Operation Enduring Freedom: a civilian’s view By Ian Pounds http://warisacrime.org/content/operation-enduring-freedom-civilian%E2%80%99s-view Obama’s Empire One thing true we can say about war is that truth is its greatest casualty. I am a volunteer teacher. Four years ago I responded to a call from then candidate Barak Obama for a new kind of soldier to [...]
Messing With Our Minds: The Ever Finer Line Between News and Advertising By Kingsley Dennis May 28, 2012 “Information Clearing House” — The manufacturing of consent is endemic within modern societies. Throughout history, the need to “persuade and influence” has always been manipulated by those people in power as a means to maintain [...]
(Image: Emily Flake) Beyond Corporate Capitalism: Not So Wild a Dream by Gar Alperovitz and Thomas Hanna It’s time to put the taboo subject of public ownership back on the progressive agenda. It is the only way to solve some of the most serious problems facing the nation. We contend that it is possible not only to talk [...]
Hedges: How Our Demented Capitalist System Made America Insane When civilizations start to die they go insane. Let the ice sheets in the Arctic melt. Let the temperatures rise. Let the air, soil and water be poisoned. Let the forests die. May 14, 2012 | Unfortunately for the author of this piece Marxism is still an [...]
Since the 1970s, wealth has become increasingly concentrated in the hands of the financial sector [EPA] Cambridge, MA - The Occupy movement has been an extremely exciting development. Unprecedented, in fact. There’s never been anything like it that I can think of. If the bonds and associations it has established can be sustained through a long, [...]
Photo: EPA One afternoon in May, Al Jazeera accompanied police sergeant Joseph Paul on patrol in San Jose, California, a city of just under a million people. As Paul wheeled his cruiser down the highways and streets of his city, he said his daily routine is full of potential dangers. “On patrol you have absolutely no [...]
British Played Central Role in CIA-Saudi Undercover Underwear Bomb Plot British authorities will neither confirm nor deny their involvement by John Glaser, May 10, 2012 Print This | Share This British intelligence played a central role in the undercover operation involving a supposed new underwear bomb threat from an al-Qaeda off-shoot in Yemen, Reuters reports. The government this [...]
Robert Scheer on Obama’s Sudden Conversion “Hope and Hesitation in Obama’s Sudden Conversion” — Once again President Barack Obama has come tantalizingly close to being terrific. Col. Ann Wright on Rape in the Marines “The Dark Side of the Prestigious Marine Barracks” — The Marine Barracks in Washington, D.C., is the showplace of the Marine [...]
A member of the 214th Reconnaissance Group flies a Predator aircraft drone in support of ground troops in Iraq and Afghanistan at Davis-Monthan Air Base in Tucson, March 10, 2009. (Photo: Jim Wilson / The New York Times)I kept finding myself thinking about the lunchbox. I was at the all-day Drone Summit in Washington DC [...]
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 [...]
Mahatma Gandhi counselled non-violent resistance to nuclear bombardment [AFP] New York, NY - Not so many decades ago, many around the world hoped that the great civilisations and traditions of the non-European world would do better than the West when it came to nuclear weapons. This was part of a larger idea that the formally colonised [...]
Supposed Would-Be Underwear Bomber Is CIA Informant Obama officials tried to present this as some successfully foiled terror attack, while it was anything but by John Glaser, May 08, 2012 Print This | Share This U.S. and Yemeni officials have confirmed that the supposed would-be underwear bomber at the heart of [...]
An Afghan Okinawa By The Afghan Peace Volunteers http://warisacrime.org/content/afghan-okinawa There is no U.S. troop withdrawal in 2014. We are ordinary Afghans wishing for peace, and we have eyes and ears and feelings of love and despair, so please read on. The Washington Post, in reporting the recent signing of the “U.S. Afghan Enduring Strategic Partnership Agreement“, stated [...]
“He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would fully suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, senseless brutality, deplorable [...]
Tomgram: Noam Chomsky, A Rebellious World or a New Dark Age? Posted by Noam Chomsky at 7:39am, May 8, 2012. If you had followed May Day protests in New York City in the mainstream media, you might hardly have noticed that they happened at all. The stories were generally tucked away, [...]
Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern says the US will not stop its assassination drone strikes due to its profits for arms makers, Press TV reports. link to voice recording. Very good listening http://presstv.com/detail/240022.html “These drone strikes create more terrorists. So, the war will keep going on and the question is who profits? [...]
President Barack Obama arriving in Afghanistan on his May 1 trip to sign a new strategic accord with Afghan President Hamid Karzai. (White House photo by Pete Souza)The optics surrounding the Barack Obama administration’s “Enduring Strategic Partnership” agreement with Afghanistan and the Memorandums of Understanding accompanying it emphasize transition to Afghan responsibility and an end [...]
