Sections
-
Recent Posts
Search Results for: syria
Biden’s hypocrisy on press freedom
President Biden condemned China on June 24 for exerting pressure on Hong Kong to close down the special region’s only remaining pro-democracy newspaper, Apple Daily. Biden said, “It is a sad day for media freedom in Hong Kong and around the world,”adding, “through arrests, threats, and forcing through a National Security Law that penalizes free speech, Beijing has insisted on wielding its power to suppress independent media and silence dissenting views.” Continue reading
US again bombs nations on other side of the world in “self-defense”
The US is again illegally bombing nations on the other side of the planet which it has invaded and occupied and branded this murderous aggression as “defensive”. Continue reading
With Bezos at the helm, democracy dies at the Washington Post editorial board
In the Soviet Union, everybody was aware that the media was controlled by the state. But in a corporate state like the U.S., a veneer of independence is still maintained, although trust in the media has been plummeting for years.
WASHINGTON—The Washington Post’s glaring conflicts of interest have of late once again been the subject of scrutiny online, thanks to a new article denouncing a supposed attempt to “soak” billionaires in taxes. Written by star columnist Megan McArdle—who previously argued that Walmart’s wages are too high, that there is nothing wrong with Google’s monopoly, and that the Grenfell Fire was a price worth paying for cheaper buildings—the article claimed that Americans have such class envy that the government would “destroy [billionaires’] fortunes so that the rest of us don’t have to look at them.” Notably, the Post chose to illustrate it with a picture of its owner, Jeff Bezos, making it seem as if it was directly defending his power and wealth, something they have been accused of on more than one occasion. Continue reading
Peru heading for showdown with war hawk Samantha Power
As Peru’s Marxist presumptive president-elect, Pedro Castillo, stands on the verge of being named certified as the official victor of the president election, he is heading for a showdown with the interventionist Samantha Power, the former US ambassador to the United Nations under Barack Obama. While at the UN, Power was a major proponent of U.S. military intervention in the Syrian, Yemeni, and Libyan civil wars. Continue reading
Think tank wars and the enforcement of thought crime laws
For those who believe that freedom of the press exists in the United States, here’s a news bulletin: Those days are long over!
The United States, Russia, Britain, and other countries are waging a war that pits think tank against think tank and criminalizes ideas and opinions. That war heated up on April 15 when the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) imposed financial sanctions on the Moscow-based think tank, Strategic Culture Foundation (SCF), for whom I have written for over ten years. OFAC alleged, without much in the way of any hard evidence, that SCF was an arm of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, the SVR. Treasury’s sanctions came after a 2020 State Department Global Engagement Center (GEC) report that illustrated the opinions being expressed by SCF and other Russian think tanks and news organizations as similar to Covid-19 virus microbes. In any event, I’ve been compared to worse than a Covid microbe. Continue reading
Biden is on the same page as Trump in maintaining an anti-Cuba stance
U.S. President Joe Biden has given every indication so far that its policies on Cuba will not veer away from those of the Trump administration. In March this year, U.S. officials told Reuters that Cuba is not a top foreign policy item for Biden. The statement was left open to interpretation until now, when the current U.S. administration decided to retain Cuba on the unilateral and defaming U.S. State Sponsors of Terrorism list. The conditions for removal are very much based on how much U.S. influence the listed country will allow – in other words, becoming a U.S. accomplice in foreign policy is a must. Continue reading
What lies beneath: President Biden’s deceptive acknowledgment of the Armenian Genocide
President Biden’s April 24 statement acknowledging the Armenian Genocide (1915–1923+) carried out by Turkey was welcome but flawed. Indeed, “Turkey” appears nowhere in the document. Moreover, the State Department swiftly undermined Biden’s virtuous-sounding words. Continue reading
The emperor’s new rules
The world is reeling in horror at the latest Israeli massacre of hundreds of men, women and children in Gaza. Much of the world is also shocked by the role of the United States in this crisis, as it keeps providing Israel with weapons to kill Palestinian civilians, in violation of U.S. and international law, and has repeatedly blocked action by the UN Security Council to impose a ceasefire or hold Israel accountable for its war crimes. Continue reading
Is DarkSide ransomware attack a pro-Trump political hit?
Is the ransomware takedown of Colonial Pipeline’s “largest refined products pipeline” in the United States by a cyber-criminal gang called “DarkSide” a political hit by Donald Trump’s allies in the transnational criminal underworld? Considering that things were going pretty well for President Biden on the Covid-19 front, the steady restoration of the U.S. economy, and job favorability (63 percent) and taking into account that Trump is stewing in his own misery over Biden’s success, the steep rise in the price of fuel and reports of motorist gas station lines in certain parts of the country has thrown a spanner into Biden’s “Build Back Better” program. Continue reading
United States withdraws from Afghanistan? Not really
The U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001 was criminal. It was criminal because of the immense force used to demolish Afghanistan’s physical infrastructure and to break open its social bonds. Continue reading
As Biden makes progress on the domestic front, he barely gets a passing grade on foreign policy
That's why many anti-war organizations and activists will continue to push the administration to improve its foreign policy record in the next 100 days, while also urging Congress to reject Biden’s increased military budget.
