15 February 2012
Prequel: I’m going to write a longer piece on this issue, not Ali per se but on the entire ‘orientalism’ approach that saturates all of us, left and right.
All quotes from, ‘Assad must go to save Syria from intervention’, RT 15 February 2012
Today, I see that the well known ‘revolutionary’ Tariq Ali is telling that:
“He [Assad] has to be pushed out,” Tariq Ali insists, for which “the Syrian people are doing their best”.
16 December 2009 — Strategic Culture Foundation
Why does the extermination of an entire culturecause not a ripple in our public discourse? The answer is obvious: we don’t have any kind of discourse with those who wield power. The Chilcott ‘Inquiry’ demonstrates this down to a tee. It’s brazen in its disregard for the reality of the crimes the British state has committed in Iraqand continues to commit in Afghanistan. And brazen in the way it scoots a lot of very guilty-looking ‘witnesses’ through the process as painlessly as possible. How has this come to pass?
9 May 2004
“Saddam a “presentable young man” with “engaging smile,”
“Let’s “do business,” said British Embassy in 1969.””“”The goal has never been to win the Olympic high jump in democracy,”
Paul Wolfowitz“That strategic objective, of a free, democratic, de-Baathified Iraq, is grandiose, and unattainable…. It’s just a matter of time before we revise downward the strategy and abandon these ridiculous objectives.” – Unnamed US Army General
Occupying the ‘moral high ground’ was the cry of the Western ‘democracies’ in their battle with the ‘evil empire’ for decades. Totalitarian regimes we were told had little regard for the rights of the individual and free expression. The individual was subsumed for the ‘greater good’ of the state and so forth and so on.
13 February 2004 — InvestigatingImperialism
In reading the endless media reports on the lack of WMD in Iraq, there’s not a single report in the corporate press that raises the issue of why except of course for the state’s mantra of ‘faulty intelligence’ followed by the endless litany of accusation and counter-accusation between governments and their various ‘intelligence’ agencies.
22 December 2003
It seems that the ‘powers that be’ are upping the ante. So now we have the USUK imperium (such as it is) issuing ‘alerts’ and warnings that the ‘terrorists’ are about to do ‘something’ terrible. And no doubt, like all the previous ‘alerts’ this one will pass. And moreover, there seems to be some disagreement over whether there really is a major alert even as BBC Radio 4 news led with it this morning (22/12/03), all mention of it mysteriously disappeared completely from the 1pm and evening (5pm) editions. (See also “FBI agents say White House scripting ‘hysterics’ for political effect“[1] and “U.S. Concerned by Heightened Security Threats:[2] But counter-terrorism officials dismissed a report that there was credible information pointing to a possible imminent strike against New York City.”)
16 December 2003
Robert Fisk, who has a reputation for covering the occupation of Iraq with a humanity that escapes most of the mass media commentators seems to have reverted to type in his op-ed piece in the Independent(16/12/03 p. 31). Take the following extracts for example:
15 December 2003
What connects Saddam Hussein to Zbigniew Brzezinski? Well aside from the fact that Hussein can be considered one of Brezinski’s former ‘assets’, they both belong to the ‘Old School’, the era of the Cold War, and they both represent a world that no longer exists but which both must be wishing, did. Yet both in their own way are instrumental in giving birth to the ‘new’ imperium.
13 October 2003
Today’s (13/10/03) editorial in the Independent illustrates just how blind the ‘liberal’ media is to the realities of the situation unfolding before my horrified eyes.
Under the heading “An audit of the war on terror makes depressing reading” it belabours us with the following inane platitudes:
“The deposing of Saddam Hussein has, sadly, had no effect on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, or the absence of one. The North Koreans, and possibly, elements of the Iranian leadership have drawn the lesson from the conflict in Iraq that they must acquire a workable nuclear device as quickly as possible.”
…“Meanwhile, the threats of international terrorism that predated the diversion of US foreign policy into the back streets of Baghdad remains little changed.”
13 July 2003
‘At present the United States faces no global rival. America’s grand strategy should aim to preserve and extend this advantageous position as far into the future as possible.’ — Project for the New American Century
‘[O]n the pretext of entering into a new ‘war on terror,’ the Bush administration successfully secured unlimited war powers, free from Congressional accountability. This has established an open-ended militarisation of foreign policy in which any country can be targeted at will on the pretext of harbouring terrorists.’ – The War on Freedom: How and Why America was Attacked, September 11th, 2001 By Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed
28 April 2003
A couple days in the life of the corporate press
For months we’ve been bombarded with a never-ending stream of state propaganda utilising a vast array of techniques: satellite images, computer simulations, faked documents, ‘revelations’,‘pulpit pounding’ and pleading verging on the evangelical, dossiers, ‘expert analysis’ of one kind or another, exhultations to one’s patriotism, and threats of dire events if we, the people, don’t go along with what is probably the most sustained campaign of disinformation ever mounted by governments in modern times.
Investigating Imperialism 