Noam Chomsky: America’s corporate doctrine of power a grave threat to humanity
The United States' foreign policy is increasingly guided by the concerns of the few -- at a terrible cost to us all
The question of how foreign policy is determined is a crucial one in world affairs. In these comments, I can only provide a few hints as to how I think the subject can be productively explored, keeping to the United States for several reasons. First, the U.S. is unmatched in its global significance and impact. Second, it is an unusually open socie
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Private military and security companies (PMSC) are the modern reincarnation of a long lineage of private providers of physical force: corsairs, privateers and mercenaries. Mercenaries, which had practically disappeared during the XIXth and XXth centuries, reappeared in the 1960’s during the decolonization period operating mainly in Africa and Asia. Under the United Nations a convention was adopted which outlaws and criminalizes their activities. Additional Protocol I of the Geneva Conventions also contains a definition of mercenary.
I’m convinced the best investigative reporter in the country is Lee Fang. Witness the following.
TPP, the Trans Pacific Partnership trade agreement still in negotiation, is a NAFTA-like treaty — it will have the legal force of a treaty — that ties the hands of any government that signs it in their dealings with big money corporations (and small ones too).
It includes a NAFTA-style trade dispute court, also legally binding, in which corps can sue cities, states, counties and nations for lost future and potential prof
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On June 2nd, the Supreme Court rejectedNew York Times reporter James Risen’s appeal of a 4th Circuit decision that ruled the government can compel him to reveal his source under
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In Praise of Michael Hastings: On the Lies and Obfuscations of the March to War in Iraq
by John R. MacArthur
Journalist and war correspondent Michael Hastings, who died last year in a car crash in California,
in this undated publiclty photo. (Photo: Blue Rider Press / Penguin)
Having read his posthumously published novel, I’m sorry I never knew Michael Hastings. That said, I’m not sure I would have wanted to hang out with him. Hastings’s leisure-time pursuits, including the one that appears to h
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In the US, most of the analysis of what’s happening in Iraq comes to us from Americans. A handful of our “Iraq experts” know the country intimately; others have traveled through it embedded with US troops or experienced it from the alternate universe of the heavily fortified US Green Zone during the height of the occupation. But a majority of the people whose supposed insights shape our views of Iraq never set foot there.
For an Iraqi perspective on what’s going on — and for some context — we turned to Raed Jarrar. Jarrar was born and r
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How the U.S. helped turn Iraq into an al-Qaida haven in just 53 steps
Eleven years after the U.S. invasion, Iraq is on the brink of collapse. We have only ourselves to blame
Militants from the al-Qaida-inspired Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) people raising their flag at the entrance of an army base in Ninevah Province. Iraq. (Credit: AP)
Here’s the short version: The United States invaded Iraq in 2003, claiming that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had both weapons of mass destruction and connections to Al Qaeda. He had neither. Today, both Sadd
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JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, head of the largest bank in the United States, prepares to testify before the Senate Banking Committee
about how his company lost more than $2 billion on risky trades. June 2012. (AP Photo/Haraz N. Ghanbari)