|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
By Mark Heisler
$21.33
$17.13
$40
|
|
|
|
|
Here are the five most-read stories of the last seven days, including Chris Hedges on America’s moral meltdown and Robert Scheer on the economic incompetents who find easy employment in the Obama administration. Full list after the jump.
|
AP photo / Elizabeth Dalziel
|
By Scott Ritter — Forget about terrorism for a moment. The potential catastrophe that climate change could unleash on America makes every other national security crisis pale in comparison. President Obama cannot secure the homeland without addressing this global emergency.
|
|
By William Pfaff — France’s president has lived up to the stereotype that his people, fond as they are of home vacationing and generally convinced of their own superiority, not infrequently fail to know what they are talking about when dealing with foreign countries.
|
|
Beverly Gage’s new book exhumes a nearly forgotten tale of class warfare—call it 9/16.
|
U.S. Army / Staff Sgt. Adam Mancini
|
The president will withdraw 12,000 troops from Iraq over the next six months, but where will he send them? Back to America? Ski trip to Aspen? Or perhaps he’ll just airlift the veterans to Afghanistan, where a similar number of reinforcements has been promised over a similar period.
|
aclu.org
|
The Justice Department has released nine secret memos and opinions written by the Office of Legal Counsel that authorized some of the Bush administration’s unlawful national security policies.
|
eyeball-series.org
|
Saying that he’s “taking on new challenges,” Blackwater Worldwide founder and CEO Erik Prince announced Monday that he’s resigning from his long-held position at the top of the security company, which has now changed its name to the spooky and sci-fi-tinged Xe.
|
Marine Corps / Lance Cpl. Michael J. Ayotte
|
By Chris Hedges — Combat troops are to be pulled out of Iraq by August 2010, President Obama said, but some 50,000 occupation troops will remain behind. Someone should let the Iraqis know the distinction.
|
White House
|
In his first speech to a joint session of Congress, President Obama acknowledged the dire state of the economy, but struck a hopeful tone as he expanded on his vision for recovery. Investments in energy, education and health care will be key, he said, as will an expanded bailout of the financial sector. (Summary, video and full text after the jump)
|
AP photo / Hasan Sarbakhshian
|
By Chris Hedges — Bibi Netanyahu’s assumption of power in Israel sets the stage for a huge campaign by the Israeli government, and its well-oiled lobby groups in Washington, to push us into a war with Iran, but a stable relationship with Iran would do more to protect Israel and our interests in the Middle East.
|
|
By Marie Cocco — We seem to have spent our way—to the tune of $864 billion—into allowing our friends the Pakistanis to enter into a peace treaty, or something that looks like it, with the Taliban.
|
AP pool photo / Alexei Druzhinin
|
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.
|
U.S. Army / Staff Sgt. Jon Soucy
|
A three-year review of more than 40 countries has found that justice systems prior to 9/11 were perfectly capable of combating terrorism. The U.S. and Britain were especially opportunistic in their violations of human rights and international law and gave comfort by example to other abusive regimes, the International Commission of Jurists found.
|
POTUS Executive Office
|
The former vice president tells Politico that there is a “high probability” of a terrorist attack involving “a nuclear weapon or a biological agent of some kind” and that the current administration is “more concerned about reading the rights to an Al Qaeda terrorist than they are with protecting the United States. ...”
|
obamaicon.me
|
Three Iraqi candidates and two campaign workers were killed Thursday as the country prepared for local elections in 14 out of 18 provinces. That’s something to keep in mind with all the talk of improved security. Relative to the hell-on-Earth of recent years, “improvement” amounts to only five people murdered for showing an interest in politics.
|
abc.go.com
|
As previously reported on Truthdig, there’s a lot going on in Homeland Security that doesn’t make it onto the reality show of the same name. The Center for Investigative Reporting’s G.W. Schulz continues to dig into the department’s unsavory bits, including an immigration officer who was arrested for allegedly having sex with an 11-year-old girl in Rio while there on official business.
