Posts From The Saker
An increasing amount of people in the USA are calling Guiliani a Fascist. Often, they refer to his own infamous words: “We look upon authority too often and focus over and over again, for 30 or 40 or 50 years, as if there is something wrong with authority. We see only the oppressive side of authority. Maybe it comes out of our history and our background. What we don’t see
I know, bragging is not good, but I simply cannot miss the opportunity, in particular that it turns out that I “beat” Scott Ritter by 32 week in predicting how the Pentagon plans the war on Iran. Listen to the interview that Charles Goyette made with Scott Ritter for Antiwar Radio and compare Scott’s analysis with the one I published on the Debianhelp political forum (another version of the same
Major General John Batiste was offered a promotion to become a three-star general, the second-highest-ranking military officer in Iraq. Instead, he quit over the war. After he appeared in a commercial for VoteVets.org, CBS News fired him as a paid news consultant. MoveOn.org collected 230,000 signatures on a petition demanding he be rehired. He was interviewed by Amy Goodman on DemocracyNow on May 25th, 2007. Among other things, they spoke
Inside Narh al-Bared and Bedawi Refugee Camps By Franklin Lamb Tripoli, Lebanon. Wearing a beat-up ratty UNCHR tee-shirt left over from Bint Jbeil and the Israeli-Hezbollah July probably helped. As did, I suspect, the Red Cross jersey, my black and white checkered kaffieyh and the Palestinian flag taped to my lapel as I joined a group of Palestinian aid workers and slipped into Nahr el-Bared trying not to look conspicuous.
(The fact that Sarkozy is Jewish really means nothing. The fact that he is a committed Zionist with “viceral attachment to Israel” means a lot. I am posting the article below because it gives a rare and fascinating insight into the ideological background of the new French President – “As a Minister of Interior, Sarkozy shared much common policy ground with former Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu (…) and it
According to the following sources, CENTCOM is stepping up its posture for a possible attack against Iran: Bush authorizes new covert action against Iran while nine US warships enter the Persian Gulf in show of force constituting largest naval force in the Middle-East since 2003. An attack againt a country like Iran would have to go through several preparatory phases which, among others, would include the preparations outlined by the
First there was Afghanistan, then Iraq, then Somalia (yes, this is a US started war), and now there is Lebanon/Palestine. Please follow me here step by step: For a description of the US “redirection”, i.e. using Al-Qaeda to fight Hezbollah and the Shia in Iraq, please read this. Then for a description of what the effects on the groud are, read this. For a confirmation that the US is, indeed,
Sir, In the dozen-plus years I have been active in matters relating to Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda, I have watched them go from a small Islamist organization to a worldwide insurgent movement, while bin Laden has established himself as the primary source of inspiration and leadership for tens of millions of Muslim Islamists. This process has been made possible by two things: (a) the skill, courage, patience, and ruthlessness
On January 26th of this year I sent out a rather alarmist email to my friends mentioning the very real risk of a US aggression against Iran. Among other things, I wrote “ Unless the current campaign of leaks from various US officials to the independent media is successful and the public outrage tips the balance (which is still quite possible – as the anti-war rally in Washington, DC planned
Of all the resolutions passed by the 109th US Congress, the two single most despicable must be the following ones: HR 6166, or the Military Commissions Act of 2006, which lifted the long-held Habeas Corpus rights from non-residents, and the HR 921 in support of Israel’s war crimes in Lebanon (it included the following language: “recognizes Israel’s longstanding commitment to minimizing civilian loss and welcomes Israel’s continued efforts to prevent
It’s over. Wolfowitz has been given the boot. Is that the World Bank’s wonderful honesty and good governance at work? Of course not. I mean – you gotta be kiddin’ – right? A international civil servant gives a promotion to his mistress, is that really something so unique? What nonesense, it is done on a daily basis at the United Nations, European Parliament, International Labor Office, World Health Organization, etc.
Something very interesting is happening in the USA: two candidates for the next Presidential election (Ron Paul, R, and Mike Gravel, D) are running on an anti-war platfrom and they are speaking up in each debate (so far – soon they will be given the boot). They stand no chance whatsoever under the current political system. Just take a look the Washington Post’s truly orwellian editorial complaining that “Too many
Originally, this was posted on Scott Horton’s blog For all its intrinsic merits – and God know they are numerous – it is unclear how big an audience Scott’s show reaches and, even more importantly, how much of an impact it has on anyone. Surely in a country which re-elected, scratch this, which elected Bush the Lesser in the midst of two lost wars any voice for reason and decency
The entire story of the “AIPAC trial” is yet another example of the fact that the “land of the free & home of the brave” and the “world’s only superpower” has become the subservient banana republic of a small country in the Middle-East. What is so amazing to me is that all the flag-waving “patriots” who thump their chests forcefully declare that they are so “proud to be an American”
Bumper stiker politics are truly an US speciality, at least judging by the quantity of cars on the road with bumper stickers, most of which reflect an appaling lack of originality or even thought of any kind: “support our troops” (how? why?), “united we stand” (for what?), “proud to be an American” (why? ever been abroad? have any idea at all about the rest of the world?), or the inevitable
“What can we do?”. This is an old question indeed. When a nation becomes enslaved by a government of thugs and terrorists one of the main goals of the rulers is to make their subjects believe that there is nothing they can do about it. Failing that, they want to push all the opposition into some activity which would justify the use of violence against them. So what are the
Can anyone really tell the two factions of the Republicrat Party apart?! I can’t. Its like the choice between (kosher) Pepsi and (kosher) Coke – no difference except the packaging, and all you have inside is corporate-designed crap harmful to your health. Libertarians, Greens, Nation of Islam, Militias are, as far as I can tell, pretty much the only ideological alternatives to the Imperial Republicrats and none of these have
[Amy Goodman interviews Andrew Cockburn on DemocracyNow! (http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/03/07/1436239)] Here is a most revealing exchange which occurred at the end of the interview: ——-AMY GOODMAN: In 2006, you write that George W. Bush said to his father, “What’s a neocon?” ANDREW COCKBURN: That’s right. One of the rare moments of sort of communication between the two. Bush said to — they were out at Kennebunkport, and Bush Jr. says, “Can I
Here below is a rather typical article warning of the risks of a war with Iran: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/200601009_bushs_nuclear_apocalypse/ However, I guess is that the Pengaton is looking at a rather different option: a two-phase war. The first phase would begin by 2-3 days of combined cruise missile and air strikes. The aim would be to degrade as much as can be Iranian C3I capabilities and, even more importantly, to isolate the
Take a guess: where would the Empire’s puppeteers meet to finalize and coordinate their plans to attack Iran? Washington? New York? London? NATO HQ in Brussels? Davos? Nope. In Herzilia. Never heard of that place? The Israeli city of Herzliya is named after Theodor Herzl, the father of modern Zionism, and it has hosted a meeting of the Empire’s Who’s Who over the past several days at the yearly conference