Reality Check. When Venezuela and Cuba offered aid to the victims of Hurricane Katrina

Eighty per cent of New Orleans was inundated when levies broke during Hurricane Katrina.

By TONY SEED

Originally published March 2, 2019 during the US “humanitarian aid” offensive against Venezuela

Fifteen years ago, at 6 a.m. on August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina struck Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama on the Gulf of Mexico, leading to the most infamous social disaster in the modern history of the United States preceding the 2020 pandemic. Hurricanes are measured by the velocity of their winds, the height of their storm surges, and other similar properties. But disasters are remembered by their impact on the social and natural environment, and on that scale Katrina is one of the most destructive disasters in U.S. history. The presidency of George W. Bush responded by federalizing military rule, providing a template in many respects to that of the Donald Trump presidency in 2020 to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Flashback: The day the war broke out

Halifax, March 20, 2003. Hundreds upon hundreds of people take to the streets to condemn the U.S. invasion of Iraq the night before.

In this article from our archives, TONY SEED chronicles the response of Haligonians – and authority – to the first day of the U.S. war against Iraq. Similar demonstrations take place in Shelburne, Wolfville and Antigonish and a silent vigil in Sydney, Cape Breton, as well as in Fredericton, New Brunswick (see below), across Canada and around the world. History shows the correctness of this just stand. The war and ensuing occupation, endorsed and supported by the Chrétien government and every daily newspaper in Canada, caused a terrible tragedy for the people of Iraq and West Asia (Middle East): the number of Iraqis slaughtered is an estimated 1,455,590 people. From reports submitted to Shunpiking Magazine and TML Daily.

(HALIFAX, 20 March 2003) – TODAY a mass democracy meeting broke out at Dalhousie University on Canada’s Atlantic coast against Bush’s barbarous war against Iraq, beginning a day of mass opposition and upheaval that swept across the nation, from east to west, continuing a wave of protest unfolding around the globe, first Oceania, then Asia, the Middle East and Europe and onto the Americas as surely as the earth travels around the sun.

This Day. The downing of Iran Air Flight 655

By TONY SEED*

(July 3) – On this day in 1988, the American warship USS Vincennes deliberately fired missiles at an Iranian civilian aircraft, Iran Air Flight 655. Two hundred and ninety innocent passengers died. Vice President George W. Bush honoured the warship, saying: “I don’t care what the facts say: I will never apologize for the United States … Life goes on!”

A300B2-203 Iran Air EP-IBT at Mehrabad International Airport, Tehran | Khashayar Talebzadeh

Designed to fail: American aggression in Afghanistan

A review of Carlotta Gall’s The Wrong Enemy: America in Afghanistan | OMAR AHMAD

US Marines stand in formation during a transfer of authority ceremony at Shorab camp, in Helmand province, Afghanistan April 29, 2017 | Reuters/James Mackenzie

In 2003 I attended a hearing on Afghanistan at the US Senate. During the hearing, at which a serving general and a few other experts were giving their testimony, the then Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Joe Biden, leaned forward and said something to the effect of, “I’ve always felt that rather than sending 100,000 troops to Iraq, we should have sent 25,000 troops to Waziristan instead.”

17 years ‘War on Terror’

Seventeen years after the September 11 terror attacks, German government advisors are calling for a re-evaluation of the ongoing “War on Terror.”

John Pilger on ISIS: Only when we see the war criminals in our midst will the blood begin to dry

 By JOHN PILGER / johnpilger.com

In transmitting President Richard Nixon’s orders for a “massive” bombing of Cambodia in 1969, Henry Kissinger said, “Anything that flies on everything that moves”.  As Barack Obama ignites his seventh war against the Muslim world since he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, the orchestrated hysteria and lies make one almost nostalgic for Kissinger’s murderous honesty.

US study documented nearly 1,000 lies from Iraq war propaganda campaign

Alex Lantier, wsws.org (26 January 2008) – THE systematic propaganda campaign waged by the Bush administration with the full collaboration of the mass media to drag the American people into a war of aggression has been newly documented by the Center for Public Integrity (CPI). The Washington-based, non-profit public policy journalism organization this week released a large database of the lies top government officials used to terrorize the US public into accepting the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

By the CPI’s count, the 380,000-word searchable database (available to the public at http://www.publicintegrity.org/WarCard/) contains at least 935 demonstrably false statements made on 532 separate occasions by the following officials: President George W. Bush, Vice-President Richard Cheney, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, and press secretaries Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan.

Obama’s self-serving falsification of history: ‘he is a good man’

“So we know President Bush the man. And what President Clinton said is absolutely true — to know the man is to like the man, because he’s comfortable in his own skin. He knows who he is. He doesn’t put on any pretenses. He takes his job seriously, but he doesn’t take himself too seriously. He is a good man.” Barack Obama, speaking at the dedication of the George W. Bush Presidential Library, April 25, 2013

On the war

Merchants of Death – Lithograph by Mabel Dwight

Editor’s Note: Since 9-11, the pro-war Halifax media – with three exceptions (CKDU Radio, Novanewsnet and The Coast) – has distinguished itself by ignoring the views of a growing anti-war movement. This essay on the violation of international law and the geopolitics of the Anglo-American war against Afghanistan in which Canada is participating is based on a speech given by Professor Isaac Saney at the anti-war rally of 20 October 2001 in Halifax.