US, Iraqi Views of Occupation Converging

One year after President George W Bush declared an end to "major hostilities" in Iraq, public opinion there and in the United States is beginning to converge, as people in both countries increasingly agree that the US invasion and occupation might not have been such a...

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Depravity as ‘Liberation’

The Abu Ghraib prison was a symbol of Saddam's horrific tyranny: electrodes hanging out of the walls, floors stained with the blood of god-knows-how-many victims, bodies dangling from meat-hooks, like in some cheap Grade-B horror flick. So when the Americans came and...

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The Vanunu Campaign and Its Lessons

In November 1992 I traveled from the UK to the US, to join Sam Day Jr. for a speaking tour on behalf of the Vanunu campaign. By that time Mordechai Vanunu had been imprisoned for five years, held in a small cell in total isolation. Our tour began in Madison, Wisconsin...

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US May be Fighting on Two Fronts Too Many

When U.S. troops backed by helicopter gunships attacked the Mehdi Army of anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr in the holy Shia city of Najaf, it is not clear who they killed. The US military says 64 Iraqi fighters were killed, but hospital officials in Najaf told the...

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Balkans and the EU

In a day or two, the European Union is set to accept 10 new member countries, many of which were once dominated by another Union – Soviet. One of the ten is the former Yugoslav republic of Slovenia. On the occasion, the London-based supporter of Empire (and EU,...

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Foreign Firms Continue to Try to Do Business in Iraq

As violence rocked Iraq in Fallujah and Najaf, major international companies gathered in London this week to figure ways of doing business in Iraq without getting their hands burnt. The magic formula was offered at a three-day Iraqi procurement conference held at...

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Neoconservatism Versus Libertarianism

Oh, how the neocons are squirming, and turning somersaults over Iraq, a performance the sight of which would be almost a pleasure to behold if not for the steep price of admission. New York Times columnist David Brooks' soddily defiant mea culpa – which we...

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Kipling’s Brutal Epitaph

At Versailles in 1919, delegates of four of the five victorious powers arrived with cold, clear ideas of what they must bring home. Japan demanded and got Germany's islands north of the equator and Shantung in China. Italy demanded and got the Austrian South Tyrol,...

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Creating Homeless in Iraq

New families seem to arrive every hour at the Iraqi Red Crescent refugee camp in West Baghdad. The camp, the first tent city erected as a result of the U.S. assault on Fallujah first drew about 50 families, a small fraction of the tens of thousands of civilians forced...

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The Bloody Cost

Here's another bit of evidence that when the United States condones the bloody ways of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Americans pay for it with their blood. I never saw this reported in the mainstream media, but libertarian Justin Raimondo quotes a group that...

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