Dive into the archives.
- Tom Engelhardt: Don’t Let Barack Obama Break Your Heart
On the day that Americans turned out in near record numbers to vote, a record was set halfway around the world. In Afghanistan, a U.S. Air Force strike wiped out about 40 people in a wedding party. This represented at least the sixth wedding party eradicated by American air power in Afghanistan and Iraq since [...]
- Why I Plan To Boycott the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election
It has come as a surprise to many of my friends to hear that I have decided not to vote. Some people have sent me messages begging me to cast a vote, some of them aggressive and condescending, others desperate… so I will try to clarify my views to those among you who consider voting [...]
- Noam Chomsky: The U.S. Has Essentially a One-Party System
Der Spiegal: Professor Noam Chomsky, cathedrals of capitalism have collapsed, the conservative government is spending its final weeks in office with nationalization plans. How does that make you feel? Noam Chomsky: The times are too difficult and the crisis too severe to indulge in schadenfreude. Looking at it in perspective, the fact that there would [...]
- Alan Bock: No Matter Who Wins, Expect More Wars
If the presidential debate Friday night told us anything, it was that whichever of these candidates is elected, we can expect more wars, or at least more conflicts that put U.S. forces or citizens in danger for dubious reasons. Neither John McCain nor Barack Obama came close to questioning the "bipartisan" consensus on U.S. foreign [...]
- Noam Chomsky: Ossetia-Russia-Georgia
Aghast at the atrocities committed by US forces invading the Philippines, and the rhetorical flights about liberation and noble intent that routinely accompany crimes of state, Mark Twain threw up his hands at his inability to wield his formidable weapon of satire. The immediate object of his frustration was the renowned General Funston. “No satire [...]
- Tariq Ali: Bush’s War Widens Dangerously
The decision to make public a presidential order of last July authorizing American strikes inside Pakistan without seeking the approval of the Pakistani government ends a long debate within, and on the periphery of, the Bush administration. Sen. Barack Obama, aware of this ongoing debate during his own long battle with Sen. Hillary Clinton, tried [...]
- Maureen Dowd: Bering Straight Talk
Anchorage I’ve been in Alaska only a week, but I’m already feeling ever so much smarter about Russia. I can’t quite see it from my hotel window, but, hey, I know it’s out there somewhere, beyond all the stuffed bears and cruise ships and glaciers and oil derricks. The proximity of the country from which [...]
- Eyad Sarraj
In the Gaza Strip, there are a vast number of inspiring individuals prepared to put their personal reputation (and even their own physical well-being) on the line for matters of conviction. Dr. Eyad Sarraj is one of the more prominent of these figures and I was fortunate enough to speak with him on several occasions [...]
- Control Room
Control Room, directed by Egyptian-American filmmaker Jehane Noujaim, provides unique insights into the media dynamics on the eve of the 2003 US invasion of Iraq. It primarily portrays the interactions between Al Jazeera journalists on the one hand and US military spokespersons and Western journalists on the other hand. Al Jazeera is a TV station [...]
- War Crimes, Inc.: Blackwater and the Occupation of Iraq
By now the private security firm, Blackwater USA, has become a household name. The firm has been the subject of multiple investigations, lawsuits, and congressional inquiries—all leading to an obvious conclusion: Blackwater in Iraq has either acted in a manner of extreme disregard for civilian lives, or they are outright contemptuous murderers. Yet, as Democracy [...]
- Amy Goodman: Whistle-Blower Points to Target List in U.S. Attack on Hotel
More than five years have passed since the invasion of Iraq, since President Bush stood under the “Mission Accomplished” banner on that aircraft carrier. While these fifth anniversaries got some notice, another did not: the shelling of the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad by a U.S. Army tank on April 8, 2003. The tank attack killed [...]
- That Much More of a Tragedy: On the Stupidity of Bush
When I reflect upon the upcoming U.S. Presidential election, I tend not to place so much faith in the rhetoric of change. Despite prevailing, popular attitudes here in Europe, I find it difficult to imagine anything but the most marginal change in domestic policy should Obama become President (and virtually zero change elsewhere). We may [...]
