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By Daniel Ellsberg
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By Gore Vidal
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Jeff Madrick’s new book insists that the anti-government ethos that is a treasured American prejudice is not grounded in the new economic reality. But is he fighting the last war?
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By Amy Goodman — As many as 5,000 children in Pennsylvania have been found guilty, and up to 2,000 of them jailed, by two corrupt judges who received kickbacks from the builders and owners of private prison facilities that benefited.
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AP pool photo / Alexei Druzhinin
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By Scott Ritter — Relations with Russia haven’t been this frosty since there was an East Berlin. President Obama may be distracted by other priorities, but getting reacquainted with Vladimir Putin and his nuclear arsenal should be at the top of the list.
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Flickr / openDemocracy
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Hugo Chavez can remain Venezuela’s president until he dies, gets bored or loses the job in an election, now that a referendum dropping term limits has succeeded. Chavez was facing mandatory retirement in 2012. An earlier attempt to extend his time in office failed. International election observers pronounced the process free and fair.
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telegraph.co.uk
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Much like an unsympathetic friend counseling you after a breakup, recently installed Zimbabwean Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai is calling on the world to “get over” the wrongs of President Robert Mugabe.
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guardian.co.uk
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With a dearth of smiles in Zimbabwe on Wednesday, Morgan Tsvangirai was sworn in as prime minister by his political nemesis, President Robert Mugabe. The long fight to this moment, which included Tsvangirai’s exile and the death of many of his political supporters, has culminated in a power-sharing agreement between the two men and their parties.
Posted on Feb 11, 2009
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By Amy Goodman — Have we learned nothing from the Iraq war? The Obama regime is gunning for more fighting in Afghanistan at a time when the U.S. should be seeking more talk.
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White House / Pete Souza
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By Eugene Robinson — Bipartisanship is a cute idea, but with 600,000 Americans losing their jobs in one month, there simply isn’t time to be nice.
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USAF / Tech. Sgt. Charlein Sheets
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The military’s spin budget—covering recruitment, advertising and public relations—has jumped 63 percent over the last five years, to $4.7 billion, according to a yearlong investigation by the Associated Press. The Pentagon pays nearly as many people to influence public opinion as the State Department has in its entire work force.
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Flickr / respres
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By Amy Goodman — Rep. Marcy Kaptur has a solution for beleaguered homeowners facing foreclosure: Dare Wall Street to produce the loan note that was bundled, securitized, sold and resold.
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AP photo / Nikolas Giakoumidis
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By Chris Hedges — The daily bleeding of thousands of jobs will soon turn our economic crisis into a political crisis. Our empire is dying. How will we cope with our decline? Will we cling to the absurd dreams of a superpower and a glorious tomorrow or will we responsibly face our stark new limitations?
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dailymail.co.uk
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The ever-unfolding democratic drama in Zimbabwe has revealed a new, potentially less contentious chapter. Opposition leader and once-exiled politician Morgan Tsvangirai has said he will join a government as prime minister with President Robert Mugabe in a power-sharing agreement between the two rival parties.
Posted on Jan 30, 2009
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A new book by Lawrence Lessig asks what constitutes copyright infringement in the era of “sampling” and point-and-click downloading.
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flapsblog.com
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Turning away from the nation-building exercises that defined Bush-era policies but maintaining the dubious “war on terror” frame, Defense Secretary Gates indicated Tuesday that he has changed his mind on the goals for Afghanistan. Gates declared that the U.S., instead of seeking democracy, should set more limited goals in the long war and occupation.
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By Amy Goodman — Millions have served time in U.S. prisons for crimes that fall far short of those attributed to the Bush administration. Some criminals, it seems, are like banks judged too big to fail: too big to jail, too powerful to prosecute.
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Two recent books show how a man of reason and conservative temperament and a man of passion and radical disposition joined together, even before either knew it, to end slavery.
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By Ellen Goodman — After the collapse of trust in every sort of expert—after lenders financed houses for people who couldn’t afford them, bankers created systems they couldn’t even describe and, finally, we hear, Bernie Madoff ripped off even his high school friends—there is a residue of resilience.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — President Barack Obama intends to use conservative values for progressive ends, and in doing so he will confuse a lot of people.
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By Amy Goodman — Barack Obama rode to Washington, D.C., for his presidential inauguration on a whistle-stop tour, which was compared to the train ride taken by Abraham Lincoln in 1861. The train holds a deeper symbolism, though, that undergirds Obama’s historic ascension to the White House.
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By Marie Cocco — George W. Bush promised to restore “honor and dignity” to the White House, but he leaves with less honor and with lower public approval than any other president since Richard Nixon.
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AP photo
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Truthdig normally celebrates Martin Luther King Day by remembering the more complex, more subversive King—the man who railed against America as “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today” and “a society gone mad on war.” But a day before America inaugurates its first black president, we have other things on our mind.
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George W. Bush gave his last presidential speech to the American public in a farewell address Thursday night that offered him a platform to have the (first) last word on his time in office. True to form, Bush stayed the course, giving little if any ground when it came to defending even the most contested aspects of his legacy.
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By Amy Goodman — Fifty million Americans are without health insurance, and 25 million are “underinsured.” Millions being laid off will soon be added to those rolls. At this perilous moment, we need sweeping New Deal-caliber changes, not the impotent tinkering that has been proposed.
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By Amy Goodman — While the Israeli government, dominated by hawks in the midst of a political campaign, has escalated its assault on Gaza, there are many Israelis who are outraged by what’s happening.
