Iraq
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Global Warfare USA: The World is the Pentagon’s Oyster By Rick Rozoff
“Not only does one country account for the overwhelming plurality of world military expenditures, but that nation also has troops and bases on all six habitable continents (as well as a 54-year military mission in Antarctica, Operation Deep Freeze) and eleven aircraft carrier strike groups and six navy fleets that roam the world’s oceans and… Continue reading
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U.S.: Army Sends Infant to Protective Services, Mom to Afghanistan By Dahr Jamail
U.S. Army Specialist Alexis Hutchinson, a single mother, is being threatened with a military court-martial if she does not agree to deploy to Afghanistan, despite having been told she would be granted extra time to find someone to care for her 11-month-old son while she is overseas. Continue reading
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UK scholars linked to ‘stolen’ bowls of Babylon: Suppressed report reveals archaeological treasures were dug up after Gulf war By Vanessa Thorpe and James Doeser
A secret report on the chequered history of priceless Aramaic bowls loaned to a leading university has exposed an apparent attempt to cover up UK academic connections to a potentially deadly trade in stolen Iraqi antiquities. Continue reading
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MEDIA LENS: THE BBC’S JEREMY PAXMAN ON IRAQ – “WE WERE HOODWINKED”
Does not government submission of evidence mark the point where serious journalism +begins+ rather than ends? What is the reason for journalism at all, if the responsibility is simply to accept what a US Secretary of Defence says because we “know” he “is an intelligent, thoughtful man, and a sceptical man”? Continue reading
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War Is a Hate Crime By Chris Hedges
Violence against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people is wrong. So is violence against people in Afghanistan and Iraq. But in the bizarre culture of identity politics, there are no alliances among the oppressed. The Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, the first major federal civil rights law protecting lesbian, gay,… Continue reading
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MEDIA LENS ALERT: THE BALANCE OF POWER – EXCHANGES WITH BBC JOURNALISTS – PART 2
19 October, 2009 — MEDIA LENS: Correcting for the distorted vision of the corporate media A Gale Of Spring Air – Barbara Plett And The President On September 24, we wrote to the BBC’s Barbara Plett: Dear Barbara Plett It’s hard to believe your article, ‘Debuts and diatribes at the UN’, was written by a… Continue reading
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MEDIA LENS ALERT: THE BALANCE OF POWER – EXCHANGES WITH BBC JOURNALISTS – PART 1
Journalists who criticise powerful interests can be attacked for their ‘bias’, for revealing their prejudices. On the other hand, as we will see in the examples below, almost no-one protests, or even notices, the lack of balance in patriotic articles reporting on the experience of British troops fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, on the credibility… Continue reading
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Media Lens Alert: The Westminster Conspiracy
Last month, Greg Dyke, who was the BBC’s director general from 2000-2004, described the BBC as part of a “conspiracy” preventing the “radical changes” needed to UK democracy. “The evidence that our democracy is failing is overwhelming and yet those with the biggest interest in sustaining the current system – the Westminster village, the media… Continue reading
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Video: Blackwater and other misdeeds of Empire
Jeremy Scahill, author of Blackwater: The Rise of the Worlds Most Powerful Mercenary Army, discusses the dwindling ranks of antiwar Democrats in Congress, the cruise missile liberals that support war in Darfur without questioning the aims of U.S. imperialism, the mercenary surge accompanying the troop surge in Afghanistan, the history of bipartisan executive assassination programs… Continue reading
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Global Research: Militarization and Western Power Selected Articles 31 July, 2009
Militarization and Western Power Selected Articles 31 July, 2009 Continue reading
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MEDIA LENS ALERT: AFGHANISTAN — “BIG BEASTS” BIG BLOODBATH
At the heart of the uncertainty lies the internet and how to make it pay. For 100 years the corporate mass media has flourished thanks to its monopoly of the means of mass communication. Reviewing the history of the British media, James Curran and Jean Seaton write that the industrialisation of the press in the… Continue reading
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Dick Cheney’s “Executive Assassination Ring”. Was British Weapons Expert Dr. David Kelly a Target? By Tom Burghardt
Revelations that the Central Intelligence Agency launched a world-wide assassination program, and then concealed its existence from the U.S. Congress and the American people for eight years, carries an implication that death squads may have been employed against political opponents. Continue reading
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Video: IN THEIR BOOTS: VETS FOR HIRE
Video: After serving in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, three veterans discover the value of their service as they search for employment in the midst of a troubled economy. Watch the documentary that tells their story below or at InTheirBoots.com. Continue reading
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Media Lens 9 July, 2009: Hired Hands – Part 2: Reporting Elections In Iran And Iraq
The call for a “louder voice” of outrage from the West over the Iranian elections could hardly be more ironic. Consider the media response to the January 2005 elections in Iraq that took place under superpower military occupation in conditions of extreme violence. In Iraq the Iraqi interim government had forced the independent al-Jazeera TV… Continue reading
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William Blum: Anti-Empire Report, Number 71 'Much ado about nothing'
In his world-prominent speech to the Middle East on June 4, Obama mentioned that ‘In the middle of the Cold War, the United States played a role in the overthrow of a democratically elected Iranian government.’ So we have the president of the United States admitting to a previous overthrow of the Iranian government while… Continue reading
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Covering (up) the coup in Honduras – the BBC does its bit for the Empire By William Bowles
The really important aspect of the BBC’s manipulation of language has to be seen in the larger context of the BBC’s mandate to control our perceptions of reality. So for example, its use of the programme ‘Masterchef’ to boost the UK’s illegal invasion of Iraq by promoting ‘our boys’, when the fact is, the great… Continue reading
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MEDIA LENS ALERT: CARTOON KOREA – FILTERED TO FIT: How The Media Keep Us Angry, Ignorant And Afraid
The message being delivered is that North Korea is of the James Bond school of cackling, malevolent villains. This is signalled through unsubtle trigger words whose true meaning is hidden but understood Continue reading
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Unfit for Combat By Dahr Jamail
The shocking story of a soldier killing five of his comrades does not come as a surprise when we consider that the military has, for years now, been sending troops with untreated PTSD back into the US occupation of Iraq. Continue reading
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Media Lens: The Left-Wing Media Fallacy Jeremy Bowen, The BBC, And Other National Treasures
There are several good reasons why the media are keen to accept that they are biased to the left. First, the overwhelming preponderance of right-wing flak machines – ‘centre-left’ parties and governments, business front groups and powerful ‘religious’ organisations – persuades media executives that they really are too left-leaning. There is just far less flak… Continue reading
The New Dark Age 