Many people deny that the U.S. government presides over a global empire. If you speak of U.S. imperialism, they will fancy that you must be a decrepit Marxist-Leninist who has recently awakened after spending decades in a coma. Yet the facts cannot be denied, however much people’s ideology may predispose them to distort or obfuscate those facts.
We learn from the Israeli press that a criminal investigation has been launched against the soldier caught on tape firing towards a bound Palestinian. However, there is a detail the Israeli press in English is reluctant to share with us. The shooting soldier was not just an ordinary low-ranking infantry recruit, he was a First Sergeant. But it goes much further, the soldier who is caught on video holding the bound Palestinian detainee is no less than a regiment commander, an IDF Lieutenant Colonel.
Seven years after the Bush administration declared its “war on terrorism,” the first trial of an accused terrorist is now underway at Guantanamo Bay. The Gitmo trial involves the new-fangled “judicial” system that the president and the Pentagon put into place after 9/11, without even the semblance of seeking a constitutional amendment. Keep in mind that this is their model of what an ideal judicial system is all about.
Barack Obama, the Democratic presidential candidate, has urged closer ties between the US and Europe in a speech to tens of thousands of people in Berlin, the German capital.
A former senior US anti-drug official has accused Afghanistan's president of playing the US "like a fiddle" and protecting drug lords in his country for political reasons.
US markets have dropped by more than two per cent after yet another fall in US home sales, a rise in jobless claims and record losses posted by the second-biggest car maker in the country.
The US justice department told the CIA in 2002 that its agents would not be prosecuted for carrying out harsh interrogations if they believed they would not cause "prolonged mental harm", according to a memo written by a senior official.
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