|
|
By William Pfaff — NATO has no coherent overall purpose and has not had one since the end of the Cold War. Any number of redefinitions and reorganizations have been proposed or tried and have proved unsatisfactory because no one can explain what it is that NATO really does or is for, other than to clean up behind the United States.
|
AP photo / Sebastian Scheiner
|
By Chris Hedges — The assault on Gaza exposed not only Israel’s callous disregard for international law but the gutlessness of the American press. Nearly all reporters were, as during the buildup to the Iraq war, pliant stenographers and echo chambers.
|
|
By Eugene Robinson — Repairing the damage that George W. Bush did to the nation’s values, honor and pride will be complicated and, at times, politically inconvenient. But nothing is more urgent, and nothing will ultimately reap more benefits at home and abroad.
|
U.S. Army / Staff Sgt. Jon Soucy
|
President Obama has asked for a stay in all military tribunals at Guantanamo Bay while his administration figures out how to handle the legal cases of the detainees still held in the island prison. The move was welcomed by Human Rights Watch and the ACLU as a positive first step.
|
|
By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — The Bush administration’s specific failures—in foreign and domestic policy and on matters related to civil liberties—are clear enough. Yet the deeper cause of the public’s disaffection goes beyond these specifics.
|
|
By Eugene Robinson — Our nation’s capital will survive the financial meltdown, the deepening recession and the plethora of foreign crises from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe. Whether Washington will survive Tuesday’s inauguration, however, is an open question.
|
AP photo / Mary Altaffer
|
It is unsurprising that a group like Human Rights Watch has condemned the Bush government for jettisoning the U.S. role as a defender of global human rights: Numerous examples—Guantanamo, gay marriage, Iraq, etc.—accentuate this failure.
|
Global Graphica / Ivan Corsa
|
In a reactionary move against technology and the beasts who wield it, the NYPD has announced it wants to jam cell phone frequencies in case of a terrorist attack, citing Mumbai as an example of how mobile phones allowed attackers in that Indian city to micromanage their assault in real time.
|
abc.go.com
|
By G.W. Schulz, Center for Investigative Reporting —
The inaugural episode of ABC’s newest reality television series did exactly as producer Arnold Shapiro told viewers it would: unabashedly celebrated the Department of Homeland Security. It also failed in every conceivable way to critically examine the largest reorganization of the federal government since World War II.
|
|
By William Pfaff — The impending end of the Bush administration and the inauguration of Barack Obama pose the enormous and explosive question of what to do about those responsible for what are regarded by a significant part of the world as war crimes.
|
un.org / unrwa
|
The United Nations is suspending relief activity in the Gaza Strip following multiple attacks by Israeli forces. “Our installations have been hit, our workers have been killed in spite of the fact that the Israeli authorities have the co-ordinates of our facilities and that all our movements are co-ordinated with the Israeli army,” said a U.N. Relief and Works Agency spokesman quoted by the BBC.
|
AP photo / Rina Castelnuovo, pool
|
By Bill Boyarsky — The president-elect has struggled to stay out of the Gaza fight, but based on everything he said during the campaign, he appears determined to stand up for Israel.
|
AP photo / Craig Ruttle
|
By Chris Hedges — The free market and globalization, promised as the route to worldwide prosperity, have been exposed as a con game. We will either find our way out of this mess by embracing an uncompromising democratic socialism or we will continue to be fleeced and impoverished by our bankrupt elite.
|
AP photo / Hatem Moussa
|
By Robert Fisk — We’ve got so used to the carnage of the Middle East that we don’t care anymore—providing we don’t offend the Israelis.
|
USAF / Michael B. Keller
|
By Scott Ritter — Iraq is not Vietnam, yet there are parallels between the two wars. The American military dominated the battlefield in both conflicts, and yet America the nation emerged the loser in each. A “decent interval” is now needed for American troops to withdraw.
|
|
One of JFK’s “best and brightest” died wondering how the Vietnam War could have gone so wrong. Now, in an important new book, we have some answers.
