Amnesty International report says there has been a failure to investigate systematically the widespread human rights violations committed by the US and UK forces.

The US has established a drone 'operations centre' in the heart of the Lincolnshire countryside which could be used to co-ordinate attacks in the Middle East and Africa.

The Iraq war bankrupted the British and American political class. They no longer speak for the people they claim to represent. Few believe any longer anything they say.

Venezuela holds the largest oil reserves in the world: Hugo Chavez came up with the subversive idea of using oil wealth to at least alleviate the problems of most of his people.

The NATO drone operator in the Nevada desert is just a much a premeditated killer as the insurgent suicide bomber pressing the button in Kabul or wherever.

News reports list "failures", "setbacks" and "lessons" for "the West", but there's never a line of background saying the people who started the war are now criminally liable.

The pattern in Iraq provides an eerie parallel to the well-documented human rights abuses committed by US-advised and funded paramilitary squads in Central America in the 1980s.

'The new battle lines have been drawn, crude as they are: to criticize the US government is to be on the side of the terrorists and their evil goals'.

For those who have experienced and borne witness to beatings, torture, and even death at Guantánamo, Obama has ensured that the prospect of freedom will remain as remote as ever.

Chavez had a real grasp of the dynamics of imperialism, and recognised that the Iraq war, and the opposition to it, held back the US from intervening against his government.