Terrorism (state and retail)

Terrorists have launched a chemical attack on civilians and government forces in the Syrian city of Aleppo.

Louis XVI needed a revolution, Napoleon needed two historic military defeats, the Spanish Empire in the New World needed multiple revolutions, the Russian Czar needed a communist revolution, the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires needed World War I, Nazi Germany needed World War II, Imperial Japan needed two atomic bombs, the Portuguese Empire in Africa needed a military coup at home, the Soviet Empire needed Mikhail Gorbachev … What will the American Empire need?

Whistleblower Julian Assange has given one of his most incendiary interviews ever in a John Pilger Special, courtesy of Dartmouth Films, in which he summarizes what can be gleaned from the tens of thousands of Clinton emails released by WikiLeaks this year.

The first “Battle of Kunduz” took place from April to October 2015 for control of the city, where Taliban forces were playing cat and mouse for months and finally overran the city, forcing government forces to flee. The capture marked the first time since 2001 that the Taliban had taken control of a major city in Afghanistan. The Afghan government claimed to have largely recaptured Kunduz by October 1 in a counterattack, but by October 6 the Taliban had recaptured substantial portions of Kunduz.

At first sight, compassion appears to loom large in ‘mainstream’ politics and media. When the American and British governments target countries like Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, ‘compassion’ is always at or near the top of the agenda.

In 1959, Phoenix, Arizona was growing like a weed.  As its population doubled every few years, I was working my way through the public school system, doing my best to obey most of the rules, or at least not get caught doing otherwise.  The teacher’s dreaded paddle was something to be avoided at all cost.  Dust and asbestos fibers from school construction filled the air as the little city burgeoned into the epicenter of the baby-booming desert Southwest.  As my school’s enrollment grew beyond its limits, boundary lines were redrawn in order to fill the classrooms of a newer school, a mile to

Last July, the Palestinian Authority took the unexpected, although belated, step of seeking Arab backing in suing Britain over the Balfour Declaration. That ‘declaration’ was the first ever explicit commitment made by Britain, and the West in general, to establish a Jewish homeland atop an existing Palestinian homeland.

November 2 marks the centenary of the Balfour Declaration of 1917, which began the still-ongoing colonisation of Palestine and sowed the seeds of an endless nightmare for the Palestinian people. The UK Government needs to make amends for its crimes against the Holy Land. Campaigners are calling on it to apologise.
*****

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 New York Easter Parade – behaviour then considered outlandish. One feminist, Ruth Booth, declared, “Women! Light another torch of freedom! Fight another sex taboo!”

On October 19, 2016, a convoy of buses left the besieged al-Nusra dominated eastern enclave in Aleppo, Syria, and made its way through the government-controlled portions of the city.  Hundreds of Syrian soldiers lined both sides of the street as they passed.  The windows of at least some of the buses were blacked out.