PRESIDENT OBAMA “THROWS IN THE TOWEL” ON POPULISM AND “INTEGRITY” IN HIS ADMINISTRATION Two obscure cabinet appointments with an outsized impact on the daily lives of Americans made by President Obama in the last month offers a startling look at the true course the president’s second term will take, argues Norman Solomon. Penny Pritzker [...]
Renewed focus is being turned to the nearly 200 individuals being held as suspected “enemy combatants” at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba with deteriorating conditions creating unrest at the prison and President Obama asserting that the facility “is not necessary to keep America safe.” The complicated history and uncertain future of the U.S. prison [...]
WANT TO GET MORE BIKES ON THE ROAD IN BRITAIN? How about making it safer and more convenient for people to ride them? Only 2% of people in UK ride bicycles to work, compared with about a quarter of them in continental countries. A group of MPs are urging their colleagues, in the name of [...]
Captured by law enforcement after what was often a violent 24-hour manhunt. the surviving suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings last Monday now recovers in a hospital under the careful watch of state and federal officials. With considerable video evidence of his role in the crime, few think Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is innocent of participating in [...]
WATCH YOUR MOUTH, JOHN KERRY. The new U.S. Secretary of State commits the unpardonable sin of comparing the suffering visited on innocent people at the Boston Marathon with the 2010 Israeli raid and killing of numerous passengers on a “flotilla” of vessels bound with humanitarian aid to breach the Israeli blockage of Gaza. Israeli [...]
“INSUFFICIENTLY PRO-ISRAELI?” New U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel had his appointment held up on such “insufficiency” charge but now, on a trip to Israel, he seems to be establishing his sufficiency bones. In presenting a large deal for U.S. arms shipments to Israel, he says that the deal is a “clear signal” to Iran [...]
PUBLIC REACTIONS TO BOSTON BOMBING: SELECTIVE SYMPATHY AND IRRATIONAL FEAR. While a definitive “who did it?” narrative has yet to emerge, preliminary reactions show an all-too-familiar pattern, according to Glenn Greenwald. There is the typical quick assumption of a “Muslim” involvement that puts U.S. Muslims everywhere at fear of retaliation, and makes “heightened security” [...]
THE WAY OF THE KNIFE: THE C.I.A., A SECRET ARMY, AND A WAR AT THE ENDS OF THE EARTH. A new book of this title by Mark Mazzetti is about to be released and is excerpted in the New York Times. It describes the “secret deal” in 2004 between the C.I.A. and the Pakistani state [...]
ANTI-DRONE ACTION: IT’S NOT JUST A 13-HOUR RAND PAUL FILIBUSTER ANYMORE. Medea Benjaming and Noor Mir describe an April “month of uprising” against drone use both domestically and in pursuit of U.S. foreign policy interests. This “uprising” is taking many forms, including prohibitions for police use in many cities and states, protests at the [...]
“ANTIQUE COLD WARRIORS IN THE SERVICE OF PIRATE CAPITALISTS.” This is Rob Urie’s tag-line for his scathing denunciation of the Iraqi war: the authorities who perpetrated it, and the 75% of Americans who “supported” it until the action came to be seen as too costly and futile. Bush administration officials come under major charges [...]
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