(UPDATED BELOW) This week, the warlords of the West took yet another step toward their long-desired war againt Iran. (Open war, that is; their covert war has been going on for decades — via subversion, terrorism, and proxies like Saddam Hussein.) On Monday, the European Union obediently followed the dictates of its Washington masters by agreeing to impose an embargo on Iranian oil. The embargo bans all new oil contracts with Iran, and cuts off all existing deals after July. The embargo is accompanied by a freeze on all European assets of the Iranian central bank. In imposing these draconian measures

In a remarkable piece of reportage, the Guardian’s Ghaith Abdul-Ahad details the glorious fruits of the “liberation” that America has so generously and selflessly gifted to the people of Iraq: Um Hussein had six children. Her eldest son was killed by Sunni insurgents in 2005, when they took control of the neighbourhood. Three of her remaining sons were kidnapped by a Shia militia group when they left the neighbourhood to find work. They were never seen again. [Her last surviving son] Yassir was detained in 2007. For three years she heard nothing of him and assumed he was dead like

As you might expect, Arthur Silber cuts straight to the core — and also lays out the much broader, much darker, more evil context — of the latest obscenity in the ongoing atrocity of America’s occupation of Afghanistan: the desecration of dead bodies by American soldiers. Below is just an excerpt — but do read it in full. (And while you’re there, give any support you can. Silber’s health situation continues to be catastrophic, and he is solely dependent on his website for survival.) Silber first lays out very carefully the horrific — and indisputable — facts of America’s many

Wise man William Blum has spent decades shredding the tired pieties of empire to reveal the rotten reality of the American war-and-domination machine, as it churns its way back and forth across the world, chewing up individual lives and whole countries. And so, as you might imagine, he has a few choice words to say about the bogus “end” to the American war crime in Iraq, recently praised to the highest heavens by our presidential Peace Laureate as “an extraordinary achievement, nearly nine years in the making.” Here are few excerpts from Blum’s take on this extraordinary achievement, from his

Lately there has been a minor imbroglio in the blogosphere between progressive stalwart Roy Edroso and Salon.com columnist Glenn Greenwald. The former took umbrage at the latter’s comparison of the foreign policy positions of Barack Obama and Ron Paul. I won’t bore you with the meat of the matter, but I would like to focus momentarily on Edroso’s umbrage, which is so unfortunately emblematic of the progressosphere at large. In sum, Edroso’s “eyes filled with blood, he said — from outrage and insult, presumably — at Greenwald’s description of what any supporter for Barack Obama is actually supporting. To wit:

It’s already the new year here, but probably not where most of this blog’s small remnant of readers are residing. So here are some “echoes from the future” to you folks still back in 2011. I hope you — and all of us — have a good year in 2012. As long as our sister, Life, is still with us, we’ll keep plowing on, I reckon. (And if you have any spare coinage to keep the plow going here, it would be much appreciated. The tip jar is empty at the moment. However, as always, be sure to first give

I had much to say about the recent terror bombings in Baghdad, which were framed almost universally in the American media as the result of the withdrawal of the steadying, beneficent hand of the U.S. military. For example, the New York Times spoke of “a country reeling from political and sectarian turmoil that erupted after the departure of the American military.” It is hard to fathom the level of moral blindness — not to mention the wilful ignorance — required to write such a statement. To pretend to oneself, much less the rest of the world, that political and sectarian

Apologies for the duplicate posts, and for the fact that in trying to fix it, I seem to have eliminated the copy that had comments on it. We may possibly be having some hack attacks, but it’s being looked into, and we crave your patience. Thanks.