peace.” Convicted Nazi war criminals were hanged. American ones keep killing with impunity. On [...]
The concept of ‘war crimes’ is a western luxury. (Zoriah.net) By Sarah Gillespie ‘Western civilization? I think it would be a good idea.’ – Mahatma Gandhi The US army staff sergeant Robert Bales, who shot dead Afghani civilians in their homes two weeks ago, has now been formally charged with 17 counts of murder. Aside from [...]
Witnessing Our War and Its Consequences by Luke Wilcox Standing in front of 40 religious leaders in Najaf, Iraq last summer, I wondered how they would react to my presentation. I was an unarmed American spending five weeks in Iraq with the Muslim Peacemaker Teams (MPT). That night I was presenting at a [...]
Iraq ‘worked out well, you may recall … But then what does it matter with people’s goldfish-like memories?’. Illustration: Phil Disley War on Iran? It is too soon to reminisce about Iraq, let alone have a repeat The Class of 2002 are beating the drums on Iran, failing to learn from a war [...]
The Shifting Strategies of Empire By David Swanson http://warisacrime.org/content/shifting-strategies-empire Remarks at the United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC) Conference: President Obama this week declared the war on Iraq to be an honorable success that has given us a brighter future. Are you fired up? Ready to go? Eric Holder this month explained [...]
