The real reason of the increasing violence in the Middle East is the return to imperial control and foreign occupation half a century after the European colonial empires were broken up.

This is the fuel for Islamic militancy. This is why fanatical but isolated Islamic groups can suddenly win broader support.

Governments allied to the US and Britain have no legitimacy. The attempts by America and Britain to crush Islamic militancy across the Middle East are making sure it will become stronger.   more »

War is as American as apple pie and baseball, a national pastime that serves to maintain the perpetual wartime economy so needed for a viable standard of living. It has been her many wars that have contributed to her unsurpassed wealth and power, for her military has at present established over 700 bases worldwide, most of them located in vital geostrategic lands full of important natural resources and interests.

Firm control over the world’s natural resources, especially petroleum, has assured America of cheap raw materials from which to exploit, basically pilfering them from third world nations, offering very little in return.

Only enriching the elite majority at the expense of the indigent masses, while helping to increase the giant, though excessively gluttonous, America empire.

Much of her wealth has been and continues to be generated from the suffering of billions of humans who will never see the benefits of the treasure that lies below their feet, as well as the pillaging of resources, along with the rape of land, air and water, that do not rightfully belong to her.   more »

While the ostensible savagery of targeting of civilians does help the US government label the freedom fighters of the present as terrorists, the simultaneous media censorship omnipresent throughout the war in Iraq blinds us to the equally if not more savage violence perpetrated by our state against the Iraqi civilians.

In Fallujah, for instance, where reporters were prohibited for several months beginning in November 2004, 65 percent of buildings were leveled to the ground and anywhere between 600 to 3,000 civilians were murdered, mostly by carpet-bombing, the increasingly favored technique employed in Iraq as manpower begins to dwindle.

All of these conditions must be recognized when we consider our relation to the Iraqi resistance.   more »

Differences of history, geography and culture are all dissolved into the term “terrorism,” a concept which describes a specific tactic of violence, not an ideology, a tactic that has been employed by the US government much more than by its opponents.

Bush said that his war on terror is “the decisive ideological struggle of the 21st century,” pitting advocates of freedom and liberty against “the right of a self-appointed few to impose their fanatical views on all the rest.”

The last phrase would serve as an accurate description of the social and political base of the Bush administration itself, which rests on the support of fanatical Christian fundamentalists who demand, not just freedom to practice their religion—which they enjoy in abundance—but freedom to impose their medieval bigotry on everyone else in America.   more »

The glacier has begun to creak. In the world's most powerful dictatorship we detect the merest hint of a thaw.

I am not talking about China or Uzbekistan, Burma or North Korea. This state runs no torture chambers or labour camps.

No one is executed, though plenty starve to death as a result of its policies. The unhurried perestroika is taking place in Washington, in the offices of the International Monetary Fund.

Like most concessions made by dictatorial regimes, the reforms seem designed not to catalyse further change, but to prevent it.

By slightly increasing the shares (and therefore the voting powers) of China, South Korea, Mexico and Turkey, the regime hopes to buy off the most powerful rebel warlords, while keeping the mob at bay.   more »

5 SEPTEMBER

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