Terrorwar
Matt Carr's Infernal Machine
Posts for Militarism Category
Middle East & Militarism & Uncategorized
Telling Lies About Syria
Galvanised by the reversals inflicted on the Syrian rebels in recent weeks, their foreign supporters have decided to lay the groundwork for further madness and folly. Two weeks ago Britain and France, the old colonial powers, managed to browbeat the European Union into abrogating its weapons embargo on Syria.
This, Hague informed the public with the deadpan expression of a fool or an accomplished liar, was intended to contribute to the peace conference in Geneva next month, by bolstering 'moderate' Syrian rebels.
Now, the Imperium has announced that the US is to start sending lethal...
Militarism & Terrorism & Terrorwar
At the end of a sad and horrible week, in which the brutal murder of a British soldier in Woolwich has unleashed dark forces that are more likely than ever to place all British Muslims under a state of siege, The Guardian's Jonathan Freedland chose to berate Ken Livingstone and 'the left' for suggesting...
Militarism & Terrorwar & UK politics & US politics
Western wars and 'interventions' in the age of 'humanitarian warfare' tend to rely on two essential propaganda tropes to prepare domestic and international public opinion for such events. Firstly, there is an appeal to humanitarianism/guilt through 'responsibility to protect' (R2P) rhetoric which confers a selective moral obligation to bomb or invade countries of geopolitical interest...
The Happy Warrior
War, as Britain's last surviving WWI veteran Harry Patch once told a glassy-eyed Tony Blair, is "organized murder, and nothing else." In the course of history, different societies have evolved various mechanisms to make this activity possible – and acceptable. Some have glorified it. Roman histories and chronicles such as Julius Caesar's Gallic Wars unapologetically...
Militarism & UK politics
Punching Above Our Weight
After a mild drop in the military budget over the last two years, the government has announced that it plans to spend £160 billion over the next ten years on new weapons systems that include Trident missile submarines, aircraft carriers and drones as part of the MoD's 'Force 2020' program.
Given the state of the...
Africa & Militarism & UK politics
Evan Davis, Mali and the Cock-up Theory
The mainstream British media tends to view foreign policy through a very narrow lens at the best of times, and the BBC's worldview tends to be more circumscribed than most. On Monday Evan Davis interviewed William Hague on the Today programme about Britain's role in Mali. During his gentle interrogation...
I'm a writer, campaigner and journalist. My latest book is The Savage Frontier: The Pyrenees in History and the Imagination (New Press/Hurst, 2018). The Infernal Machine is where I write on politics, history, cinema and other things that interest me.
The Savage Frontier: the Pyrenees in History and the Imagination
The Devils of Cardona
Fortress Europe: Dispatches from a Gated Continent, New Press 2012/Hurst 2016
Chronicle of a Coup Foretold
All Hail to the Monster
The Strange Tale of the Disappearing Country
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