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I visited Iraq in 1999. At the time, there were no so-called ‘jihadis’ espousing the principles of ‘jihadism’, whatever the interpretation may be. On the outskirts of Baghdad was a military training camp, not for al-Qaeda, but for Mojahedin-e-Khalq, an Iranian militant exile group that worked, with foreign funding and arms, to overthrow the Iranian Republic.

At the time, the late Iraqi President Saddam Hussein used the exiled organization to settle scores with his rivals in Tehran, just as they, too, espoused anti-Iraqi government militias to achieve the exact same purpose.

Iraq was hardly peaceful then. …

Imagine Moscow being taken over by some international corporate cartel. By a monster which has its own factories and office buildings, security services, private prisons, re-education (‘training’) centers, and its obedient mass media outlets. Imagine that it also has detailed databases on almost everyone who really matters in the capital.

Imagine that human lives suddenly don’t matter. People are only expected to produce and consume; they become fully disposable.

Imagine that the once greatly educated Russia with its legendary artists and philosophers is gradually getting reduced to an unimaginably primitive level. Suddenly, there is US pop trash flying about everywhere, and the …

Engaged in his dirty spate of housecleaning under the auspices of protecting the constitution and the Turkish state, President Recep Tayyip Erdo?an continues to insist on one vital scalp in his enterprise.

Thus far, the cleric Fethullah Gülen has eluded Ankara from his abode in Pennsylvania. From his base, something of a global network has been constructed, one discernable through foundations and an assortment of endeavours pursued under the guise of a faith movement. These do not attest to the spirit of a pacifist warrior, averse to revolution. They suggest influence, and the markings of power.

…

This series sprang from discussions I’ve had with several people regarding the Danish/Scandinavian model of social democracy, or socialism as Bernie Sanders contends. Some well intentioned persons view the Nordic Model as a solution to greedy capitalism, while others view its role as a seditious savior of exploitative capitalism. Many Cubans I knew when living there (1988-96) and visiting since see the Nordic Model as a way out for their failing revolution, gone the way of a bureaucratic state. Some Spaniards backing Podemos hope to emulate Scandinavia, whose social democracy is also failing, unbeknownst to many foreign admirers.

I have been …

This should be a joyous time for the UK when efforts turn towards throwing off EU bondage and exploring the sunny uplands of free will and expanded world trade. Unfortunately a big, dark storm-cloud looms over the celebrations…. Scotland’s political ‘élite’ are about to piss on us.

People like me were brought up in the belief that anyone threatening the safety or integrity of the realm would be for the chop – quite literally.

So I watch in amazement as Scotland’s First Minister, Nicola Strugeon, dishonestly claims time and again that in the recent EU referendum Scots voted for Scotland to stay …

Commentators who have learned to distrust official explanations, such as Peter Koenig and Stephen Lendman have raised questions about the Nice attack.

It does seem odd that a lone person driving a large truck can gain access to blocked off areas where French people have assembled to watch the fireworks of Bastille Day. It also seems odd that the event is branded a terrorist one when the alleged perpetrator’s family says that he was not at all religious and had no religious motivation.

We will never know. Once again the alleged perpetrator is dead and conveniently left behind …

He was the kingpin of the whole affair by suggesting it. In December 2015, the US Republican presumptive nominee for President, Donald Trump, came up with that daft suggestion which seems so utterly devoid of informed meaning.  Ban Muslims from entering the United States and the phenomenon of terrorism would somehow be abated.

His prepared statement was characteristically dramatic in the manner of reality television, envisaging a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.”

The recent shootings of US police officers, inflicted by disgruntled former black American soldiers, …

The Israeli government stands accused of waging a campaign of incitement against human rights groups as it tries to hamper efforts by the international community to monitor abuses of Palestinians under occupation.

A so-called Transparency Law, passed by the Israeli parliament last week, compels some two dozen Israeli rights organisations to declare publicly that they receive a majority of their funding from foreign governments.

In future, they will have to divulge such funding – mostly from individual European states or the European Union – every time they appear in the media, issue publicity material, make statements online, and deal with …

We suspected it was a scam all along.  The whole money and debt thing.  I mean, how much sense does it make for any government to hand over money creation to a group of private individuals who then lend it back to their own government and earn interest (in other words, do nothing other than collect a kind of rent) on something that, more or less, doesn’t even exist?  Dire Straits got it right about the “Money for nothin’ ” thing.

Ellen Brown’s recent piece on DissidentVoice throws around some pretty impressive figures:  500 trillion …

BREXIT might be what one-hand-clapping sounds like. It might also be the reappearance of concerns relating to, “where have all the flowers gone”, where have all the manufacturing jobs disappeared to, where has all the untaxed wealth stashed itself, where have regulations protecting public interest gone to, or, a falling out of love with the Brussels techno-oligarchs and their boots-on-the-ground Mighty Mouse NATO Military. Most of all, it’s likely to be the sound of suffering humanity scraping itself off the canvas after its initial stoush with the counterrevolutionary protocols of neoconservative privatisation. But best of all, it is a public …

But if they incline to peace, you (also) incline to it, and (put your) trust in Allah. Verily, He is the All-Hearer, the All-Knower.

— The Noble Qur’an, Al-Anfal, 8.61

Jihad

The most excellent Jihad is that for the conquest of self.

The ink of the scholar is more holy than the blood of the martyr.

– Sayings of the Prophet

Respected writer William Blum understands US hegemony and imperialism on a global scale. In his important book Rogue State, he provided a comprehensive account of US imperialism around the world.

Recently, Blum wrote a trenchant article that compellingly …

British politics has seen it before: a good deal of political bloodletting in a dramatic Cabinet reshuffle. Prime Minister Harold Macmillan did so on July 13, 1962 in what became known as Britain’s own variant of the much cruder and bloodier German event of 1934.

Similarly, the new Prime Minister Theresa May, was intent on going a bit deeper than the surface after coming to power, removing such old Tory hands as the Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, and replacing him with former foreign secretary Philip Hammond. The ideologically charged Michael Gove, who has made his irreparably damaging …

A car is stolen. It’s a car that has been in the family for generations: picnics, road trips, weddings, funerals, accidents. There are pictures, memories, indelible life events. There is a huge robbery of the entire house, in the confusion, mayhem, and distraction, the car also disappears.

A few days later, a neighbor turns up with the car. The neighbor claims it’s their car. They say that they bought it–for a single dollar from someone, a Tomas, a well-known car thief, who is arrested. Alternatively, they say they found it on their property, and that …

In the early morning of July 5th, 37 year-old father of five, Alton Sterling, was shot in both his chest and his back by law enforcement officers outside a convenience store in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

Following this tragedy, on the night of July 6th, a 32 year-old father, Philando Castile, was brutally slain with 4 to 5 shots by a law enforcement officer outside St. Paul, Minnesota, after being pulled over for a minor traffic violation – a faulty tail-light. Witnessing the murder was his girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds, and his 4-year-old daughter. His daughter attempted to comfort her distressed mother, while …

The European Union is controlled by an oligarchy, which dictates socio-economic and political decisions according to the interests of bankers and multi-national business. The central organs of power, the European Commission (EC), the European Central Bank (ECB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have systematically imposed austerity programs that have degraded working conditions, welfare programs, and wages and salaries.

EU policies demanding the free immigration of non-unionized workers to compete with native workers have undermined wage and workplace protections, union membership and class solidarity. EU financial policies have enhanced the power of finance capital and eroded public ownership of …