US control is diminishing, but it still thinks it owns the world | Noam Chomsky
This piece is adapted from Uprisings, a chapter in Power Systems: Conversations on Global Democratic Uprisings and the New Challenges to US Empire, Noam Chomsky's new book of interviews with David Barsamian (with thanks to the publisher, Metropolitan Books). The questions are Barsamian's, the answers Chomsky's. Does the United States still have the same level of control over the energy resources of the Middle East as it once had? The major energy-producing countries are still firmly under the control of the western-backed dictatorships. So, actually, the progress made by the Arab spring is limited, but it's not insignificant. The western-controlled dictatorial system is being eroded. Take the US invasion of Iraq, for example. The United States was seriously defeated in Iraq by Iraqi nationalism – mostly by nonviolent resistance. Iraq was an attempt to reinstitute by force something like the old system of control, but it was beaten back. Declining because of economic weakness? Yes.
Lake Erie Correctional Institution, Ohio Private Prison, Faces Concerns About 'Unacceptable' Conditions
When a private prison corporation paid Ohio $72.7 million in 2011 to purchase one of the state's facilities, the company touted the deal as a "groundbreaking" move that would serve as a model for other states looking to cut costs. But in the year since Corrections Corporation of America took over the 1,700-bed Lake Erie Correctional Institution, state audits have found patterns of inadequate staffing, delays in medical treatment and "unacceptable living conditions" inside the prison -- including inmates lacking access to running water and toilets. The state docked the company nearly $500,000 in pay because of the violations. In addition, a major uptick in crime near the private prison has burdened the small town of Conneaut, Ohio, with police there making a series of recent arrests related to attempts to smuggle drugs and alcohol into the facility. Private prison companies typically build their own facilities or manage existing prisons; the Ohio prison sale was the first of its kind.
William Dalrymple: How the affair of Karzai’s Afghanistan is replaying Imperial history – internet lookup list
THE name Gandamak means little in the West today. Yet this small Afghan village was once famous for the catastrophe that took place there during the First Anglo-Afghan War in January 1842, arguably the greatest humiliation ever suffered by a Western army in the East. The course of that distant Victorian war followed a trajectory that is beginning to seem distinctly familiar. In 1839, the British invaded Afghanistan on the basis of dubious intelligence about a nonexistent threat: information about a single Russian envoy to Kabul, the Afghan capital, was manipulated by a group of ambitious hawks to create a scare about a phantom Russian invasion, thus bringing about an unnecessary, expensive and wholly avoidable conflict. Initially, the British conquest proved remarkably easy and bloodless; Kabul was captured within a few months and a pliable monarch, Shah Shuja, placed on the throne. The last 50 or so survivors made their final stand at Gandamak.
Remember Aaron Swartz
Drones, US Propaganda and Imperial Hubris
Pakistanis should be more supportive of having their national sovereignty violated by Americans, according to US-based political scientists who favor drone strikes in Pakistan. I am trying hard not make this sound like an Onion article, even though it does. In a January 23 article for The Atlantic, professors Christine Fair, Karl Kaltenthaler and William J. Miller argue that Pakistani opposition to drone strikes is not as widespread as previously claimed, and that the US government should take steps to convert Pakistanis to the official US view on drone strikes: [The US] must draw to its side the large swath of the population that doesn’t even know about the program. This may mean using radio, non-cable TV (including local Pakistani networks) or even hyper-local media such as SMS -- and it means doing so in Urdu and perhaps other vernacular languages. This is some of the most propagandistic writing in support of President Barack Obama’s targeted kill lists to date. That was T.
ANTILIMIT | Anything Worth Seeing
William Dalrymple: a life in writing
On page 493 of William Dalrymple's new narrative of Britain's calamitous 1839 invasion of Afghanistan, he draws this present-day parallel: the west's "fourth war in the country looks certain to end with as few political gains as the first three, and like them to terminate in an embarrassing withdrawal after a humiliating defeat, with Afghanistan yet again left in tribal chaos and quite possibly ruled by the same government which the war was originally fought to overthrow". That isn't how the government sees the situation, I tell him when we meet in London just before Christmas: the prime minister is with the troops in Helmand and defence secretary Philip Hammond has just told the Commons that the planned reduction of British troops in April "is possible because of the success of the Afghan national security forces in assuming a lead role". How could you write such an off-message book, I ask Dalrymple. Dalrymple pulls out his phone and shows me a holiday snap from Kandahar.
Jerry Ashton: Happy Occu-Year 2013!
The last of the confetti has been swept up, hangovers are only a memory, and a new (Occupy) year has begun. It should prove to be a doozie. And, why not? It is off to a phenomenal start. Occupy Sandy When Hurricane Sandy devastated boroughs in NYC and along the Jersey coast, former and present OWS protestors were among the very first people on the scene to lend help and support. Their organizational abilities surprised -- and awed -- both survivors as well as fellow volunteers with other organizations. Occupy Sandy's online presence, coordinated through InterOccupy and OWS Tech Ops, provided constant updating through Facebook and Twitter (#Sandy) to help juggle supplies and assistance. An "Occupy Motor Pool" of construction teams and medical committees -- advised weather-wise by forecasts from an "Occupy Weatherman" -- put volunteers directly into the heart of stricken neighborhoods and properly equipped. Even today, their kitchen in Bay Ridge at St. Rolling Jubilee Who'da Thunk?
How the Vatican built a secret property empire using Mussolini's millions | World news
Few passing London tourists would ever guess that the premises of Bulgari, the upmarket jewellers in New Bond Street, had anything to do with the pope. Nor indeed the nearby headquarters of the wealthy investment bank Altium Capital, on the corner of St James's Square and Pall Mall. But these office blocks in one of London's most expensive districts are part of a surprising secret commercial property empire owned by the Vatican. Behind a disguised offshore company structure, the church's international portfolio has been built up over the years, using cash originally handed over by Mussolini in return for papal recognition of the Italian fascist regime in 1929. Since then the international value of Mussolini's nest-egg has mounted until it now exceeds £500m. The surprising aspect for some will be the lengths to which the Vatican has gone to preserve secrecy about the Mussolini millions. The company secretary, John Jenkins, a Reading accountant, was equally uninformative.
