Marwan Bishara on August 30, 2010 0 Comments
The US occupation of Iraq will last another decade
Politics
Thanks America: Falluja, malformed births and depleted uranium
International Coalition to Ban Uranium Weapons — August 15, 2010 1 Comment
Recent research and a tide of media coverage are indicating that something is very wrong in the Iraqi city of Fallujah. The rates of certain cancers and birth malformations seem to be far higher than those of other countries in the region. Such is the level of concern, that the World Health Organisation is currently undertaking research in the city, elsewhere experts are trying to gauge whether environmental factors may be responsible. One such risk factor could be the possible use of uranium weapons in the US Marine-led assault on Fallujah in 2004
Editor's Pick, Politics
Matt Kennard on Russia Today extended: ‘US Army sent ‘hardcore’ neo-Nazi troops to Iraq and Afghanistan’
Matt Kennard — June 18, 2010 3 Comments
Under the Bush administration, the U.S. military allegedly started to recruit neo-Nazis and gang members to fight in Afghanistan and Iraq. Investigative journalist Matt Kennard talks to RT about his researh into these allegations and other problems in the US military.
Politics
Johann Hari on Chomsky, Hitchens, Iraq, and anarchism
Matt Kennard — June 15, 2010 9 Comments
But I think Hitchens arguments are so well put and one should engage with them and take them at face value. He says Saddam was intermeshed increasingly with Islam. Zarquawi, for example, was already in Iraq before the war. I don’t agree with his argument on that. Ba’athism and Islamism are different things, and should be opposed for different reasons
Editor's Pick, Politics
Polly Toynbee on Iraq and New Labour
Matt Kennard — June 11, 2010 0 Comments
No I think it’s very difficult to navigate because for one thing even if you more want to bring democracy to the Middle East more than you want to take the oil – which I think probably is the case now – but such is the fear of fundamentalism that you wonder if you knock over the Saudi’s who takes over? Is it even stronger Wahhabist, and is that even more dangerous, and even less democratic? It’s very difficult
Politics
Douglas Murray, neoconservative thinker, on the War on Terror and Islamism
Matt Kennard — June 8, 2010 1 Comment
And it goes in very small erosions. It goes in the erosion of a state and a public who see nothing for which they will fight and nothing for which they would die and nothing for which – in that case – they are particularly willing to live. In that situation, a strong ideology, which extremist Islam is, is not only powerful but attractive to much of the Western world and that doesn’t mean necessarily that like John Bert’s son and Jack Straw’s son, are going to convert, but it means they will kowtow to it
Politics
Andrew Roberts, right-wing historian, on neoconservatism and the English-speaking peoples
Matt Kennard — June 7, 2010 0 Comments
I don’t think democracy can be immediately transported to every country in the world because some countries are too feudal, theocratic, obscurantist or backward, frankly, to do anything other than immediately vote for a government which would be so antipathetical to the English-speaking peoples as to negate the whole process, frankly
Politics
Ken Livingstone on America, Iraq, and his political evolution
Matt Kennard — June 6, 2010 0 Comments
For the last 500 years global politics has been determined by Europe and America. Now it is about to shift so that power will have to be shared with China and the coalition of forces in the developing world
Politics
“Passive” death-counts in Iraq have merit
Robert Shone — June 1, 2010 3 Comments
A media-based count of war dead may be incomplete; a survey estimate may be erroneous due to sampling bias – such things have nothing to do with relative passivity/activity. So why is the phrase “passive surveillance” used? In fact, it’s misleading
Editor's Pick, Politics
Nick Cohen on Iraq, the Left and the anti-globalisation movement
Matt Kennard — May 25, 2010 5 Comments
In this society you don’t have to make commitments anymore. You didn’t have to say, “If Saddam’s Iraq was a terrible place when America when was his ally, it was still a terrible place when America was his enemy.”
Politics
Joseph Stiglitz on the left turn in Latin America and the privatization of Iraq
Matt Kennard — April 27, 2010 4 Comments
I think we live in a different world than we lived in the 1980s. In the 1980s the CIA could get away with change of regimes that it didn’t like in other countries. We are in a different world, and we are in a world in which that kind of strategy risks backfiring. And it happened in Venezuela: after the US attempted coup, Chavez’s electoral vote increased markedly, and I think it’s partly because countries don’t like the US coming in and changing their government from the outside. No matter where it is, in general it’s not welcome
Economics, Editor's Pick
Clare Short interview on Blair, Brown, Iraq and Afghanistan
Matt Kennard — April 9, 2010 0 Comments
“I think Blair is a peculiar kind of man. I think he is fundamentally a presentational person and he is superb at presentation and he’s very careful always to use language which leaves plenty of wriggle room and doesn’t tie him down too firmly and that’s what he is good at”