My Reaction to Osama bin Laden's Death by Noam Chomsky - required reading

"We might ask ourselves how we would be reacting if Iraqi commandos landed at George W. Bush’s compound, assassinated him, and dumped his body in the Atlantic."

Chomsky

Acclaimed social activist and professor of linguistics Noam Chomsky gives a rational and thought-provoking reaction to the recent highly-publicised assassination of Osama bin Laden in this Guernica magazine article.

A Lockerbie reality-check

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With David Cameron rushing to make as much political capital as possible out of the recently published Cabinet Secretary's review of papers relating to the release of Abdelbaset Al-Megrahi (see below), Michael Meacher gives us a timely reminder of why Al-Megrahi should never have been in jail in the first place.  For more background on the investigation into the Lockerbie bombing, check out William C Chasey's book Pan Am 103: Lockerbie Cover-up.

Click here to download:
20110207-megrahi-review-report.pdf (1.02 MB)
(download)

Michael Meacher article via Pete Grubb

Charlie Brooker on the myth of the "Ground Zero Mosque"

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George Dubya Bush's influence clearly survives in the world of t-shirt design...

"The planned "ultra-mosque" will be a staggering 5,600ft tall – more than five times higher than the tallest building on Earth – and will be capped with an immense dome of highly-polished solid gold, carefully positioned to bounce sunlight directly toward the pavement, where it will blind pedestrians and fry small dogs. The main structure will be delimited by 600 minarets, each shaped like an upraised middle finger, and housing a powerful amplifier: when synchronised, their combined sonic might will be capable of relaying the muezzin's call to prayer at such deafening volume, it will be clearly audible in the Afghan mountains, where thousands of terrorists are poised to celebrate by running around with scarves over their faces, firing AK-47s into the sky and yelling whatever the foreign word for "victory" is."

Read the full article at The Guardian.

Americans protest church at Hiroshima | NewsBiscuit

American campaigners are mounting a campaign to urge Japanese officials to reject plans to build a church close to the site where an atomic bomb was dropped in the city of Hiroshima in 1945.

‘We can’t believe that anyone could be so insensitive’ complained campaigner Aimee Duke. ‘That bomb was dropped by a Christian country and killed more than 160,000 people. Wanting to build a Christian church in the city is just an insult to the victims’ she said.

President Obama has however defended the plans, saying that not all Christians should be blamed for dropping nuclear bombs on Japanese civilians. Some campaigners have however attempted to distance themselves from accusations of religious intolerance.

‘We’re not being anti-Christian’ said Duke, ‘we just think that these Christians should go and build their churches somewhere else. If they don’t like it they can go back home.’

via newsbiscuit.com

 

WikiLeaks releases CIA Red Cell Memorandum on United States "exporting terrorism", 2 Feb 2010

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"Contrary to common belief, the American export of terrorism or terrorists is not a recent phenomenon, nor has it been associated only with Islamic radicals or people of Middle Eastern, African or South Asian ethnic origin. This dynamic belies the American belief that our free, open and integrated multicultural society lessens the allure of radicalism and terrorism for US citizens."

Read more and download the full file here.

Wikileaks exposes the real war in Afghanistan

Wikileaks have made available the Afghan War Diary, a collection of over 75000 secret US military reports that cover the war in Afghanistan from 2004 to 2010.

Most notably, the large number of civilian deaths - usually covered up or mis-described as 'insurgent' deaths is revealed: "This archive shows the vast range of small tragedies that are almost never reported by the press but which account for the overwhelming majority of deaths and injuries."