Yesterday we wrote of the plight of a U.S. citizen who had fled the fighting during the Bush-backed invasion of Somalia only to find himself “renditioned” into the sinister prisons of the Ethiopian in
vaders — despite the fact that U.S. officials declared that there were no charges against him. (See the second half of that post.)
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Has anyone noticed that yet another “regime change” accomplished with U.S. military assistance is now collapsing into savage – and entirely predictable – internecine conflict?
The Washington Post has certainly noticed. They put this story about the growing insurgency in Somalia and the brutal reprisals against the Bush-backed, Bush-trained Ethiopian occupiers and
Rarely has the imperial hubris that lies at the basis of U.S. foreign policy – the unspoken, unquestioned assumption of America’s right to global domination by force – been so nakedly revealed than in the recent Washington Post story decrying the degraded state of the Pentagon’s military preparedness. (“Military is Ill-Prepared for Other Conflicts.“) What makes the story so remarkable, and so valuable as a diagnostic tool for the health of the Republic (which could perhaps be most accurately described
(Updated Below.)
Winter Patriot has an important post up at his place, with eyewitness accounts of the treatment doled out to anti-war protestors in Washington on Saturday by bellicose”counter-protestors,” who were sometimes backed by the authorities on the scene in their attacks and attempts to block legitimate, patriotic dissent.
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As’ad AbuKhalil has a brief word to say about Nicholas Kristof’s latest column, in which the earnest NYT columnist boldly announces that it is permissible to criticize the government of Israel without
automatically being termed a genocidal Nazi pigdog — while making sure to pimp the meme of his fellow Timesman, Thomas “The Flat” Friedman, and lambast Arabs for ignoring the depredations of Arab leaders. This is a constant theme of the
I join Jon Schwarz and many others in sending the most deeply felt condolences to Arthur Silber upon the death of his sister, Virginia. Silber has long been one of the most passionate, informed and
enlightening writers standing up against the inhumanity of the Bush Imperium and its bipartisan antecedents. As Jon says, all those who admire Arthur’s work should visit his site and offer their support in this time of
I’m afraid I don’t quite understand the criticism voiced in this recent article by Layla Anwar on Uruknet: Enough is Enough. Aside from the very valid point that only Iraqis have the best understanding of what is happening in their country, I find most of her scattershot attack “too cunning to be understood,” as the saying goes.
In the piece, she lays into “Papa Chomsky, Hajji Mullah Chossudovsky, the Nabob Chris Floyd, the John le Carre Kurt Nimmo, Lawrence of Arabia P.Cockburn, the Romantic Orientalist Troubadour Robert Fisk, the
Stop what you’re doing and go read – right now – Glenn Greenwald’s account of the recent 
“literary luncheon” that George Bush held with a gaggle of extremist neocon “scholars” in the White House. Read of the poison flattery they lovingly smeared all over Bush’s ego, of the brutal and ignorant prejudices they confirmed him in, of the unbridled military aggression they advocated. Read how they fed Bush’s megalomaniac belief in his “divine
Tom Engelhardt writes of the strange and disturbing non-reaction to Seymour Hersh’s recent story about the Bush Regime’s “Redirection” campaign – which involves funneling money to Sunni jihadist groups allied with al Qaeda, running covert ops inside Iran (including terrorist strikes), and shifting “black pools of money” from various dubious sources (most likely including some of the missing billions looted from Iraqi “reconstruction”), and laying the groundwork for a massive act of aggression against Iran – with Congress (and
Stopping the coming war with Iran is the imperative of our day. In addition to all the other horrors such a new war would bring, it would also prolong and intensify the nightmarish war crime in Iraq. Anyone concerned with the long-term interests of the United States — its security, its prosperity, its constitutional liberties — should be standing up right now in fierce and implacable resistance to the launching of another act of aggression.
So naturally, the national Democrats — who were returned to power