Media

By Nicolas J.S. Davies January 27, 2020 The numbers of casualties of U.S. wars since Sept. 11, 2001, have largely gone uncounted, but coming to terms with the true scale of the crimes committed remains an urgent moral, political and legal imperative, argues Nicolas J.S. Davies, in part two of his series. Originally posted on Consortium News April 3, 2018 here Part One here In the first part of this series, I estimated that about 2.4 million Iraqis have been killed as a result of the illegal invasion of their country by the United States and the United Kingdom in 2003. I turn now to Afghan and Pakistani deaths in the ongoing 2001 U.S. intervention in Afghanistan. In part three, I will examine U.S.-caused war deaths in Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen.  According to Ret. U.S. General Tommy Franks, who led the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan in reaction to 9/11, the U.S. government...

VideoAnother video from the event where the author gave this talk Like perhaps most people who visit Los Angeles, I consider it my duty to offer a brilliant new idea for a film script. My idea is in the genre of science-fiction mafia, a genre that I think has not been sufficiently exploited. In this film, the protagonist wakes up to the fact that without knowing it, he has somehow joined the mafia. I expect people to be able to relate to the story because I believe that this entire country either has become aware or needs to become aware that it has joined the mafia. How do major U.S. newspapers and television news programs refer to the murder of an Iranian general? Never with the word murder. Often with words like “deal with” or “take out.” Trump had to deal with him. You could read an article like that,...

By Nicolas J. S. Davies* January 17, 2020 How many people have been killed in America’s post-9/11 wars? I have been researching and writing about that question since soon after the U.S. launched these wars, which it has tried to justify as a response to terrorist crimes that killed 2,996 people in the U.S. on September 11th, 2001. Originally posted on Consortium News, January 15, 2020, here But no crime, however horrific, can justify wars on countries and people who were not responsible for the crime committed, as former Nuremberg prosecutor Ben Ferencz patiently explained to NPR at the time. “The Iraq Death Toll 15 Years After the U.S. Invasion” which I co-wrote with Medea Benjamin, estimates the death toll in Iraq as accurately and as honestly as we can in March 2018.  Our estimate is that about 2.4 million people have probably been killed in Iraq as a result of the historic act of aggression committed by the U.S. and U.K. in...

Photo – Eastern Aleppo, December 2016 – © Jan Oberg By Gordon M. Hahn January 17, 2020 If Western leaders are able to put aside the now worn-out cliches such as Russian Vladimir Putin ‘punching above his weight,’ ‘Trump handing Putin a victory on a silver plate’, not to mention ‘Trump as Putin agent’, there are serious lessons that they might still be able to draw from Putin’s looming victory in Syria.  Originally posted on Gordon M. Hahn’s personal blog on December 2, 2019 here First, the era in which the United States and/or the West (NATO) can dictate outcomes anywhere across the globe unilaterally has ended. Events in Syria are but the latest confirmation of this fact, but many in Washington and Brussels still do not see it. NATO expansion drove Russia into China’s arms, and the rest is history and the future.  Second, Washington and Brussels (NATO and...

. On December 12, 2012, on the day, 4 years earlier, Western countries and allies – perversely calling themselves ‘Friends of Syria’ – carried through a regime change by statement and set up a Syrian National Council of people never elected by anyone in Syria and told the world that it was, from now on, the only ‘legitimate representative of the Syrian people!’ During the 4 years, Western, Saudi, Turkish and the Gulf States supported innumerable illegal, destructive and mainly foreign terrorist groups with the goal to undermine the legitimate Syrian government and destabilise the country – as had been recommended by US ambassador William Roebuck (1) in Damascus as far back as in 2006 (WikiLeaks documentation here). December 12, 2016, marked a fundamental turning point. Aleppo did not “fall to the dictator/butcher/mass murderer” aka President Bashar al-Assad – no, it was liberated and the occupation by terrorist groups such...

More documents leaked confirming 2 OPCW whistleblowers’ accounts of Douma Report By Natylie Baldwin December 19, 2019 This past weekend saw two more major blows to the years-long establishment narrative of the Syrian war in general and the chemical weapons attacks allegations against the Assad government in particular. This article was originally published at Natylie Baldwin’s blog on December 16, 2019 First, Tareq Haddad, an accomplished British journalist who began working for Newsweek earlier this year, resigned last week, telling his Twitter followers that he had done so as the result of his editors attempting to block him from accurate reporting on the Syria war and the OPCW whistleblowers. He also said that in the coming days he would be sharing a write-up on what had happened, despite threats of legal action by Newsweek: Yesterday I resigned from Newsweek after my attempts to publish newsworthy revelations about the leaked OPCW...

