President Obama’s presumptive choice to replace Hillary Clinton as secretary of state in his second term is in the middle of a partisan storm stirred up by angry Republican lawmakers over her role in the Benghazi attack that killed four Americans. But others argue that the Libya incident and her role in disseminating information about [...]
THE U.S. IS ENGAGED IN PLENTY OF “NATION BUILDING”; IT’S JUST NOT THE AMERICAN NATION THAT ITS GOVERNMENT IS BUILDING. Nick Turse notes the stark contrast between rhetoric and reality in President Obama’s words that the U.S. is not interested in “nation building” abroad but in “freeing resources” from investment in foreign development to [...]
THE POOR IN AMERICA: THE BEATINGS WILL CONTINUE UNTIL MORALE IMPROVES. In what Mike Whitney calls the “lousiest recovery of all time,” the U.S. economy has recovered from the recession of 2007 in only one respect: in booming profits in the stock market and elsewhere on Wall Street. Meanwhile unemployment remains high, real wages [...]
DOES ISRAEL HAVE A RIGHT TO EXIST? Let’s put that another way, says Patrick Higgins; does “murderous settler-colonialism” have a right to exist? The current Israeli raids on Gaza provoke this question. Higgins compares the Jewish settler movement in the middle east to the process of white settlers “winning the west” from native Americans. [...]
“THIRD WAY” IS WALL STREET’S WAY OF PROMOTING SOCIAL SECURITY PRIVATIZATION AND AUSTERITY. The “Grand Bargain” between Democrats and Republicans which faces America at the brink of the “fiscal cliff” is being supported by Third Way, a “liberal-centrist think tank” which promotes the Wall Street agenda. William Black notes that “Third Way” is neither [...]
“KINDNESS HOLDS A PLACE ON A PAR WITH INTELLECTUAL ATTAINMENT.” This admonition, given to incoming freshmen at Harvard University as they are required to take an oath to exercise “sensitivity” in their public utterances and demonstrations, highlights a tendency across the country for students on college campuses to be restrained in their “speech” [...]
MISSING IN ACTION IN PRESIDENTIAL DEBATES: THAT VISION THING. With 3 of their 4 scheduled debates under their belts, the presidential and vice-presidential candidates have failed to articulate much of anything in the way of concrete plans that might determine how the electorate votes. Beyond accusing their opponents of not having detailed such plans, [...]
ARMS DEPOT EXPLOSION IN CONGO: THE DEATH TOLL THAT DIDN’T HAVE TO BE. (Christian Science Monitor) Explosion of government arms depot in capital city of Brazzaville produces at least 213 deaths of residents in the area. Observers note that this death toll was the result of “bad urban planning” if not outright corruption of DRC [...]
ANOTHER U.S. PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION? MAYBE IT’S TIME FOR ANOTHER ISRAELI INVASION OF GAZA. (Jerusalem Post) The Jerusalem Post reports that senior staff of Israeli Defense Forces are preparing a larger version of the 2008 Cast Lead invasion, as rockets continue to be fired from Gazan into Israeli territory. While Hamas has only about 20,000 troops [...]
ONE IF BY SEA, TWO IF BY AIR (The National) Israel continues its repressive practices against would-be pro-Palestinian protesters. Having thwarted a “flotilla” of ships headed for Gaza to support solidarity with the besieged territory by the grace of the Greek government, Israel takes action to “re-patriate” numerous activists in a “flytilla” of activists who [...]
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