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The Legal Pervert’s Parade: Executive Privilege Über Alles

Just in case you haven’t noticed before, the United States of America has become a presidential tyranny. We’ve been clanging this bell here (and elsewhere) since late September 2001, and have seen it confirmed over and over through the years — with torture edicts, domestic spying, rendition, secret prisons, indefinite detention of uncharged, untried captives, etc. — and most recently and most baldly with the “Military Commissions Act,” which enshrined the principle of arbitrary presidential power in law and gutted the ancient privilege of

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Clone Wars: The Replication of Ruin From Iraq to Somalia

The rough beast that is George W. Bush’s Terror War replicates itself with remarkable fidelity. Each new monstrosity it brings forth exhibits the same markings, the same structure: a weak, corrupt client regime maintained in office by the occupation army of a foreign power, in brutal conflict with an ever-growing opposition led by — but not limited to — religious sectarians. And each replication produces the same results: chaos, ruin, atrocity, suffering, repression and the spread of violent, virulent extremism.

This has been the pattern in all four of the Terror War’s

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Cult Figure: Mad Dog Time in America

Your correspondent is still on the road. So below is another revenant offered for your diversion. This piece was published by the Moscow Times in the heady days just before the Bush Machine stole its second presidential election in 2004, and was based on Ron Suskind’s revelatory article about the Bushists’ scorn for the “reality-based community” and their open embrace of empire. Again, the revelance of this glimpse behind the scenes at the maniacal, messianical fervor that drives the Regime is still all too relevent, as Glenn Greenwald and <a target="_blank" href="http://www.chris-floyd.com/Articles/Articles/%22Black_Mass%22_and_the_Americanization_of_the_Apocalypse/"

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The Commander’s Corruptibles: The Fruit of Immoral War

Your correspondent is on the road for a few days. In lieu of fresh fodder, here’s a blast from the past — a piece that it is still entirely relevant today, especially in light of the new landmark article by Chris Hedges and Laila Al-Arian on the brutalization of the American forces sent to carry out George W. Bush’s war crime in Iraq. The piece below was written on July 3, 2006, just after the horrific murder-rape atrocity at Mahmudiyah had been uncovered.

Home Free: American Power

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No More Mister Nice Guy: Newsweek’s Kremlin Fairy Tale

Putin’s Dark Descent.” That’s the minatory headline on the latest Newsweek International Edition. (I’m not sure what’s on the current cover of the Stateside edition: “Did Jesus Raise Puppies From the Dead? Theologians Weigh In,” or some other burning topic, I imagine.)

In any case, Newsweek International draws up a bill of indictment against the Russian president, who is not at all a nice guy, it seems. The big whopping article is by Owen Matthews (who, as it happens, was once

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“Black Mass” and the Americanization of the Apocalypse

I.
I had planned on writing a review here of John Gray’s important new book, Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia, one of the most bracing and insightful things I’ve read in a long time. But now I find that acclaimed novelist John Banville has beaten me to it, with a review in Saturday’s Guardian that pretty much says it all. So without further ado, let’s turn it over to Mr. Banville, with these excerpts from <a target="_blank" href="http://books.guardian.co.uk/reviews/politicsphilosophyandsociety/0,,2125887,00.html"

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One in a Million: More on the Killing of Khalid Hassan

Here’s an update on the previous post. The NYT has now followed up on the killing of their reporter, Khalid Hassan, in Baghdad. He was apparently gunned down by militiamen after his car had been diverted into the backstreets by an American roadblock. It was a two-stage hit; he was forced off the road by a black Mercedes and shot, but survived. As he was calling his mother to say that he was OK, a second car came along, carrying a gunman who shot

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Out, Vile Jelly: The Blinding of America

“I carry a wounded horizon/In the seasons of my eye.” — Marty Matz

I.”Who’s Your Baghdaddy?

New York Times Journalist Killed in Baghdad (NYT)
Khalid W. Hassan, 23, an interpreter and reporter in the New York Times’s news bureau in Baghdad, was shot and killed today, John F. Burns, the bureau chief, reported…Mr. Hassan was shot in the Seiydia district of south central Baghdad while driving to work under unclear circumstances,
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Down in the Flood: The Senate’s Blank Check for War on Iran

(UPDATED BELOW. Updated again.)

As you may know — unless you rely on the corporate media for your news, of course — yesterday the U.S. Senate unanimously declared that Iran was committing acts of war against the United States: a 97-0 vote to give George W. Bush a clear and unmistakable casus belli for attacking Iran whenever Dick Cheney tells him to.

The bipartisan Senate resolution – the brainchild (or rather the bilechild) of Fightin’ Joe Lieberman

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