Here is a good backgrounder with her speech and an interview at COP 25 in Madrid: Greta Thunberg Slams COP25, Says Response to Climate Crisis Is “Clever Accounting and Creative PR” What she says in her intro is really important, important as a criticism of the world’s media: If she does not say something personal and emotional, few will listen. This fact-oriented speech has received much less media attention – proving her important point: When you speak facts, rely on research and appear “dull”, the media cannot get their satisfaction in terms of drama, individual story/identity, smashing superficial headlines and sensationalism. While one can certainly point out that she says less-thought-through things about democracy and the Free World towards the end of this speech, she is growing better and better – and she obviously knows more than anyone in decision-making positions. And in the mainstream media. Now, what does that...

Imagine that you tell a friend something and you say it’s a fact and you know the sources are reliable – but then, a few weeks later, you learn that there was more to it, perhaps even that what you were in good faith believing was unfortunately factually wrong. Would you not call that friend and say – “hey, I’ve just learned that what I told you wasn’t really true; rather, it turned out to be a story, more or less constructed for a purpose, and the facts are much more complex?” Well, you are surely a decent person so you would. But what about our mainstream media? Do you remember to have seen a front-page item stating something to the effect that “we are sorry to inform you that the news story this media published some weeks back, turned out to be a planted propaganda story. We have now...

Political NATO’s London Summit on December 3 and 4, 2019 displays the deep political crisis of the 70-year-old alliance: Only a dinner and a short meeting, no statement to be issued, quarrels among the leading military members, accusations, substantial differences on Syria and many other issues, the deepest-ever Transatlantic conflict and the usual issues of burden-sharing. Legal But the political dimension of NATO’s crisis is only one. There is also a legal crisis. You’ll recognize it if you care to read the NATO Treaty text – something academic and media people don’t generally seem to have done. They would then have noticed that the Alliance of 2019 consistently operates outside – indeed in violation of – its own goals, purposes and values. For instance, the UN Charter which should be NATO’s guideline has been violated on a permanent basis for decades – such as in its out-of-area bombings of Yugoslavia...

“Uanset om man tror, at Assad står bag angrebet eller ej, er det journalisternes opgave at være kritiske over for egne magthaveres beslutningsgrundlag.” Det skrev jeg i Ræson den 20. april 2018 i forbindelse med at Assad og den syriske regering blev beskyldt for at udføre et giftangreb mod sin egen befolkning i byen Douma. Danmark, med tidligere udenrigsminister Anders Samuelsen i spidsen, støttede op om et amerikansk missilangreb mod Syrien på den baggrund, inden vi nåede at tag en offentlig debat om det i det danske demokrati. Hvordan vidste den danske regering, at Syriens regering stod bag? Hvorfor venter Danmark ikke med at støtte op om et missilangreb og fordømme den syriske regering, før der har været en undersøgelse? Er missilangreb en konstruktiv måde at “svare igen” på? Hvordan er Danmarks erfaring med at løse problemer i Mellemøsten ved at affyre missiler? Takket være de – dovne – danske...

By Joe Emersberger November 6, 2019 Grayzone editor Max Blumenthal, a prominent journalistic critic of US policy toward Venezuela,  was arrested by DC police on Friday, October 25, in connection with a protest at the Venezuelan embassy, and held incommunicado. But if you rely on corporate media, or even leading “press freedom” groups, you haven’t heard about this troubling encroachment on freedom of the press. Originally posted on Fair.org on October 30, 2019 here Blumenthal is a bestselling author whose work has appeared in such publications as the New York Times, CJR, The Nation and Salon. DC police arrested him at his home on a five-month-old arrest warrant, charging him with simple assault for his attempt to deliver food to the besieged Venezuelan embassy; he was held for two days, and for the first 36 hours was not allowed to speak with a lawyer. (In an interview with FAIR, Blumenthal noted that keeping arrestees—generally poor and African-American—from speaking...

By Scott Ritter November 4, 2019 At a time when the credibility of the United States as either an unbiased actor or reliable ally lies in tatters, Russia has emerged as the one major power whose loyalty to its allies is unquestioned, and whose ability to serve as an honest broker between seemingly intractable opponents is unmatched. Originally posted on Truthdig.com on October 30, 2019 here If there is to be peace in Syria, it will be largely due to the patient efforts of Moscow employing deft negotiation, backed up as needed by military force, to shape conditions conducive for a political solution to a violent problem. If ever there was a primer for the art of diplomacy, the experience of Russia in Syria from 2011 to the present is it. Like the rest of the world, Russia was caught off guard by the so-called Arab Spring that swept through the Middle...