In Defense of Extremism

Ted Rall | 22 Oct 2014 From The Washington Post: “The cost of turning against the Islamic State was made brutally apparent in the streets of a dusty backwater town in eastern Syria in early August. Over a three-day period, vengeful fighters shelled, beheaded, crucified and shot hundreds of members of the Shaitat tribe after…

The US is a Leading Terrorist State

Noam Chomsky | Telesur | 20 Oct 204 An international poll found that the United States is ranked far in the lead as “the biggest threat to world peace today,” far ahead of second-place Pakistan, with no one else even close. Imagine that the lead article in Pravda reported a study by the KGB that reviews major…

Reasons to doubt Key's spy overhaul

Andrea Vance | Sunday Star Times | 12 Oct 2014 OPINION: Welcome to the politics of fear. Chiming in with other Western governments, Prime Minister John Key has signalled he will once again overhaul spying legislation. Last year, foreign spying powers were beefed up, on the pretext of an illegal snooping scandal. This time around,…

The University of Al-Qaeda? America’s “Terrorist Academy” in Iraq Produced ISIS Leaders

Mike Whitney | Counterpunch | 6 Oct 2014 “Since 2003, Anglo-American power has secretly and openly coordinated direct and indirect support for Islamist terrorist groups linked to al-Qaeda across the Middle East and North Africa. This ill-conceived patchwork geostrategy is a legacy of the persistent influence of neoconservative ideology, motivated by longstanding but often contradictory ambitions…