The President’s Private War Andrew Napolitano on drone killings: ‘What monstrous nonsense all this is’ By Andrew Napolitano May 05, 2012 “Information Clearing House” – Did you know that the United States government is using drones to kill innocent people in Pakistan? Did you know that the Pakistani government has [...]
Why I Interrupted Obama’s Counterterrorism Adviser: Because the U.S. Keeps Killing Innocents Abroad “Mr. Brennan, will you speak out about the innocents killed by the U.S. in our drone strikes?,” asked Benjamin during a speech marking the anniversary of bin Laden’s death. May 2, 2012 | Photo Credit: AFP LIKE THIS ARTICLE ? Join our mailing [...]
Soldiers acting as part of Operation Pranoo Verbena in order to disrupt Taliban operations in Kandahar province, Afghanistan, March 16, 2012. (Photo: MATEUS_27:24&25) Henry A. Giroux | Violence, USA: The Warfare State and the Brutalizing of Everyday Life Wednesday, 02 May 2012 10:03By Henry A Giroux, Truthout | Op-Ed Since 9/11, the war on terror and the campaign for homeland security have increasingly [...]
Confessions of an angry young drone By Pepe Escobar PARIS – These are tumultuous times in Droneland. Some bewildered United States drones are actually mired in second thoughts about their god-given mission – as expressed in detail to author and blogger David Swanson. [1] They even founded their own awareness [...]
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 [...]
Rebecca Solnit, American Dystopia, Fiction or Reality? Posted by Rebecca Solnit at 8:49am, May 1, 2012. In my childhood years of the 1950s, apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic landscapes were a dime a dozen. In the Arctic, the first radioactivated monster, Ray Bradbury’s famed Rhedosaurus, awakened in The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms and began its [...]
Key US bases in Asia-Pacific. Source: BBC News. Role of Philippines in US Imperial ‘Pivot’ in Asia May Expand Washington has been building up the Filipino military, like others in the region, to contain a non-threatening China by John Glaser, April 30, 2012 Print This | Share This Recent joint U.S.-Filipino military exercises are a direct military [...]
An Occupy Wall Street protest in New York. Photograph: Emmanuel Dunand/AFP/ Getty Images link http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/apr/30/noam-chomsky-what-next-occupy This is the transcript of a discussion that took place earlier this year between Noam Chomsky and Occupy supporters Mikal Kamil and Ian Escuela for InterOccupy, an organisation that provides links between supporters of the Occupy movement around the world. Professor Chomsky, the Occupy movement is [...]
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 [...]
On OWS, Anarchism, Labor, Racism, Corporate Power and the Class War Talking With Chomsky by LAURA FLANDERS A CounterPunch Exclusive Noam Chomsky has not just been watching the Occupy movement. A veteran of the civil rights, anti-war, and anti-intervention movements of the 1960s through the 1980s, he’s given lectures [...]
Welcome to the Asylum By Chris Hedges April 30, 2012 “Information Clearing House” — When civilizations start to die they go insane. Let the ice sheets in the Arctic melt. Let the temperatures rise. Let the air, soil and water be poisoned. Let the forests die. Let the seas be emptied [...]
Aimal Faizi. “This means the text is closed….”What is the opinion of the agreement among regular Afghan citizens? (Photo: Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers) Why “lock” or “close” the future of Afghanistan to 30 million ordinary Afghan citizens? While the world may accept that the U.S. and Afghan governments have some “state” or “noble” considerations [...]
White House Defends Drones Despite Civilian Deaths ‘Sometimes You Have to Take Life to Save Lives’ by Jason Ditz, April 29, 2012 Print This | Share This It’s no real secret that the Obama Administration’s ever escalating drone war has killed a massive lot [...]
Confessions of a Drone By David Swanson http://warisacrime.org/content/confessions-drone They told me I was the best, better than any human. I didn’t hesitate. I didn’t flinch. I didn’t think. It wouldn’t have occurred to me to think. I’d been taught to value obedience above all else, and I did so, and they loved me for it. [...]
Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari has once again expressed his concerns over the U.S. drone strikes in his country’s tribal regions. In a meeting with U.S. Special Envoy for Pakistan and Afghanistan Marc Grossman on Friday, Zardari said Pakistan has always maintained that U.S. drone attacks are highly “counter-productive” in the war against militants since [...]
The Obama Contradiction Weakling at Home, Imperial President Abroad By Tom Engelhardt He has few constraints (except those he’s internalized). No one can stop him or countermand his orders. He has a bevy of lawyers at his beck and call to explain the “legality” of his actions. And if he cares [...]
May Day by Noam Chomsky If you’re a serious revolutionary, then you are not looking for an autocratic revolution, but a popular one which will move towards freedom and democracy. That can take place only if a mass of the population are implementing it, carrying it out, and solving problems. They’re not going to undertake that [...]