In evaluating the first 100 days of Joe Biden’s presidency, many progressives are singing the president’s praises. During a virtual town hall, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said that Biden “exceeded expectations that progressives had.” Professor Jeffrey Sachs claimed Biden is on his way to becoming “the most transformative president since Franklin D. Roosevelt.” Sure enough, on the domestic front, these 100 days have brought some exciting initiatives ranging from significant COVID economic relief and the vaccine rollout to massive infrastructure plans and serious proposals to address the climate crisis. Continue reading
Reporting from around the world, Reese Erlich was a beacon of independent journalism
The longtime war correspondent, who died earlier this month, embodied the honesty and deep humanity that makes for the very best journalists.
When Reese Erlich died in early April, we lost a global reporter who led by example. During five decades as a progressive journalist, Reese created and traveled an independent path while avoiding the comfortable ruts dug by corporate media. When people in the United States read or heard his reporting from more than 50 countries, he offered windows on the world that were not tinted red-white-and-blue. Often, he illuminated grim consequences of U.S. foreign policy. Continue reading
Russia, Russia, ever failing
No one ever asks: Mr Expert, you’ve been wrong for twenty years, why should anybody take you seriously now?
One of the favourite delusions of the people Scott Ritter calls the “Putin whisperers” is that Russia or Putin—to them the two are synonymous—are always on the point of collapse and one more push will bring them down. To the sane, observing the development of Russia from 1991 to 2021, this conviction is crazy: Russia has endured and prospered. But, as I have said elsewhere, these people fit Einstein’s definition of insanity and forever repeat their failures: Ritter calls them “intellectually lazy”. They’re not Russia experts, they’re wrongness experts and constant practice has made them quite good at being wrong. Continue reading
Almost everything Biden Said about ending the Afghanistan war was a lie
While Americans hailed the announcement that the U.S. would withdraw troops from Afghanistan after nearly two decades of war, President Biden left out the most important details about the war and how it will in fact continue.
President Joe Biden, in announcing an ostensible end to the U.S. war in Afghanistan, is continuing his streak of paying eloquent lip service to progressive causes while maintaining the implied status quo. In a televised address from the White House on April 14, Biden said, “it’s time to end America’s longest war. It’s time for American troops to come home.” But just a day later, the New York Times reported without a hint of irony that “the Pentagon, American spy agencies and Western allies are refining plans to deploy a less visible but still potent force in the region.” This means we are ending the war, but not really. Continue reading
The incompetent, negligent, mishandling, miscalculating elite blunderers
You’ve heard of them, no doubt, the U.S. rulers who can’t rule too well and are always getting surprised by events or fed bad advice by their underlings. Their “mistakes” are always well intentioned. They stumble into wars through faulty intelligence. They drop the ball because of bureaucratic mix-ups. Continue reading
Biden’s appeasement of hawks and neocons is crippling his diplomacy
President Biden took office promising a new era of American international leadership and diplomacy. But with a few exceptions, he has so far allowed self-serving foreign allies, hawkish U.S. interest groups and his own imperial delusions to undermine diplomacy and stoke the fires of war. Continue reading
A Palestinian prayer for Ramadan: May the voices of the oppressed be heard
COVID-19 cases in Palestine, especially in Gaza, have reached record highs, largely due to the arrival of a greatly contagious coronavirus variant which was first identified in Britain. Continue reading
How “representative” is US democracy?
American politicians love to boast of their nation’s status as the world’s premier “representative democracy,” and to lecture other, presumably less enlightened, countries on the importance of representative political institutions. Going by the numbers (which admittedly don’t tell the whole story), there’s good reason to question whether such preening is justified. Continue reading
Russia increases its defense while U.S. backs down from provoking WWIII
The stooge-president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, appears to be trapped between what he has promised to do — which is for Ukraine to retake both Donbas and Crimea — and what will be within his power to do.
Ever since Joe Biden became America’s President in January, America’s hostile and threatening actions and rhetoric against (as Biden refers to him) the ‘killer’ Vladimir Putin, Russia’s President, have made clear to Putin that the U.S. government’s determination to impose regime-change upon Russia will continue undiminished. This hostility from Biden has dashed Putin’s hope that the string of sanctions which the U.S. Government has constantly been adding to ever since President Obama started the anti-Russian sanctions in 2012, would end, or at least not continue to be added to, under Biden. Continue reading
A school for spooks: The London university department churning out NATO spies
Last week, MintPress exposed how the supposedly independent investigative collective Bellingcat is, in fact, funded by a CIA cutout organization and filled with former spies and state intelligence operatives. However, one part of the story that has remained untold until now is Bellingcat’s close ties to the Department of War Studies at King’s College London, an institution with deep links to the British security state and one that trains a large number of British, American and European agents and defense analysts. Continue reading
The secret wars of Africa’s Sahel: What is behind Mali’s ongoing strife
In a recent report, the United Nations Mission in Mali, known as MINUSMA, concluded that, on January 3, French warplanes had struck a crowd attending a wedding in the remote village of Bounti, killing 22 of the guests. Continue reading
Contrary to what Biden said, US warfare in Afghanistan is set to continue
No matter what the White House and the headlines say, U.S. taxpayers won’t stop subsidizing the killing in Afghanistan until there is an end to the bombing and "special operations" that remain shrouded in secrecy.
