Old Articles | Thursday, January 15 | · | |
Friday, October 03 | · | |
Monday, September 29 | · | |
Saturday, September 20 | · | How the US Helped Create Al Qaeda and ISIS |
Tuesday, September 16 | · | |
· | Convenient Genocide: Another Failed War to Re-arrange The Middle East |
Friday, September 12 | · | The US and Global Wars: Empire or Vampire? |
Thursday, August 14 | · | The Empire Reaps the Jihadist Whirlwind |
Thursday, August 07 | · | Will Putin Realize That Russia Holds The Cards? |
Thursday, July 31 | · | |
Wednesday, July 23 | · | Airliner Shot Down 'By Mistake' say US Officials |
Friday, July 18 | · | The Human Price of Neocon Havoc |
Wednesday, June 25 | · | If Maliki's a good guy, then so is Assad |
· | |
Thursday, June 12 | · | The Fundamental Lie of the Afghan War |
Wednesday, June 04 | · | Elections in Syria: The People Say No to Foreign Intervention |
Tuesday, May 27 | · | Iraq - The biggest oil heist in history? |
Sunday, October 06 | · | Freedom Rider: Death and Somalia |
· | Innocent Kenyan Blood Drips from Imperial Hands |
Friday, September 27 | · | |
Older Articles
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| | War and Terror: Pompeo Imposes Visa Ban on ICC Staff Probing US War Crimes Saturday, March 16 @ 04:00:43 UTC |
"It reeks of the very totalitarian practices that are characteristic of the worst human rights abusers."
By Jessica Corbett March 15, 2019 - Common Dreams
"This is an unprecedented attempt to skirt international accountability for well-documented war crimes that haunt our clients to this day."
—Jamil Dakwar, ACLU
The move, Pompeo confirmed to reporters Friday morning, is a direct response to ongoing efforts by the ICC to probe allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity tied to the seemingly endless war in Afghanistan.
Jamil Dakwar, director of the ACLU's Human Rights Program, was among those who spoke out against the decision. The ACLU currently represents Khaled El Masri, Suleiman Salim, and Mohamed Ben Soud, who were all detained and tortured in Afghanistan between 2003 and 2008.
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War and Terror: How America Spreads Global Chaos Saturday, November 04 @ 05:12:45 UTC | The U.S. government may pretend to respect a
“rules-based” global order, but the only rule
Washington seems to follow is “might makes
right” — and the CIA has long served as a chief
instigator and enforcer, writes Nicolas J.S.
Davies.
By Nicolas J.S. Davies November 01, 2017 - Consortium News
As the recent PBS documentary on the American
War in Vietnam acknowledged, few American
officials ever believed that the United States
could win the war, neither those advising
Johnson as he committed hundreds of thousands of
U.S. troops, nor those advising Nixon as he
escalated a brutal aerial bombardment that had
already killed millions of people.
As conversations tape-recorded in the White
House reveal, and as other writers have
documented, the reasons for wading into the Big
Muddy, as
Pete Seeger satirized it,
and then pushing on regardless, all came down to
“credibility”: the domestic political
credibility of the politicians involved and
America’s international credibility as a
military power.
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War and Terror: Wednesday, September 06 @ 06:16:40 UTC | The U.S.-led aggressions against Iraq and Libya are two war crimes that keep on costing, with their grim examples of what happens to leaders who get rid of WMDs driving the scary showdown with North Korea, writes Robert Parry.
By Robert Parry
September 065, 2017 - consortiumnews.com
It is a popular meme in the U.S. media to say that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is “crazy” as he undertakes to develop a nuclear bomb and a missile capacity to deliver it, but he is actually working from a cold logic dictated by the U.S. government's aggressive wars and lack of integrity.
Indeed, the current North Korea crisis, which could end up killing millions of people, can be viewed as a follow-on disaster to President George W. Bush's Iraq War and President Barack Obama's Libyan intervention. Those wars came after the leaders of Iraq and Libya had dismantled their dangerous weapons programs, leaving their countries virtually powerless when the U.S. government chose to invade.