|
|
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.
|
|
By Eugene Robinson — The federal manslaughter indictment of five Blackwater Worldwide security guards for the horrific massacre of more than a dozen Iraqi civilians in Baghdad may look like an exercise in accountability, but it’s probably the exact opposite.
|
|
By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — In naming retired Gen. Eric K. Shinseki as veterans affairs secretary, President-elect Barack Obama made what may be the most politically and morally significant choice of his transition.
|
commons.wikimedia.org
|
Five Blackwater guards were indicted on charges of manslaughter on Monday in a case that will test the legal accountability of private contractors in Iraq. A sixth guard pleaded guilty. The Blackwater employees killed 17 unarmed Iraqi civilians without justification at a Baghdad traffic circle, the Justice Department alleges.
|
Flickr / sergis blog
|
How did two nuns end up on a list of terrorists? Blame a now-defunct investigation by the Maryland State Police, who sent undercover troopers to spy on political groups and identify supposed terrorists, among them pacifists, environmentalists, a congressional candidate and those two feisty nuns. Update
|
|
By Joe Conason — When the journalistic pack bites into a tasty cliché, they often refuse to let go, lazily chewing and regurgitating a phrase like “team of rivals” long after the flavor is gone.
|
|
By Ellen Goodman — It was a moment bound to give anyone second thoughts about Hillary Clinton’s nomination as secretary of state: Rush Limbaugh called it a “brilliant stroke.”
|
|
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.
|
|
By William Pfaff — What is the message of a terrorist attack that fails to deliver a message? Threats and warnings are being exchanged by India and Pakistan over the attack on Mumbai, carried out by presumed Muslim extremists. But acting to what purpose, and under whose instructions?
|
|
By Eugene Robinson — Terrorism (for the umpteenth time) is a tactic, not an enemy. One of the most urgent tasks for President-elect Barack Obama’s “team of rivals” is coming up with a coherent intellectual framework—and a winning battle plan—for George W. Bush’s globe-spanning “war on terror.”
|
USAF / Tech. Sgt. Jerry Morrison
|
Multiple news outlets, from ABC to Fox, now confirm that Robert Gates will retain his post as secretary of defense for at least the first year of the Obama administration. The president-elect will roll out Gates and his other hawks during a national security team unveiling next week.
|
|
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.
|
|
By William Pfaff — The cynical view of national sovereignty holds that it belongs only to those who can defend it. This was said recently at the Pentagon concerning American manned and unmanned attacks inside Pakistan.
|
|
Those famous “multiple Democratic sources close to the transition” have revealed three more members of Barack Obama’s Cabinet: Former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle as secretary of health and human services, Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano as chief of homeland security and Obama’s billionaire buddy and top fundraiser Penny Pritzker to head the Commerce Department. Update: Pritzker is out.
|
change.gov
|
Barack Obama and John McCain have both made a big fuss about working with the opposition, so the cooperative theme of their meeting on Monday, something of a tradition among presidential rivals, was no surprise. But will McCain really help Obama? “Obviously,” says Mr. Arizona.
|
Flickr / transplanted mountaineer (altered)
|
The president-elect is a notorious gadget hound who has been known to carry multiple cell phones, but he faces a looming downgrade. Because the public has a right to presidential records, Barack Obama will probably give up his precious Blackberry—and quit e-mailing altogether. However, he is likely to be the first president with a laptop on his desk.
|
Department of Homeland Security
|
With nearly 62 million passengers having traveled through its terminals last year, Los Angeles International Airport is the world’s fifth-busiest. Thanks to lax security practices, it’s also embarrassingly vulnerable to cyber attack, according to a report from the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general.
Posted on Nov 13, 2008
READ MORE 
|
AP photo / Hasan Sarbakhshian
|
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.
|
View the most popular tags overall?
|
|
Real American Boy: How Our Byzantine Immigration System and Failed Economy May Have Made a Terrorist
Newsletter 
Like Us
Follow Us
Get Our Feed
