Saturday, April 02, 2011

Libyan War Recalls Afghan Pitfalls

By Robert Parry
April 2, 2011

The historical parallel most unnerving the Obama administration about the Libyan conflict is not Vietnam or Iraq, but Afghanistan in the 1980s, when the Reagan administration eagerly armed Islamic fundamentalists as a proxy force against Soviet troops only to see these “freedom fighters” morph into the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

Read on.

'Free-Marketeers' Target Labor Unions

By Michael Winship
April 2, 2011

There’s a joke making the rounds and it goes like this: Big Business, a Tea Partier and Organized Labor are sitting around a table. A dozen cookies arrive on a plate. Big Business takes eleven of them and says to the Tea Partier, "Pssst! That union guy is trying to steal your cookie!"

Read on.

Friday, April 01, 2011

Surreal Rhetoric on Libya

By Lawrence Davidson
April 1, 2011

Spokespersons for NATO, European politicians, members of the Obama administration, and the President himself have been out and about seeking to articulate justifications for the ongoing intervention in Libya. For better or worse, their public statements do not always make sense.

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The Looming Government Shutdown

By Danny Schechter
April 1, 2011

Forget Libya. The real bombing is not underway there. Pay less attention to Pakistan. The drone attacks there pale in comparison.

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A Wave of Wackiness Sweeps America

By Don Monkerud
April 1, 2011

Guns in churches, schools and bars. Immigrants expelled to solve financial problems. Morality praised as the key national issue.

Read on.

A Two-Decade Detour into Empire

By Robert Parry
March 31, 2011

Twenty years ago, in spring 1991, the United States was at a crossroads that would decide the near-term fate of American democracy, but that reality wasn’t apparent to many. What was clear was that the U.S. empire was resurgent.

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Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Into the Shifting Sands of Libya

By Ivan Eland
March 30, 2011

Things are bad when a president who says he wants out of Iraq and claims American soldiers will soon start to withdraw from Afghanistan succumbs to international and domestic pressure to do the heavy lifting in yet another civil war — this time in Libya.

Read on.

Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Warriors of the Mainstream Media

By Robert Parry
March 29, 2011

The New York Times and the Washington Post both believe that the United States should have begun bombing Libya before the United Nations Security Council approved the mission – a sign that the two preeminent American newspapers continue their slide into neoconservatism.

Read on.

Monday, March 28, 2011

Afghan War Hawks Strike Again

By Gareth Porter
March 29, 2011

The announcement by U.S. Deputy Undersecretary of Defense Michele Flournoy in congressional testimony that the United States would continue to carry out "counter-terrorism operations" from "joint bases" in Afghanistan well beyond 2014 signaled that President Barack Obama has given up the negotiating flexibility he would need to reach a peace agreement with the Taliban leadership.

Read on.

Hidden Words of Nuclear Disaster

By Rory O'Connor and Richard Bell
March 28, 2011

Tsunami is a Japanese word – one sign of the island nation’s intimate relationship with the destructive forces of the ocean that surrounds it.

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Obama Lacks Clarity on Afghan War

By Ray McGovern
March 28, 2011

“Let me be clear,” President Barack Obama is fond of saying – and his desire was on full display two years ago when he announced a “comprehensive, new strategy” for the war in Afghanistan.

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America's Escape from Knowing

By Phil Rockstroh
March 28, 2011

In Berlin, Germany, in early 1939, at Friedrichstrasse railway station, shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War, my grandmother placed my mother and her older sister, with a few family valuables sown into their clothing, on a Kindertransport bound for Great Britain.

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Sunday, March 27, 2011

The US Muzzling of Muslim Inmates

By Sherwood Ross
March 27, 2011

If you think the U.S. Bureau of Prisons (BOP) couldn't possibly make its prisons more inhumane no matter how hard it tried, you are wrong. It has created CMUs, or Communications Management Units, where the “management” part consists of denying inmates virtually all communication with their families and the outside world.

Read on.