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War and Terror: San Bernardino Incident Has the Earmarks of a False Flag Friday, December 11 @ 06:28:22 UTC | By Stephen Lendman
December 11, 2015 - sjlendman.blogspot.com
Justifiable suspicions about what happened surfaced straightaway after the incident.
The alleged perpetrators, Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik, appear to have been used as convenient patsies - the same way April 2013 Boston Marathon bombing suspects Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Dzhokhar were unjustly framed for a crime they didn’t commit.
False flag attacks are used to stoke fear, to enlist public support for planned domestic and foreign horrors, harming the welfare and security of millions at home and abroad - including waging endless imperial wars along with harsh crackdowns on fundamental freedoms.
Events post-9/11 are well-documented. What’s unfolding now looks like more of the same - pure evil on the phony pretext of combating ISIS, state-sponsored high crimes at home and abroad, risking possible nuclear war.
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War and Terror: The Religious Element of Terrorism Wednesday, December 09 @ 03:03:18 UTC | By William Blum
December 08, 2015
Is it terrorism or is it religion? Does the question matter?
From the early days of America’s “War on Terror,” and even before then, I advocated seeing terrorists as more than just mindless, evil madmen from another planet. I did not believe they were motivated by hatred or envy of American freedom or democracy, or of American wealth, secular government or culture, although George W. Bush dearly wanted us to believe that.
The terrorists were, I maintained, driven by decades of terrible things done to their homelands by U.S. foreign policy. There should be no doubt of this I wrote, for there are numerous examples of Middle East terrorists explicitly citing American policies as the prime motivation behind their actions. And it worked the same all over the world.
In the period of the 1950s to the 1980s in Latin America, in response to a long string of outrageous Washington interventions, there were countless acts of terrorism against U.S. diplomatic and military targets as well as the offices of U.S. corporations. 9/11 was a globalized version of the Columbine High School disaster. When you bully people long enough they are going to strike back.
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War and Terror: Sunday, November 29 @ 04:17:50 UTC | By Glen Ford
November 29, 2015 - blackagendareport.com
“By making only a partial correction of Donald Trump’s prevarication, the corporate media were telling their own lie about what happened on 9/11.”
The corporate media don’t like Donald Trump. They used to like him a lot; in fact, Big Business Media are responsible for making this minor multi-millionaire into a household name. But Trump is on their hit list, nowadays, because the Republican presidential candidate insists on telling his own lies, rather than sticking to the list of official lies parroted by corporate media every minute of every day.
Donald Trump told a really “HUGE” – as he would put it – lie when he claimed to have watched thousands of Muslims cheering in Jersey City, New Jersey, as the World Trade Center came down on 9/11. Every corporate news outlet in the country rushed to debunk Trump’s fictitious account. The Washington Post offered psychological theories for why Trump gets away with telling fantastic lies. The New York Times said there was no evidence that Jersey City Muslims cheered the destruction on 9/11. CNN said it never happened. And, they were right.
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War and Terror: Turkey Downs Russian Fighter to Draw NATO and US Deeper into Syrian Quagmire Thursday, November 26 @ 02:21:48 UTC | By Mike Whitney
November 25, 2015 - Counterpunch
On Tuesday, Turkey shot down a Russian warplane that was
carrying out military operations against jihadi groups in
Northern Syria. The downing of the Su-24 fighter jet is part of
a broader plan by the administration of Turkish President Tayyip
Recep Erdogan to topple the secular government of Syrian
President Bashar al Assad and to establish “safe zones” on the
Syrian side of the Turkish-Syrian border. Erdogan needs the safe
zones to provide a sanctuary for the militant extremists who are
the footsoldiers in his war against Syria. The downing of the
Russian fighter is a desperate attempt by Erdogan to incite a
reaction from Russia that will draw either NATO or the United
States deeper into a conflict which has dragged on for 4 and a
half years and killed 250,000 people.
