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Showing posts with the label iraq

A Continuum of Intervention

“The question is: if humanity is to be defended, who must do the defending, how, and with which consequences? Beyond humanity, if life on earth is to thrive or survive, who or what must take responsibility for what appears to be an impending catastrophe?” The logic of humanitarian intervention

The Most Powerful Man in Iraq

A detailed article but too much political science, almost nothing about Iraqi capitalism and why it is not providing. Note that there are no classes anymore in Iraq; no economic institutions and capitalists; no form of economic development; no rate of profit; no foreign capital; no IMF…   In a long article by two journalists about the Sadrist movement and “the most powerful man in Iraq,” there is no word about the man’s economic programme! The word economy itself does not feature at all.  U.S. enemy and friend of Iran? Related Iraq’s “March for Reforms”

Brown University’s Account of the ‘War on Terror’

“ The Costs of War Project is analytically conservative. Unlike several nongovernmental surveys over the years, it does not conduct epidemiological studies to determine the true lethality of the war – such as deaths from war-shattered public health systems, lack of access to clean water, war-prompted displacement, and other indirect but real consequences of conflict. Instead, the project only counts  direct  death. The authors acknowledge the shortcomings of this approach.” Over 900,000 People Dead, a ‘Vast Undercount,’ and $8 Trillion Looted 

US: Two Decades of Forever Wars

Using ‘imperial’ and avoiding imperialism and capitalism. America isn’t ‘back’. Here’s why Related “ About 42 percent of Americans are now either unaware of the fact that their country is still fighting wars in the Greater Middle East and Africa or think that the war on terror is over. Consider that for a moment. What does it mean to be fighting wars for a country in which a near majority of the population is unaware that you’re even doing so?” “I tell my son that people die in wars because so many of us turn our backs on what’s going on in the world we live in.” Andrea Mazzarino from Cost of War Project

I Will Not Fight For Queen and Country

Ben Griffin is an ex-SAS soldier who served in Afghanistan and Iraq. The speech was given at Oxford Union, England.

Robert Fisk (1946-2020)

Robert Fisk, the revered foreign correspondent for The Independent, his knowledge and insight of the Middle East is perhaps unrivalled among contemporary commentators. Fisk, who has met Osama bin Laden three times, talks about his experience of covering conflict throughout the region, the Middle East's history and the possibilities for its future.  Here is part of a talk I recorded at the Institute of Education at the book launch of Fisk's  Wars for Civilization,  London 13 October 2005.  He was a vigorous opponent of the new-fangled concept of “embedded journalism”. Latterly, however, his own embedded reports on the continuing civil war in Syria, which tended to absolve the Assad regime of some of the worst crimes credited to it, provoked a backlash, even among his anti-imperialist acolytes. Obituary