World Anti-militarism Newswire Archive

As we enter the 2010s the deaths from the Afghanistan War include 4.5 million violent and non-violent excess deaths of Indigenous Afghans since 2001.

The carnage of Obama's Afghan War, Afghan Holocaust and Afghan Genocide is already comparable to that of the WW2 Jewish Holocaust.

Ignoring or downplaying Western crimes is a standard feature of the corporate Western media. On rare occasions when a broadcaster or newspaper breaks ranks and reports ‘our’ crimes honestly, it is instructive to observe the response from the rest of the media. Do they follow suit, perhaps digging deeper for details, devoting space to profiles of the victims and interviews with grieving relatives, humanising all concerned? Do they put the crimes in perspective as the inevitable consequence of rapacious Western power? Or do they look away?

"That doesn't square" Ranstorp elaborated, "because the American Department for Homeland Security has pretty stringent data-mining capability. I don't understand how he had a valid visa if he was known on the terror watch list."

Good question, Dr. Ranstorp. Perhaps because someone wanted him on that plane. The question is, who?

One would have thought, given the "special treatment" afforded antiwar activists by TSA at airports, that a warning about Abdul Mutallab's possible involvement with terrorists, by his own father no less, a former top official in a government friendly to Washington, numerous NSA intercepts, a CIA dossier and MI5 reports would have raised at least one red flag!

In the suspect's case, there were so many red flags flying you'd have thought the Red Army was parading through Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport!

Then again, perhaps Abdul Mutallab was on that plane because, as journalist Daniel Hopsicker was told by a former aviation executive during his investigation of the 9/11 attacks: "Sometimes when things don't make business sense ... its because they do make sense...just in some other way."

"The relation between past imperial successes in securing harmonious hegemonic collaborating rulers in the 1990’s and the profound political changes resulting from the crises of and breakdown of neo-liberalism, led Washington to totally misread the new realities. The resulting policy failures (for example Latin America’s rejection of the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas) and isolation and defeat of US policy toward Venezuela, Cuba and Honduras reflects what we conceptualize as “romantic reaction”, a failure of political realism: nostalgia for the imperial “golden age” of hegemony and pillage of the 1990’s. The repeated failure by both the Bush and Obama regime to recognize regime changes, ideological shifts and the new development models and trade patterns has lead to mindless threats and diplomatic incapacity to develop any new bridges to the centrist regimes in the key countries of South America, especially toward Mercosur (Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay).
The gap between past (1975 – 2000) dominance and present declining hegemony, in Latin America establishes the parameters for understanding US-Venezuelan relations and in particular the ten years of political confrontation and the incapacity of Washington to restore its client elites to power, despite repeated efforts. Likewise despite Venezuela’s dependence on single product exports (petrol) and bureaucratic inefficiencies and corruption, its external policies have gotten around selected US boycotts and hostile diplomatic moves, while expanding regional ties and forging new trade and investment networks."

A missile test-fired by Iran last week was reported on the BBC World Service as being “capable of striking Israel”. The choice of words was not unusual. The well-worn phrase is so reliably heard in these news bulletins that its use betrays a coded script.

The not-too subliminal implications are that Iran is: a) a hostile state; b) doing something illegal in test-firing a long-range missile; and c) gearing up to deliver on its alleged threat to wipe out the state of Israel.

This is a propaganda system at work: the choice of words and framework of logic designed to condition people into accepting certain options. In this case, the pre-determined option is a unilateral military strike on Iran either by the US or Israel.

Police in Turkey attacks people who opposes US military bases
Urgent action needed . Please send protest messages to officials

The U.S. assigns to itself the right to slaughter civilians and children wherever it chooses on the planet, yet howls in outrage when its protégés on the other side assert the same murderous privileges. “In the same week that Americans wrung their hands over Mutallab’s holiday season threat, soldiers from their country murdered Afghan children.”

The Christmas period is one of the busiest times of the year for date importers. Tonnes of dates are imported into the UK from illegal Israeli agricultural settlements on Palestinian land. Campaigners have been focusing on Israeli companies, such as Carmel Agrexco, importing these dates into the UK but little is known about Fyffes, a transnational company that has also sourced dates from Israeli settlements.

With just under two weeks to go to Smash EDO's Remember Gaza mass event this is a short message to keep you all in the loop.

In Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell described a superstate called Oceania, whose language of war inverted lies that “passed into history and became truth. ‘Who controls the past’, ran the Party slogan, ‘controls the future: who controls the present controls the past’.”

In Oceania, truth and lies are indivisible. According to Obama, the American attack on Afghanistan in 2001 was authorised by the United Nations Security Council. There was no UN authority. He said the “the world” supported the invasion in the wake of 9/11 when, in truth, all but three of 37 countries surveyed by Gallup expressed overwhelming opposition.

"The Transportation Security Administration is mandating that every individual flying into the U.S. from anywhere in the world traveling from or through nations that are state sponsors of terrorism or other countries of interest will be required to go through enhanced screening." (*)

Exactly 1 year on from the decommissioning of the EDI ITT arms factory in Brighton by 6 Bristol anti-militarists (see  http://decommissioners.co.uk/the-background-story/), supporters of the 6 combine to present a rip snorting fundraiser for the defendants campaign.

There has been a global call for action from the international Palestine solidarity movement for December 27th - January 18th, the anniversary of the Israeli massacre in Gaza, In the run up to Smash EDO's Remember Gaza mass demonstration on the 18th Jan why not target Barclays Bank, read on to find out why...

On Thursday, 31 December 2009, a video was released through the UK’s Guardian Newspaper, claiming that “after a year-long investigation, GuardianFilms has exclusively uncovered the story of what happened to the five Britons kidnapped in Iraq on 29 May 2007, as the only survivor, Peter Moore, is released”.

Granted, this PR effort on behalf of the British Secret Intelligence Services, using Guardian Newspapers as a front, is a cut-above U.S. IntelCenter’s amateurish video releases of ‘Al-CIA-Duh’ agents.

There is no better story to confirm the existence of Al Qaida than having an alleged Muslim fundamentalist fumble his attempt to blow up a plane over US soil, then declare to the authorities that Al Qaida instructed him to do it.

As a result of this last Christmas terror incident our Nobel Prize president will continue to expand his low intensity wars in Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, maybe Nigeria and for certain Iran to make us safer and to defeat the mythical Al Qaida.

The hip-hop beats ringing through the muddy, unlit streets of the burnt-out Palestinian refugee camp Nahr al-Bared seem incongruous. But the rhymes are camp-grown - and courageous.

Frances-Mary Blake 1939 - 2009
Reseacher and Writer on the Irish Civil War. Campaigner for British Withdrawal from Ireland. Supporter of Irish Political Prisoners and their families. Activist on Human Rights & Justice generally

A British national from London (who wishes to not have his name revealed) was viciously beaten by LAPD while attempting a one-man protest against the recent escalating threat of a new US-British front for war in Yemen.

January 1 will usher in the last year of the first decade of a new millennium and ten consecutive years of the United States conducting war in the Greater Middle East.

American troops will continue to fan out to most all parts of the world. Everywhere, that is, except to their own nation's borders

His single crime for which he has been sentenced to over 15 years of imprisonment: "e-mailing videos of last summer's public demonstrations following the disputed re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad."