Home

Recent content by Saul Landau

Free private Manning: Unmasking the Myth of National Security

Double standards and double speak surround the case of private Manning; the term 'national security' has been used again and again by the government to cover up bureaucratic mistakes and human rights crimes.

Assassination on Embassy Row: 34 years later

Remembering Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffitt 34 years after their assassination by Chile's secret police.

Poverty Rising

As the empire flails in unsuccessful efforts to control 'strategic areas' abroad, its internal politics have devolved into 'The Unreality Game'.

Revenge of the Deficit-Haters

Ironically, the loudest complainers about paying taxes become the most eloquent advocates of spending more on the military.

Gross Media Negligence

When the mainstream media fails to question the dictates of the powerful or omits the contradictory facts that might lead to a questioning audience, history itself gets rewritten, with dangerous implications for the future.

A Tale Of Two Extraditions

The US government demanded that Jamaican Prime Minister Bruce Golding extradite a drug dealer. When Venezuela made similar demands on Washington, for arguably the Hemisphere’s most notorious terrorist, the Justice Department brushed off the request.

Remember Vietistan?

McChrystal's departure has highlighted not only how mired in conflict the US has become - but also the striking similarities between Vietnam - now the second longest War in US history - and Afghanistan.

Israel again gives Jews a bad name

Israel's attack against a humanitarian flotilla to Gaza was intended to show the world who is the boss.

The new right history

The US Texas State Board of Education approved a new social studies
curriculum to reflect American History as it should have happened.

The decline of the Catholic Church?

Scandals distract the public from focusing on key issues. Sometimes, however, they also provide insights into the character of leading cultural and political figures -- and their institutions.

Reflections of routine air travel

Few commentators dare link poverty and corruption to extremism in Muslim countries.

Reciprocity!

The CIA has backed some 600 documented attempts against Castro, while there have been no Havana-backed plots against U.S. Presidents. Should Cuba put Washington on its terrorist list? Long Live Reciprocity!

Department of Defense, Inc.

Instead of Pentagon fighting healtcare for the lion's share of US budget, introducing a National Defense Medicare bill, lodged inside the Pentagon budget, would assume health care as just one more task in the unending challenge of defending our besieged nation.

The Pentagon: Gargantua’s mouth

With no real military dangers threathening the US, the Pentagon has to invent them to justify its multi-billion dollar budget. And the bill is presented to the taxpayers.

Decline of decency

Instead of discussing the ethical dimension of the US foreign policy, the national debate in the US still rages around how many more crimes the government should commit to ensure “security.”

Really inconvenient truth

Most political leaders face a challenge they refuse to acknowledge: to gain control of runaway climate change they must abandon convenience, the unchallenged assumptions that place the corporation as means and ends of policies.

Honduras: The preventive coup (Final Part)

Zelaya's biggest sin was proposing, through a non-binding
referendum, a Constitutional convention to consider structural change.

Magical Realism -- A coup in Honduras, so 20th Century! (Part 1)

By recognising the coup in Honduras, Obama follows the old US Latin American policy of siding with corporate interests against the will of the people.

Naked empire

In November 2008, Americans, recoiling from the Bush nightmare, voted for “hope” and “change”, but Obama turned out not to be exactly what they voted for.

Almost one year: Assessment

We have made the transition from a President who both horrified and amused us to one who simply disappoints.