A number of late-day, coordinated attacks targeted markets and bakeries to take advantage of food shopping right before the Iftar evening meal, which breaks Ramadan fasting for the day. July 14 also marks the 55th anniversary of the coup which installed the regime that ended with the 2003 overthrow of Saddam Hussein. At least 77 Iraqis were killed and 223 more were wounded.
No doubt the administration of President Barack Obama had hoped that this week’s foreign policy news would be dominated by the high-level U.S.-China Strategic and Economic and Dialogue (S&ED) that just ended here Thursday. That would have furthered the administration’s effort to “pivot” public attention, as well as serious policy-making, more towards the Asia/Pacific region …
Continue reading “Obama’s Many Middle East Miseries Multiply”
Late day attacks pushed the number of those killed to 46 dead, while another 106 people were wounded in the carnage. In Baghdad, soccer players and mosque attendees were among the victims, while in Diyala province another funeral gathering was attacked.
High-profile police response to terrorism threats – as in the case of the Boston bombing – grab headlines, but it wasn’t the paranoias of our post-9/11 world that made cops often indistinguishable from an army. It started earlier. It started with the war on drugs. The rule about war is there are always casualties – …
Continue reading “How We Got Warrior Cops”
“Bleeding”, “vomiting”, “a quarter or even a third” of bodyweight lost, “torture”. These are characteristic descriptions from testimony by hunger strikers at the detention center at Guantanamo Bay of their experience being force-fed at the hands of U.S. officials, published in a report released Thursday. The report, produced by Reprieve, a U.K.-based legal assistance and …
Continue reading “Report Gives Graphic Details of Guantanamo Force-Feeding”
In February 2011, a series of protests began in North Africa, spreading from Tunisia to Egypt and then into Syria and the Arabian Peninsula. It was described as a popular revolt demanding more democracy, and dubbed the "Arab Spring." Soon however, details emerged about the involvement of activists funded and trained by the Empire. Here …
Continue reading “The Meaning of Words”
Not only did the surge in attacks continue into today, but more casualties were reported in yesterday’s violence. Overall, at least 84 new deaths were reported. At least 77 people were wounded.
He’s been portrayed in the mainstream media as a "narcissist," a scheming "traitor," an agent of Russia, a Chinese spy, a clueless high school drop out, an anti-government "extremist," and I’m quite sure I must’ve missed a few of the more exotic epithets. I’m talking about Edward Snowden, of course, the former CIA employee and …
Continue reading “Snowden a Hero to Americans”
With stories like these, there is nothing better than an image, so picture this: poor Nepalese and other migrant workers toiling under the hot Kandahar sun, taking blow torches to American Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles, which cost about $1 million each to make. Once dismantled, the huge slabs of steel are then ground down …
Continue reading “Our Afghan Wasteland”
Alberto Nisman, the Argentine prosecutor who was prevented by Argentine President Cristina Kirchner from testifying before a U.S. House subcommittee investigating alleged Iranian terrorist networks in the Americas here this week, claimed in a recent report that Tehran was involved in a 2007 plot to blow up fuel tanks at New York’s John F. Kennedy …
Continue reading “No Evidence for Charge Iran Linked to JFK Terror Plot” 