Unlike the Obama administration, that has been willing to arm
and train jihadi groups to conduct its proxy-war against Assad
in Syria, Erdogan is a true believer, a committed Islamist who
has done everything in his power to roll back democracy in
Turkey, to establish one-man rule, to destroy the independent
judiciary, to silence the free press, and to establish a
conservative and intolerant Islamic state. Erdogan is what many
would call a “Koolaid drinker”, a man who believes that his
support for disparate and vicious terrorist groups that have
decimated Syria, laid its civilian infrastructure to waste, and
displaced more than half the population is “God’s work”. Make no
mistake, the Turkish government is the modern-day Caliphate. The
fact that its government officials dress in nicely-tailored
suits rather than black pajamas, is merely a way to divert
attention from their extreme fanaticism and their covert support
for liver-eating fundamentalist savages.
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War and Terror: The Paris Attacks and the White Lives Matter Movement Saturday, November 21 @ 15:57:29 UTC | By Ajamu Baraka
November 20, 2015 - ajamubaraka.com
I received a message from one of my friends in Lebanon who asked with feigned curiosity why the U.S. media only gave a passing reference to the bombing in Beirut before turning to non-stop coverage of the attacks in Paris. Of course, like many of us she already knew the answer – that in the consciousness of the White West there is a premium on the value of White life.
Acknowledging this fact is neither new nor should it be particularly controversial. Its obviousness is apparent to anyone who is honest. We saw it in the response to the Charlie Hebdo attacks where the world (meaning the White West) engaged in a gratuitous expression of moral outrage against terrorism. But that outrage against terrorism didn’t extent to the two thousand Nigerians who were murdered by Boko Haram the same weekend that a massive rally in Paris took place to condemn the Charlie Hebdo attack. At that rally not one word of solidarity or condemnation of terrorism in Nigeria was expressed by the speakers or the thousands gathered that day.
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War and Terror: Former Drone Pilots to Obama: Civilian Killings Driving 'Terrorism' Wednesday, November 18 @ 23:01:34 UTC | Air Force whistleblowers say US drone program "is one of the most devastating driving forces for terrorism and destabilization around the world."
By Lauren McCauley
November 18, 2015 - Common Dreams
Four former U.S. Air Force drone operators issued a public letter on Wednesday warning that the United States' ongoing targeted killing program "is one of the most devastating driving forces for terrorism and destabilization around the world."
The letter (pdf), addressed to U.S. President Barack Obama, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, and CIA Chief John Brennan accuses the administration of fueling "tragedies such as the attacks in Paris" while "lying publicly about the effectiveness of the drone program."
"We came to the realization that the innocent civilians we were killing only fueled the feelings of hatred that ignited terrorism and groups like ISIS," the whistleblowers wrote, "while also serving as a fundamental recruitment tool similar to Guantanamo Bay."
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War and Terror: From Pol Pot to ISIS: the Blood Never Dried Wednesday, November 18 @ 02:43:03 UTC | By John Pilger
November 17, 2015 - counterpunch.org
In transmitting President Richard Nixon’s orders for a “massive” bombing of Cambodia in 1969, Henry Kissinger said, “Anything that flies on everything that moves”. As Barack Obama wages his seventh war against the Muslim world since he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, and Francois Hollande promises a “merciless” attack on the rubble of Syria, the orchestrated hysteria and lies make one almost nostalgic for Kissinger’s murderous honesty.
As a witness to the human consequences of aerial savagery – including the beheading of victims, their parts festooning trees and fields – I am not surprised by the disregard of memory and history, yet again. A telling example is the rise to power of Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge, who had much in common with today’s Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). They, too, were ruthless medievalists who began as a small sect. They, too, were the product of an American-made apocalypse, this time in Asia.
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War and Terror: Tuesday, November 17 @ 21:48:23 UTC | By Paul Gottinger
November 17, 2015 - counterpunch.org
The hysteria of vengeance has once again grasped hold of the West. Almost instantly, the West’s veneer of civilization has been peeled away, leaving in its place, a renewed commitment to barbarity and retribution against the monsters known as ISIS.
