Bill Van Auken & David North

Today marks the tenth anniversary of the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq. Ten years ago, the world watched the “shock and awe” bombing campaign light up the nighttime sky of Baghdad with billowing clouds of flame and smoke.

This campaign and the bloody ten years of occupation that followed had a devastating impact on what was once among the most advanced societies in the Middle East. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians were killed and millions were made homeless.

The American military’s conduct of the war produced crimes of staggering dimensions. This included the turning of Fallujah, a city of 350,000 people, into a free-fire zone, the bombarding of its occupants with white phosphorus shells, banned by international law, and the summary execution of wounded prisoners. Ten years later, the rates of child cancer and birth defects in Fallujah are similar to those in Hiroshima following the US atomic bombing.

The leaking of stomach-turning photographs from Abu Ghraib lifted the veil on the barbaric character of the war, which included the systematic use of torture, death squads and sectarian massacres to terrorize the Iraqi population into submission.

People in Iraq continue to die from the sectarian violence unleashed by the war as well as from the destruction of infrastructure that has deprived them of clean water, health care and other essentials of life. One million children under the age of 18 have lost one or both parents, and hundreds of thousands suffer from grievous wounds.

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Stephen Lendman

Israel's Fascist Government [Part I]

On March 18, Israel's new government was sworn in. Doing so hardened fascist rule. A previous article explained. Israelis elected their most extremist government ever. It's hugely over-the-top. It's militantly hardline, racist and unscrupulous. It menaces the region. It supports state-sponsored terrorism, belligerence, neoliberal harshness, and unlimited settlement expansions.

Troika partners rule. Netanyahu remains prime minister. He's an embarrassment to democratic governance. He spurns rule of law principles. He deplores peace. Expect more conflict on his watch.

Yair Lapid emerged a surprise partner. He's more showman than politician. He's more con man than legitimate. He's more demagogue than democrat. He's amateurish, shallow and disingenuous. He's more image and mirage than real. He's a ne-er-do-well wannabe. He's ignorant, callous, uncaring and racist. He's a media personality turned politician.

Naftali Bennett represents settler interests. He's the son of American immigrants. He's one of Israel's super-rich. He heads Habayit Yayehudi. It's Israel's third most powerful party. Earlier he led Israel's Yesha Council. It's a hardline umbrella group. It represents settler interests. It replaced Gush Emunim (Block of the Faithful). It replicates its extremism. It's militantly hardline. It's ideologically over-the-top. It's committed to unlimited settlement expansions. It wants Palestinians displaced. It wants Greater Israel exclusively Jewish. Expanding settlements reflects core Israeli policy. Hardline ministers are committed to do so.

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Michael Albert

John Pilger Interviewed by Michael Albert

Michael Albert: 1. As a person very well known for both video work and writing work - I wonder if you could tell us how you got started in each, so people know a bit more about your history.

John Pilger: My journalism began in Australia when I started a newspaper at Sydney High School. It was called 'The Messenger' and I was 12 years old. Or perhaps it began a year or two earlier when I would get up before sunrise to deliver newspapers, only to be chastised by my employer for wasting his time reading them. Journalism certainly helped bring the world to me as I grew up; the antipodes are ruled by a tyranny of distance; I tried to imagine the rest of humanity so far away.

I grew up in Sydney, in what was then quite a poor industrial city, in a family that was considered "political": that is, we were "on the side of the underdog", as my mother would say. Australia was a society divided deeply by class, religion and silence, as Mark Twain recognised on one his visits. He described our colonial history as "like the most beautiful of lies". The indigenous people, the oldest continuous culture on earth, about whom almost no one spoke, did not exist; the likeness with South Africa was too disturbing.

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