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Anti-Empire

Anti-Empire

offsite link North Korea Increases Aid to Russia, Mos... Tue Nov 19, 2024 12:29 | Marko Marjanovi?

offsite link Trump Assembles a War Cabinet Sat Nov 16, 2024 10:29 | Marko Marjanovi?

offsite link Slavgrinder Ramps Up Into Overdrive Tue Nov 12, 2024 10:29 | Marko Marjanovi?

offsite link ?Existential? Culling to Continue on Com... Mon Nov 11, 2024 10:28 | Marko Marjanovi?

offsite link US to Deploy Military Contractors to Ukr... Sun Nov 10, 2024 02:37 | Field Empty

Anti-Empire >>

The Saker

Indymedia ireland

Indymedia Ireland is a volunteer-run non-commercial open publishing website for local and international news, opinion & analysis, press releases and events. Its main objective is to enable the public to participate in reporting and analysis of the news and other important events and aspects of our daily lives and thereby give a voice to people.

offsite link Army Sergeant Travis Decker Murdered His Three Children After Being Denied Mental Health Care at JBL... Sat Jun 07, 2025 04:52 | JBLM Whistleblowers
A corrupt military police force and incompetent Commander who denied emergency mental health care and crisis counseling to an American service member resulted in the murder of the sergeant's three young daughters

offsite link Gaza doctor grieves her nine children killed in Israeli strike Sun May 25, 2025 20:00 | imc
Israeli regime continues it's slaughter
'The children were completely charred'

Paediatrician Alaa al-Najjar was treating victims of Israeli attacks when her children were killed by an Israeli strike on their home

offsite link British doctors working in Gaza describe territory as a ?slaughterhouse? Sat May 24, 2025 00:23 | imc
There?s no food getting in so people are starving,? surgeon Tom Potokar says
British doctors working in Gaza have described the territory as a ?slaughterhouse,? where the patients they are treating are severely malnourished.

Plastic surgeons and orthopedic specialists from the UK are based at the Amal and Nasser hospitals in Khan Younis in the south of the territory.

Dr. Tom Potokar, a plastic surgeon specializing in burn injuries, has worked in Gaza 16 times but said this mission had revealed a level of destruction far greater than his last visit in 2023,

offsite link It is time to talk about the Out of Control Immigration. Mon Mar 31, 2025 22:12 | imc
For the last few years since the CV19 scamdemic undocumented immigration into Ireland has surged. No one is allowed discuss it because they do not want any rational debate about it. If you do you are labelled an extremist. However this out of control immigration is fully facilitated by the Irish government and the EU and the shady figure behind the Neo Con movement pushing for endless war, wokeism and globalist agenda.

offsite link [Dublin] National Demonstration for Palestine: End Israeli Apartheid & Genocide Thu Mar 06, 2025 22:35 | ipsc
Sat, 22 March 2025, 13:00 Assemble at the Garden of Remembrance, Parnell Square, Dublin 1
The Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign, supported by over 150 Irish civil society organisations, has called another National Demonstration for Palestine on Saturday 22nd March.

The march will begin at the Garden of Remembrance at 1pm and finish outside the D?il on Molesworth Street/Kildare Street to bring our demands to the Irish government?s doorstep.

The Saker >>

Lockdown Skeptics

The Daily Sceptic

offsite link ?Muhammad? Tops Baby Name Charts Again Thu Jul 31, 2025 13:00 | Richard Eldred
Muhammad is once again the most popular baby name for boys in England and Wales, in a year marked by a growing trend towards global, cross-cultural naming.
The post ?Muhammad? Tops Baby Name Charts Again appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

offsite link White House Warns Starmer: Stop Threatening US Tech Companies? Free Speech Thu Jul 31, 2025 11:00 | Toby Young
It looks increasingly likely that the sweeping censorship powers granted to Ofcom by the Online Safety Act will be raised in US-UK trade talks, as the Trump administration becomes increasingly concerned.
The post White House Warns Starmer: Stop Threatening US Tech Companies? Free Speech appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

offsite link Mainstream Naysayers Gather As Hopes Rise for Fourth Year of Record Coral on the Great Barrier Reef Thu Jul 31, 2025 09:00 | Chris Morrison
Despite three record years of coral growth, the mainstream media keeps pushing doom and gloom on the Great Barrier Reef ? a story that doesn't quite add up, says the Daily Sceptic's Environment Editor.
The post Mainstream Naysayers Gather As Hopes Rise for Fourth Year of Record Coral on the Great Barrier Reef appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

offsite link Unless Migrant Crime Is Happening to Them Personally, Many Brits Simply Refuse to Believe It Even Ex... Thu Jul 31, 2025 07:00 | Steven Tucker
Britain's migrant crimewave is only invisible to those living in leafy delusion ? just ask Steven Tucker, who rips into the blind elites mistaking burning mattresses for cultural enrichment.
The post Unless Migrant Crime Is Happening to Them Personally, Many Brits Simply Refuse to Believe It Even Exists ? Especially Our Blinkered Rulers appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

offsite link News Round-Up Thu Jul 31, 2025 00:51 | Richard Eldred
A summary of the most interesting stories in the past 24 hours that challenge the prevailing orthodoxy about the ?climate emergency?, public health ?crises? and the supposed moral defects of Western civilisation.
The post News Round-Up appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