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By Eugene Robinson — President-elect Obama will have more urgent matters to deal with after he takes the oath of office. But somewhere on his long to-do list, he should make a note to finally bring five decades of counterproductive American policy toward Cuba to a definitive end.
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By Amy Goodman — Strong voices for peace have left us this year, people who used their art for social change, often at a high personal price.
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By Amy Goodman — A Utah student’s disruption of a federal auction has temporarily blocked a Bush-enabled land grab by the oil and gas industries.
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AP photo / Khalil Hamra
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By Chris Hedges — We fool ourselves into believing we are immune to the savagery and chaos of failed states. Take away the rigid social structure, let society continue to break down, and we become, like anyone else, brutes.
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nytimes.com
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Although allegations of physical abuse against reporter Muntazer al-Zaidi, better known as the guy who chucked his shoes at the head of the guy who invaded his country, were widely reported in recent days, it took until today for an Iraqi judge to officially rule that al-Zaidi was beaten while in custody. The system works!
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By William Pfaff — According to a new report, the U.S. has accomplished little more in Iraq than restoration of the basic services destroyed by the American invasion and the looting that followed. This is after killing or wounding—how many, a half million?—Iraqi civilians in order to liberate them. No wonder the Iraqi journalist threw his shoes at George W. Bush.
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By Amy Goodman — Bernard Madoff’s criminal pyramid scheme, in which losses are expected to be $50 billion, paints a grim picture—unless you are a corporate executive. Read the fine print. Of the TARP bailout funds, only those that were technically spent “in an auction” carry limits on executive pay.
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By William Pfaff — Why are the allies waging war against the largest of the native ethnic groups in Afghanistan? The NATO answer is that the allies didn’t set out to fight a war against the Pashtuns. It just happened that way.
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By Amy Goodman — While the Nobel prizes recognize lifetime achievements in medicine, chemistry, physics, literature, economics and peace, and Sweden is a paragon among progressive, social democracies, there is another side to Sweden and the Nobels that warrants a closer look.
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By David Sirota — A month after Barack Obama’s triumphant victory, we are still celebrating America’s only authentic national religion, and it isn’t Christianity—it’s presidentialism.
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By Eugene Robinson — Remember that long-ago news conference when George W. Bush couldn’t think of any mistakes he had made? Unbelievably, he still can’t.
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By Amy Goodman — President-elect Barack Obama introduced his principal national security Cabinet selections to the world Monday and left no doubt that he intends to start his administration on a war footing. It is revealing that his choice for national security adviser is a director of Boeing, a weapons manufacturer, and Chevron, an oil giant.
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AP photo
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As Poland’s last communist-era head of state, Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski faced off with the country’s growing pro-democracy Solidarity movement and drew widespread criticism and outrage for his 1981 crackdown on the organization. Now some former detractors are reconsidering his legacy.
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AP photo / Pablo Martinez Monsivais
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Still-President Bush has discussed his legacy with his sister Dorothy Bush Koch as part of a national oral-history project, suggesting the future should remember him for his “liberation” of 50 million people and reluctance to ”sell his soul ... to accommodate the political process”—likely referring to that which is outlined in the U.S. Constitution.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — In electing Barack Obama, the country traded the foreign policy of the second President Bush for the foreign policy of the first President Bush.
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By Amy Goodman — As President-elect Barack Obama focuses on the meltdown of the U.S. economy, another fire is burning: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — While the nation’s capital obsesses over who will be the next pick for Barack Obama’s Cabinet, the president-elect’s lieutenants are engaged with what may be a more important long-term issue: What will become of Obama’s vast grass-roots network?
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By Amy Goodman — Evo Morales knows about “change you can believe in.” He also knows what happens when a powerful elite is forced to make changes it doesn’t want.
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AP photo / Hasan Sarbakhshian
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By Scott Ritter — Now that the presidential election has liberated Barack Obama from the need to play to the fickle whim of domestic politics, he should put away the saber and take a more enlightened approach to Iran.
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By Amy Goodman — The first African-American elected president of the United States recently visited his soon-to-be residence, a house built by slaves. Alice Walker told me: “Even when they were building it, you know, in chains or in desperation and in sadness, they were building it for him.”
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By Amy Goodman — Perhaps the job that qualified Obama most for the presidency was the one most vilified by his opponents: community organizer. Yet community organizing is inherently at crosscurrents with the massive infusion of campaign cash.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — With Obama’s victory, it’s time to hope that the era of racial backlash and wedge politics is over. Time to imagine that the patriotism of dissenters will no longer be questioned and that the world will no longer be divided between “values voters” and those without a moral compass.
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AP photo / Kevork Djansezian
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By The Rev. Madison Shockley — The thousands of same-gender couples who have married in the few months since the California Supreme Court cleared the way are in fact married. The notion that a majority vote by people who are not party to these marriages of love, commitment, care and family will have the power to impose a divorce on these couples is flatly repugnant.
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AP photo / Ted S. Warren
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From long lines to vote-flipping, the race to disenfranchise America’s voters is off to a depressing start. With that in mind, we spoke with leading election integrity journalist Brad Friedman of the BradBlog to get the lay of the land heading into Tuesday’s big showdown.
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nytimes.com
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As you head to the polls Tuesday, keep this thought in mind: A voter in Wyoming is three and a half times more influential than a voter in Florida. Thanks to the Electoral College, it’s possible to become president with only 16 percent of the population’s support. Yay, Democracy!
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