France, like the US after September 11, immediately rolled back its citizen’s rights and made promises to escalate the harassment and surveillance of Muslims. President François Hollande, taking a page from some of the darkest days of the Bush administration, pledged bloody revenge in a “pitiless” war against ISIS.
Hollande wasted no time making good on his pledge.
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War and Terror: How Saudi/Gulf Money Fuels Terror Monday, November 16 @ 08:34:34 UTC | By Daniel Lazare
November 16, 2015 - consortiumnews.com
Today, it’s the case in Yemen where the U.S. and France are helping Saudi Arabia in its massive air war against Houthi Shi‘ites. And it’s the case in Syria, the scene of the most destructive war game of them all, where Saudi Arabia and other Arab Gulf states are channeling money and arms to Al Qaeda, the Islamic State (also known as ISIS, ISIL and Daesh), and similar forces with the full knowledge of the U.S.
Western leaders encourage this violence yet decry it in virtually the same breath. In April 2008, a Treasury official testified in a congressional hearing that “Saudi Arabia today remains the location from which more money is going to … Sunni terror groups and the Taliban than from any other place in the world.” [See Rachel Ehrenfeld, “Their Oil Is Thicker Than Our Blood,” in in Sarah N. Stern, ed., Saudi Arabia and the Global Islamic Terrorist Network: America and the West’s Fatal Embrace (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), p. 127.]
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War and Terror: After Paris Attacks, Critics Warn Against 'Wars of Vengeance' Monday, November 16 @ 02:10:16 UTC | Meanwhile, human rights advocates predict backlash against refugees
By Deirdre Fulton
November 15, 2015 - Common Dreams
As details trickled out about Friday's deadly attacks in and around Paris, observers urged world leaders to avoid knee-jerk responses both at home and abroad.
"The true test for France is how they respond to the terror attacks in the long-game–that’s the king in all this," said analyst and former U.S. Foreign Service employee Peter Van Buren in an op-ed Sunday. "America failed this test post-9/11; yet it does not sound like France understands anything more than America. 'We are going to lead a war which will be pitiless,' French president [François] Hollande said outside the Bataclan concert hall, scene of the most bloodshed."
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War and Terror: The "Why": The Spectacular Media Failure on Charlie Hebdo Thursday, January 15 @ 10:59:02 UTC | By Shamus Cooke
January 15, 2015 - counterpunch.org
A core tenet of journalism is answering the question “why.” It’s the media’s duty to explain “why” an event happened so that readers will actually understand what they’re reading. Leave out the “why” and then assumptions and stereotypes fill in the blank, always readily supplied by politicians whose ridiculous answers are left unquestioned by the corporate media.
Because the real “why” was unexplained in the Charlie Hebdo massacre, an obviously false culprit was created, leading to a moronic national discussion in the U.S. media about whether Islam was “inherently” violent.
For the media to even pose this question either betrays a blinding ignorance about the Middle East and Islam, or a conscious willingness to manipulate public sentiment by only interviewing so-called experts who believe such nonsense.
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War and Terror: Thursday, January 15 @ 10:08:13 UTC |
The Cartoons Outlawed in France
By John Walsh
January 15, 2015 - counterpunch.org
To understand the attack on Charlie Hebdo in Paris last week, we need only invert George W. Bush’s 2005 mantra*, thus: “They will continue to attack us over here so long as we slaughter them by the millions over there.”
In a word, this is one more instance of blowback, as Ron Paul tells us in his perceptive essay, “Lessons From Paris.” Among other things Paul points out: “The two Paris shooters had reportedly spent the summer in Syria fighting with the rebels seeking to overthrow Syrian President Assad. …But France and the United States have spent nearly four years training and equipping foreign fighters to infiltrate Syria and overthrow Assad! In other words, when it comes to Syria, the two Paris killers were on ‘our’ side. They may have even used French or US weapons while fighting in Syria.”
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