- John Pilger: Stealing Diego Garcia
There are times when one tragedy, one crime tells us how a whole system works behind its democratic facade and helps us to understand how much of the world is run for the benefit of the powerful and how governments lie. To understand the catastrophe of Iraq, and all the other Iraqs along imperial history’s [...]
- As’ad Abu-Khalil: The Anniversary of the Lebanese Civil War (The Wars That Never End)
When did the Lebanese civil war (the major one) start? Did it start in February of 1975 when Sidon-based leader, Ma`ruf Sa`d, was assassinated by a Lebanese Army intelligence sniper? Or was it the widely accepted “Sarajevo” (of the civil war) of 13th of April, 1975? I think that the civil war started in 1973, [...]
- Half a Decade of War: Five Years After Iraq Invasion, Soldiers Testify at Winter Soldier Hearings
AMY GOODMAN: [Five years ago] on March 19th, 2003, the US began bombing Baghdad. The invasion was on. Six weeks later, President Bush stood under a banner reading “Mission Accomplished” and declared an end to major military combat operations in Iraq. Now, half a decade later, the war continues with no end in sight. In [...]
- Winter Soldier CONT’D: US Vets, Active-Duty Soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan Testify About the Horrors of War
AMY GOODMAN: [Tonight] the US invasion and occupation of Iraq will enter its sixth year. On Monday, at least seventy-two Iraqis were killed in violence around Iraq, including forty-two Shiite worshippers in a suicide bombing in Karbala. Two US troops were also killed, bringing the US death toll to 3,990, ten deaths away from the [...]
- Winter Soldier: US Vets, Active-Duty Soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan Testify About the Horrors of War
AMY GOODMAN: Iraq and Afghanistan veterans gathered in Maryland this past weekend to testify at Winter Soldier, an eyewitness indictment of atrocities committed by US troops during the ongoing occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Organized by Iraq Veterans Against the War, the event was modeled after the historic 1971 Winter Soldier hearings held during the [...]
- Robert Fantina: In Torture We Trust
The U.S. Congress sent President Bush a bill that would have banned the CIA from using ‘harsh interrogation methods,’ which most of the world sees as torture and which even the military is forbidden to use. Said Mr. Bush: “The bill Congress sent me would take away one of the most valuable tools in the [...]
- David Rose: The Gaza Bombshell
The Al Deira Hotel, in Gaza City, is a haven of calm in a land beset by poverty, fear, and violence. In the middle of December 2007, I sit in the hotel’s airy restaurant, its windows open to the Mediterranean, and listen to a slight, bearded man named Mazen Asad abu Dan describe the suffering [...]
- A Little Restraint?
It’s almost impossible to comprehend the hypocrisy behind American actions in the Middle-East. U.S. Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice—a woman whose grasp of Middle-Eastern issues was made acutely apparent during Israel’s bombardment of Lebanon in 2006 (birth pangs, remember?)—recently appealed to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on behalf of the Palestinian civilians currently being bombed [...]
- Iran’s (Defunct?) Nuclear Program
In the chronology of the Bush administration’s record of manipulation and willful distortion of evidence, the apparent revelation – revealed in a recently declassified National Intelligence Estimate – that Iran ceased its nuclear program in 2003 promises to usher in a renewed phase of White House propaganda. While the cautious pundits and news anchors of [...]
- Occupying Justice
Writing about the serious flaws in American justice a la the “war on terror” is not especially easy. Where does one begin? From Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib to the secret CIA detention facilities scattered across Eastern Europe – there is surely an abundance of outraging cases of Orwellian malfeasance. One case in particular has been [...]
- The Bush Doctrine in Somalia: Yet Another Success
Over 500,000 people have now fled Mogadishu and its seems safe to assume that the Bush doctrine is alive and well in Somalia. With the Islamofascists overthrown and the bloodshed intensifying, America has added yet another success to its long list of accomplishments in spreading freedom and democracy. Somalis may yet throw candy to the [...]
- Comment: Pakistan’s Authoritarian Falstaff
George W. Bush seems terribly confused these days (and not just because he can’t decide whether the U.S. supports the Kurds in Iraq, opposes the Kurds in Turkey, encourages Kurdish terrorism in Iran or does all three simultaneously). With Pervez Musharraf declaring emergency rule in Pakistan, the Bush Doctrine has come face to face with [...]