The Supposed Legality of Murder By David Swanson http://warisacrime.org/content/supposed-legality-murder War is legal, but pointing out its illegality is not mistaken; it’s irrelevant and un-strategic. That’s the argument I’m hearing from a number of quarters. Chase Madar has a terrific new book on Bradley Manning in which he argues that [...]
Make Love, then War By Linh Dinh April 27, 2012 “Information Clearing House” — In these days of a dying, raving and hallucinating empire, its best known poet, and a master at being anti-war, is accepting a Presidential Freedom Award from a cynical if affable, still, to many people, master of [...]
Photo Credit: Shutterstock LIKE THIS ARTICLE ? Join our mailing list: Sign up to stay up to date on the latest Economy headlines via email. How America’s Obsession With Money Deadens Us In a society that worships “one market under God,” we are forced to be somewhat money-centric in order to survive. [...]
A Game of Drones More Sharing ServicesShare|Share on facebookShare on twitterShare on email Precision-guided mythology masks a brutal truth. By Ximena Ortiz | April 27, 2012 America’s recent foreign policy has been enabled by a central idea: the United States does things differently. It wages wars differently. It suspends habeas [...]
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has often been perceived as unwilling to negotiate with the US [REUTERS] Washington, DC - In January 2009, just before Gary Samore left his position as Vice-President for Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, he summed up his rather cynical view of how Iran would conduct negotiations. “The logical position [...]
How Obama Recycled a Lie about Iran By Elizabeth Murray April 26, 2012 “Information Clearing House” — In June 2007, Middle East expert and University of Michigan professor Juan Cole remarked that bad translations can sometimes start wars. Professor Cole, in this case, was referring to the misleading, yet widely circulated mistranslated [...]
By Ben Cohen: When the massive economic crisis hit the US back in 2008, people struggled to understand how everything fell apart so quickly. Up until that point, the American economy was heralded by the media as a miraculous powerhouse embodying the principles of the free market and dynamic entrepreneurialism. The reality [...]
The New(er) World Order? Neoliberal Dragons, Eurasian Wet Dreams, and Robocop Fantasies A History of the World, BRIC by BRIC by Pepe Escobar Goldman Sachs — via economist Jim O’Neill — invented the concept of a rising new bloc on the planet: BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa). Some cynics couldn’t help [...]
Below is a link to an excellent interview with Ray McGovern a former CIA analyst. He of course as a CIA employee reported directly to a President nd is an acknowledged expert in the field. Although this is only short you get a god sense of what is happening with the dissemination [...]
US soldiers overlook Major’s Bay at the Pacific Missile Range Facility on the Hawaiian island of Kauai, one of the sites of Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC), the largest world’s largest maritime exercises [Jon Letman/Al Jazeera] Kauai, Hawaii - As Noam Chomsky wrote in this two-part essay, America‘s “pivot” toward the Asia-Pacific region is in response to what [...]
U.S. relents and grants Pakistani lawyer visa in time for International Drone Summit By davidswanson - Posted on 24 April 2012 From Code Pink, Reprieve, and Center for Constitutional Rights: After months of pressure from human rights activists, the U.S. government has granted Pakistani lawyer Shahzad Akbar a visa to attend [...]
AMY GOODMAN: We turn now to part two of our interview with Dr. Cornel West and Tavis Smiley. They have just come out with a new book, The Rich and the Rest of Us: A Poverty Manifesto, which draws in part on a 10-state tour they conducted last year to highlight the issue [...]
Tel Aviv is often described as ‘insulated’ from the Israeli/Palestinian conflict [EPA] Washington, DC - The occupation and the Iran nuclear issue have swallowed up Israel. Unless you live there, the only sense you get of that country is that it is obsessed with Iran, maintaining the occupation and exploiting the Holocaust to keep critics of [...]
An Interview With Noam Chomsky D.J. BUSCHINI APRIL 23, 2012 link http://bostonoccupier.com/2012/04/23/an-interview-with-noam-chomsky-working-for-revolutionary-peace/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=an-interview-with-noam-chomsky-working-for-revolutionary-peace In early March, Boston Occupier staffer D.J. Buschini sat down with Noam Chomsky, M.I.T. linguistics professor and acclaimed intellectual. The full text and video of this exclusive will be published shortly here on bostonoccupier.com DJ Buschini: A good deal of committed [...]
by Dariush Gilani 21-Apr-2012 link http://www.iranian.com/main/2012/apr/all-quiet Checking out the US media recently I have noticed a dramatic downturn in anti-Iran rhetoric. Now that the Israeli leaders got what they wanted from the Obama administration, in terms of more weapons and money and a relief from forced negotiation with Palestinians, the scare tactic about nuclear Iran has [...]
The Simple Truth in Chomsky’s Words By Geoff_Kennedy April 21, 2012 “Information Clearing House” — I rarely employ long quotes in these essays. I prefer my own words to express my own ideas. But this time I make an exception. The simple words at the end of Noam Chomsky’s 1992 [...]
