Tom Carter – Whistle-Blower Chelsea Manning: “I Became Very, Very Sad” During Torture

A 2015 interview with Amnesty International, published Tuesday in theGuardian, sheds light on the conditions faced by US Army whistleblower, political prisoner, and torture victim Chelsea Manning, who attempted suicide on July 5 and now faces a vindictive campaign of retaliation by the military. Chelsea Manning (born Bradley Manning), formerly a US Army specialist stationed in Iraq, is a whistleblower …

MEL GURTOV – Unintended Consequences and the Warfare State

“The danger is, as ever with these things, unintended consequences.” So wrote Prime Minister Tony Blair to President George W. Bush in 2002, as Bush prepared to invade Iraq.  Blair’s unstinting support of US policy, notwithstanding numerous unknowns and acknowledged large-scale obstacles, is more than a case of over-optimism or misplaced friendship.  For as the Chilcot Commission has just concluded after a …

George Monbiot – The Judgement of History

The Chilcot report is utterly damning; but it’s still not justice. By George Monbiot, published on the Guardian’s website, 6th July 2016 Little is more corrosive of democracy than impunity. When politicians do terrible things and suffer no consequences, people lose trust in both politics and justice. They see them, correctly, as instruments deployed by the strong against the weak. Since …

Robert Parry – Hillary Clinton as Damaged Goods

Compared to Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton presents herself as the well-qualified steady hand to manage U.S. foreign policy over the next four years, yet she has associated herself with a series of failed strategies and now faces an FBI judgment that she was “extremely careless” in protecting national security secrets. A partial list of her dubious and dangerous judgments include …

Philip Weiss – Clinton’s ‘infatuation with war’ and neoconservatism stirs misgivings on the left

As the Democratic convention approaches and Hillary Clinton tries to win over, or finesse, the progressive anti-war component of her base, many writers are expressing misgivings about her foreign policy. Not that they are Trump supporters; but they worry about being left out in the cold in a Clinton administration studded with neoconservatives. Here are three new takes on the …

PATRICK COCKBURN – What Tony Blair Has Learned About the Middle East: Absolutely Nothing

Normally anybody who criticises Jeremy Corbyn is guaranteed knee-jerk support by the British media which apparently feels that it does not even have to pretend to be non-partisan when it comes to the Labour leader. The only political figure similarly subjected to automatic demonisation is Tony Blair, so when he fiercely attacked Corbyn last week for supposedly focusing on “the …

Eresh Omar Jamal – Is The “Official 9/11 Story” Coming Apart At The Seams?

Anyone who is even barely informed knows by now that the “official 9/11 story” is a complete fantasy. The event did, however, provide the US government with a “catastrophic and catalysing event like a new pearl harbour,” which the Project for the New American Century — co-written by Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz along with seven other individuals, who …