Lockdown Skeptics >>

Voltaire Network
Voltaire, international edition

offsite link Will intergovernmental institutions withstand the end of the "American Empire"?,... Sat Apr 05, 2025 07:15 | en

offsite link Voltaire, International Newsletter N?127 Sat Apr 05, 2025 06:38 | en

offsite link Disintegration of Western democracy begins in France Sat Apr 05, 2025 06:00 | en

offsite link Voltaire, International Newsletter N?126 Fri Mar 28, 2025 11:39 | en

offsite link The International Conference on Combating Anti-Semitism by Amichai Chikli and Na... Fri Mar 28, 2025 11:31 | en

Voltaire Network >>

Iraq War Veteran and Milblogger wins Blooker Prize

category international | arts and media | news report author Tuesday May 15, 2007 12:00author by DM Report this post to the editors

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Iraq War Veteran, Colby Buzzell - Blooker Prize Winner. Photograph: Reuters
Iraq War Veteran, Colby Buzzell - Blooker Prize Winner. Photograph: Reuters

Blooking about the war
The last time an Iraq war veteran won a major prize he collected a lot more hard cash but a lot less attention. But that was when 24 year old Peter Willers Jepsen defeated 284 players in the Euro Poker Championship (http://peacenikhurler.blogspot.com/2007/04/iraq-war-vet....html), to win the biggest sum of a $1.385 million prize pool, picking up $433,000 for his win. Extracts I have read from US soldier Colby Buzzell's prize-winning book, which began online as a blook (blog book) while he was stationed in Mosul, Iraq, are quite disturbing, to put it mildly. Ranging from his recollection of how 'Lt Armeni's guts were spilling everywhere' after an RPG attack on a U.S. convoy to how he tried to 'waste an unarmed man' flying a scene of carnage, mourning the fact the 'somehow the bastard got away'. Well, by the tone of these couple of examples we can be fairly certain that Colby did indeed 'waste' a good few Iraqis on his tour of duty. War on terror? More like 'War of terror'. Then again, why should any of us be shocked at such an obscene account of violence, when we all know the disaster the invasion and occupation of Iraq has been.

His account of fighting in Iraq's Sunni triangle has won the 'Blooker prize' (http://www.lulublookerprize.com/), worth $15,000, beating off stiff competition from over 110 entries from 15 countries. The former U.S. military machine-gunner turned writer, whose successful account entitled 'My War: Killing Time in Iraq', was voted the best book of the year based on a blog. The award is granted by Lulu (http://www.lulu.com/) which credits itself as 'the world's fastest-growing provider of print-on-demand books'. But it's quite probable that Buzzell's win will be last such victory for military personnel typing up their experiences online.

Milblog Clampdown
This is due to the irony of his success coming at the same time as the Pentagon's attempts to crackdown on the amount of free-blogging engaged in by soldiers in the theatre of war, citing security concerns and pressure on servers as the justification. Supervising officers will now have to check and censor the 'milbloggers' before they can place their entries online for the whole world to read. The Pentagon announced yesterday that they were blocking access, throughout their system of military computers and networks, to 13 popular websites, such as YouTube.

The pen is mightier than the sword
The memoir is based on Buzzel's experiences in Mosul, northern Iraq, where he was based for a year in 2004. He claims to have joined the army after a period of time when "I was living off Top Ramen [pot noodles] in a suburb of San Francisco and my life was going nowhere".
He discovered blogging by reading a Time article while in Iraq, and started posting eight months into his tour. Whatever one thinks of his book, and the little I have read doesn't make a good impression on me about the type of stuff Buzzell and his fellow soldiers got up to, it has already been translated into seven languages. Thankfully, his new found talent has led him to embark on a career away from the killing fields and the machine guns to freelance writing for Esquire magazine, among others. He's back living California, this time is Los Angeles.

He cites the deceased Kurt Vonnegut and Hunter S. Thomson as literary heroes of his. An unlikely duo one might think, but I was surprised to read the following words from Vonnegut, "My War by Colby Buzzell is nothing less than the soul of an extremely interesting human being at war on our behalf in Iraq." U.S. Today believe that "military recruiters won't be handing My War to prospective soldiers, who would do well to read one grunt's account of what they could be getting into." So it certainly seems that this real-life account of the terror U.S. soldiers perpetrate and experience on the ground in Iraq and elsewhere is a read those of us who are anti-war could learn a lot from. Indeed if Kirkus reviews are right about the potential impact the book contains, then we may even need to start promoting it: "If military recruitment is down now, wait till the kids read this book."

The following is an extract from Buzzel's book, as posted on the Guardian website:

My War: Killing Time in Iraq

Thursday August 4 2004

Down in the hatch, I was frantically scanning my sector when suddenly about 300 metres away from us, over by the traffic circle, I saw two guys with those red-and-white jihad towels wrapped around their heads creeping around a corner.......

More at http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,2079657,00.html

Related Link: http://peacenikhurler.blogspot.com/2007/03/world-needs-little-nonviolent_30.html
author by Will Lynchpublication date Thu May 17, 2007 16:11author address author phone Report this post to the editors

I read it last year and I didn't particularly rate it - not a bad effort but not great either.

I would recommend Generation Kill by Evan Wright - excellent.

Even though it was set in the last Gulf War, Jarhead by Anthony Swofford is one of the best books I have ever read.

Dispatches by Michael Herr is cool too. Different War- Same Shit.

author by e_m_remarque_fan - == reincarnated ww2 fighter pilots ==publication date Wed Sep 26, 2007 18:44author address author phone Report this post to the editors

I have read a good number of battllogues, and jarhead was by leaps and bounds the weakest of them all.
About 90% of the material is training, drinking, and moaning about how marine brainwashing is a fantasy.

Read a book called (en) "all quiet on the western front" by Erich Maria Remarque.
(de: Im Westen nichts Neues)

 
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