March 29, 2015

CBS News An excerpt: In the run-up to the war in Iraq, one moment seemed to be a turning point: the day Secretary of State Colin Powell went to the United Nations to make the case for the invasion. Millions of people watched as he laid out the evidence and reached a damning conclusion -- that Saddam Hussein was in possession of weapons of mass destruction. Correspondent Scott Pelley has an interview with Greg Thielmann,…

By Wayne Northey July 9, 2005 21780 18th Ave. Langley BC V2Z 1P8 (604)533-9767 Dear Editor: The ringing condemnation by Western leaders of acts of terror is obviously fully deserved. As far as it goes… On July 7, 2005 Prime Minister Tony Blair called the London bombings “barbaric attacks.” On September 1, 1939, President Roosevelt wrote to the major powers that aerial bombing of civilians had “profoundly shocked the conscience of humanity” and called it…

Sobering. Canada anyone? An excerpt: Political scientist Dr. Lawrence Britt recently wrote an article about fascism ("Fascism Anyone?," Free Inquiry, Spring 2003, page 20). Studying the fascist regimes of Hitler (Germany), Mussolini (Italy), Franco (Spain), Suharto (Indonesia), and Pinochet (Chile), Dr. Britt found they all had 14 elements in common. He calls these the identifying characteristics of fascism. The excerpt is in accordance with the magazine's policy. The 14 characteristics are:... Please click on: The…

By Wayne Northey An excerpt: The week before Christmas south of the border has been designated “Thank a Soldier Week”. It may be dubbed as accurately “Thank a Trained Killer Week”.1 [American soldiers are not “evil”. All kinds of social, economic, and political pressures, not least ethically dubious recruitment methods, propel thousands to sign up. They become killers not because they started that way, but because they are so shaped by the military. See below.]…

talk by Jim Forest An excerpt: In the dawn of time, back in the fifties, my favorite comic strip concerned an assortment of animals living in Florida’s Okefenokee Swamp. The artist, a whimsical man named Walt Kelly, referred to them as “nature’s schreechers.” ... You may wonder why Jim Forest, who is supposed to be talking about “Following Christ in a Violent World,” is instead talking about a comic strip on the 1950s? The answer…

By Wayne Northey Stephen Harper is a scary man. He is at best sycophant, at worst dupe, of the confidence racket called American Foreign Policy. There is a growing collection of articles on my computer about American Empire and “Emperor” George W. Bush. The assortment exceeds to the point of crescendo journalist Serge Schmemann’s agonizing in a recent New York Times article, in review of a mounting spate of publications on America: “Though I have…

Sixty years after the Allies' bombing of Dresden enveloped the city in flames, controversy persists over whether the attack was militarily justified or morally indefensible. But another question, no less crucial, is seldom asked: Did wartime conditions allow military leaders to look away as they violated their own principles? The Wilson Quarterly Spring, 2005 Please click on: Sifting Dresden's Ashes

By Jason Burke The Observer U.K. An excerpt: The United States government, in conjunction with key allies, is running an "invisible" network of prisons and detention centres into which thousands of suspects have disappeared without trace since the "war on terror" began. In the past three years, thousands of alleged militants have been transferred around the world by American, Arab and Far Eastern security services, often in secret operations that by-pass extradition laws. The astonishing…

By Dana Priest and Joe Stephens Washington Post An excerpt: In Afghanistan, the CIA's secret U.S. interrogation center in Kabul is known as "The Pit," named for its despairing conditions. In Iraq, the most important prisoners are kept in a huge hangar near the runway at Baghdad International Airport, say U.S. government officials, counterterrorism experts and others. In Qatar, U.S. forces have been ferrying some Iraqi prisoners to a remote jail on the gigantic U.S.…

This is illustrative of all war. An excerpt: Above all, it is the premeditated attack on life, the human casualties, that make “the scourge of war” so horrible and dehumanizing. The first Gulf War in January-February, 1991, is a classic example of the human destructiveness of war as an end in itself. The Pentagon states it conducted 110,000 aerial sorties against Iraq in 42 days, one every 30 seconds, unleashing 88,500 tonnes of bombs. Iraq…