With President Obama down to less than two weeks in office, everyone is busy assessing his legacy. So let’s begin with the Arab world. Not since the Vietnam War, we can safely say, has an administration left a region in ruins the way Obama has left the Middle East (although it’s true that George W. Bush contributed…
What would George Orwell have made of 2016? Some of the biggest news stories of the year, promoted by pro-Establishment media, were either false, such as the claims made in December that a ‘Holocaust’ was taking place in eastern Aleppo, or not backed up by any hard evidence, such as the allegations that Russia interfered…
The evidence is clear and convincing: U.S. President Barack Obama, against advice and warnings from his top military officers, pursued a policy to protect the fundamentalist-Sunni organization, Al Qaeda in Syria (called «Al Nusra» there), and to arm them, so as to overthrow Bashar al-Assad and replace Assad’s secular government with a Sharia-law, fundamentalist-Sunni, government,…
The American journalist, Edward Bernays, is often described as the man who invented modern propaganda. The nephew of Sigmund Freud, the pioneer of psycho-analysis, it was Bernays who coined the term “public relations” as a euphemism for spin and its deceptions. In 1929, he persuaded feminists to promote cigarettes for women by smoking in the…
When Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg of the US-NATO military alliance went to see the Pope on October 13 there were some observers unkind enough to express surprise that Mr Stoltenberg could spare the time for such an appointment; but all was made clear when it was announced that the call was made in the sidelines…
Britain is fighting at least seven covert wars in the Middle East and North Africa, outside of any democratic oversight or control. Whitehall has in effect gone underground, with neither parliament nor the public being allowed to debate, scrutinise or even know about these wars. To cover themselves, Ministers are now often resorting to lying…