When I met a seven-year-old girl named Guljumma at a refugee camp in Kabul a dozen years ago, she told me that bombs fell early one morning while she slept at home in southern Afghanistan’s Helmand Valley. With a soft, matter-of-fact voice, Guljumma described what happened. Some people in her family died. She lost an arm. Continue reading
Consent that’s manufactured by propaganda is not informed consent
A March 9 Twitter post by Secretary of State Tony Blinken reads as follows: “We will never hesitate to use force when American lives and vital interests are at stake, but we will do so only when the objectives are clear and achievable, consistent with our values and laws, and with the American people’s informed consent – together with diplomacy.” Continue reading
Ring out the old; ring in the old
While our sacred democracy was allegedly being served by a stupid attempt to unsuccessfully impeach an ex-president for the second time and essentially tell more than 70 million Americans that they might as well vote for Pavlov, FDR, Hitler or Oprah Winfrey since any alleged exercise of supposed freedom on their part would be meaningless in the rape of language we call a democracy. You know, the one with a billionaire class getting richer by the second and Americans across the board sinking lower by the minute. But enough good news, let’s move on to the even better signs of our political economic progress against logic, morality and majority rule, something that vanished in practice the moment our euro ancestors arrived and the people who’d lived here for millennia were brutally forced out of their homelands. Continue reading
Sanction the axis of mercenary and terrorist evil: Azerbaijan, Turkey, and Georgia
Azerbaijan deployed thousands of mercenaries in last year’s 44-day war that it and Turkey waged against Artsakh/Nagorno-Karabagh and Armenia. Continue reading
What planet Is NATO living on?
The February meeting of NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) Defense Ministers, the first since President Biden took power, revealed an antiquated, 75-year-old alliance that, despite its military failures in Afghanistan and Libya, is now turning its military madness toward two more formidable, nuclear-armed enemies: Russia and China. Continue reading
‘Leaving aside’ international law, why Democrats are as dangerous as Republicans to a just peace in Palestine
Motivated by their justifiable aversion to former US President Donald Trump, many analysts have rashly painted a rosy picture of how Democrats could quickly erase the bleak trajectory of the previous Republican administration. This naivety is particularly pronounced in the current spin on the Palestinian-Israeli discourse, which is promoting, again, the illusion that Democrats will succeed where their political rivals have failed. Continue reading
The new guardrails for Biden’s Obama interventionists
The devastation left by the Trump administration makes it nearly impossible for the Biden State Department to achieve a pre-Trump status quo ante.
It might have come as a shock to the old Obama administration global interventionists who have landed top foreign policy positions in the Biden administration that the world has moved on from 2016. Whether it likes it or not, the Biden foreign policy team is dealing with a world that no longer reacts to every move made in Washington, DC. In fact, the U.S. capital city is now viewed as a place where a far-right insurrection nearly toppled constitutional rule and imposed a dictatorial regime rife with neo-Nazis, Ku Klux Klan members, private militias, and other societal nasties. So much for lectures from U.S. ambassadors about the need to maintain a civil society. Continue reading
The Russian alternative: How Moscow is capitalizing on US retreat in Palestine, Israel
Israeli anxiety was palpable when it was reported that Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was not contacted by the new American president, Joe Biden, for days after the latter’s inauguration. While much is being read into Biden’s decision, including Washington’s lack of enthusiasm to return to the ‘peace process,’ Moscow is generating much attention as a possible alternative to the United States by hosting inner Palestinian dialogue and conversing with leaders of Palestinian political groups. Continue reading
Beating back the far right globally
It’s time to resurrect a global anti-fascist consensus to name, shame, and throw these guys out of the game.
After four years of shock, confusion, and paralysis, the United States is finally taking action against the far right. Continue reading
Freedom Rider: Forced labor in the U.S.
Forced labor of Uyghurs in China is questionable, but there is absolute proof that incarcerated people in this country are forced to work for little or no pay. Continue reading
‘Rules-based international order’ means Washington-based international order
Posted on June 24, 2021 by Caitlin Johnstone
The US government has shut down multiple news media websites based in the Middle East, including Iran’s state-owned Press TV, and al-Masirah TV which is owned by the Houthi group Ansarullah in Yemen. The Department of Justice said on Tuesday it had seized 36 Iranian-linked websites, claiming without evidence that they were associated with “either disinformation activities or violent organizations” and were shut down for a violation of US sanctions. Continue reading →