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Angered that a beloved member of his squad had been killed in an explosion, a US Marine urinated on one of the 24 dead Iraqi civilians killed by his unit in Haditha, the Marine testified.

Sergeant Sanick Dela Cruz, who has immunity from prosecution after murder charges against him were dismissed, also said he watched his squad leader shoot down five Iraqi civilians who were trying to surrender.

In dramatic testimony in a pretrial hearing for one of the seven Marines charged in the November 2005 killings and reported cover-up at Haditha, Dela Cruz described his bitterness after a roadside bomb ripped Lance Corporal Miguel Terrazas, known as TJ, into two bloody pieces. Continue reading →

We know that capitalism is not just the most sensible way to organize an economy but is now the only possible way to organize an economy. We know that dissenters to this conventional wisdom can, and should, be ignored. There’s no longer even any need to persecute such heretics; they are obviously irrelevant.How do we know all this? Because we are told so, relentlessly — typically by those who have the most to gain from such a claim, most notably those in the business world and their functionaries and apologists in the schools, universities, mass media, and mainstream politics. Capitalism is not a choice, but rather simply is, like a state of nature. Maybe not like a state of nature, but the state of nature. To contest capitalism these days is like arguing against the air that we breathe. Arguing against capitalism, we’re told, is simply crazy. Continue reading →

More than a million Turks rallied on Sunday in support of secular democracy amid an unprecedented stand-off between the Islamist-rooted government and the army over presidential elections.

As calls for calm mounted, Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul, a former Islamist and the sole candidate in the race to become president, ruled out withdrawing his bid, defying the army’s threat of intervention in politics.

The prospect of Gul becoming head of state has alarmed secularists who fear the strict separation of state and religion will be eroded and Islam will creep into all fields of life if he is elected.

“Turkey is secular and will remain secular,” the protesters who filled up Istanbul’s sprawling Caglayan square chanted.

“Neither Sharia, nor coup d’etat. Democratic Turkey,” they shouted, carrying Turkish flags and portraits of the country’s founding father, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.

Police at the scene told AFP the number of demonstrators was well over one million. It was the second such rally in two weeks, following a similar one in Ankara on April 14.

Tensions rose after Gul narrowly missed becoming the country’s next president in a first round of voting in parliament on Friday.

The ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) dominates the 550-seat parliament, but does not have the required two-thirds majority of 367 to get Gul elected in the first two rounds of voting.

The opposition, which opposes Gul as president, boycotted Friday’s vote.

The army, which has toppled four governments in as many decades, responded by saying it was determined to protect the secular system and take action if the need arose.

This made it clear, many analysts said, that Gul’s candidacy was not welcome with the army top brass.

The government retorted by calling the army to order and Gul said he would remain in the race.

“It is out of the question for me to withdraw my candidacy in any way,” he told reporters in Ankara.

The main opposition party has asked the Constitutional Court to cancel Friday’s presidential vote in parliament, arguing that the assembly did not have the necessary quorum to open the voting session.

If the court annuls the vote, general elections set for November 4 could be brought forward.

If it does not, Gul could be elected president in a third round of voting on May 9, when an absolute majority of 276 votes would suffice.

The court’s president said they would make decision before the second round of voting on Wednesday.

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Some things interest the media, others don’t. Since the fall of the USSR, the United States has sought another menace to designate as the ultimate evil, a world threat the Americans desperately need to take on. The 9/11 attacks gave them that enemy. And when the White House speaks, the media listens obediently.

Over the last number of years the “Islamic threat” has become one of the favourite issues for media coverage. It’s all over the news–Muslims leaders pronouncing threats against the countries participating in occupying Muslim land.

While America is the Western country most succumbed to the fear of Islamism, things aren’t much better in Europe. Its media is highly Americanised and thus eager to reiterate U.S. governmental positions towards the non-Western world. Islamic terrorism is subsequently a theme close to the hearts of European journalists as well.

Following this, you might think the journalists would be beside themselves with joy when the European Police Office (Europol) releases its first report on terrorism in the EU. I can assure you they weren’t. In fact, to my best knowledge, not a single Swedish paper or news-channel has paid any attention to it whatsoever. I haven’t seen it receiving much attention in other EU countries either (kudos to the EUobserver for having the decency to report on it). The report is namely a grave disappointment for the anti-Islamic campaigners.

There were 498 incidents in eleven EU countries last year labelled as “terrorist attacks.” The Basque separatist group ETA did best (136 terrorist attacks) and was responsible for the only deadly attack, killing two in Madrid. The remaining 497 fortunately cost no human lives.

How about the Islamic terrorists then? Considering the perpetual warnings in our daily papers, the findings in the Europol report is, to say the least, surprising. The truth is that Islamists only carried out one out of the 498 terrorist attacks in the European Union in 2006. Don’t believe me? The entire report is available on Europol’s website. Had Islamic fundamentalists been behind a higher number of attacks-say 136-it would have been front page news at every big daily. One attack is simply too few–it won’t do if the image of an “Islamic threat” is to live on.

The Europol report devotes several pages to Islamist terrorism, despite the low number. Except for the one attack in Germany this group was responsible for (which, by the way, failed and resulted in no victims), also Denmark and the United Kingdom reported that Islamists plotted to carry out one attack in each country respectively (incidentally, all three countries are accessory to the illegal occupation of Iraq). However, since these plans in both cases were exposed before they were set to work, they were not included among the 498. Either way, even after taking these plots into account, the report proves the genuine magnitude of Islamic terrorism in Europe–it’s not exactly a huge threat.

If we look at the people arrested on suspicion of terrorism offences, the figures are rather disproportionate; about half of them arrested were Muslim. In plain English: Muslims are a group causing very little terrorism in Europe, while at the same time much more likely to be arrested on suspicion of it. The constant media coverage of Muslims being arrested creates the false image of a serious threat in order to benefit the imperialist world-view Washington wants us to adopt. Meanwhile the Americans and their accomplices are carrying out genocide in Iraq. Clearly, something needs to be done about the media.

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