|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
By Garry Wills
$18.45
 . '/' . substr('9781403964311',-6,3) . '/' . '9781403964311' . '.jpg'; ?>)
By Juan Cole
$22
|
|
|
|
|
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.
|
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.
|
AP photo / Allauddin Khan
|
The legacy of George Bush’s two “wars of liberation” may already be judged as foreign policy blunders, but the real costs of war remain even after the truism of failed empire. In Afghanistan, acid attacks on at least 15 female students mark a worrisome trend in women’s rights there. And in Iraq, an Iraqi soldier opened fire on a patrol of U.S. troops, killing two.
|
AP photo / Al Grillo
|
By G.W. Schulz, Center for Investigative Reporting —
When Sarah Palin brags about the self-reliance of her state, she doesn’t mention the mobile command communications vehicle, bought with federal dollars to help keep her home town of 7,028 safe from terrorism. Thanks in part to an anti-terrorism bonanza, Alaska is one of the greatest per-capita beneficiaries of federal funding among the 50 states.
|
|
By William Pfaff — The real issues of the American presidential election are the future of the economy and the future of American foreign policy. The one seems already settled. The second seems to unite John McCain and Barack Obama in support of a program doomed to fail.
|
Collage: AP photo / Chip Somodevilla, pool / Wikimedia Commons
|
James G. Blight and janet M. Lang —
The leading issue in the current face-off between Barack Obama and John McCain is the economy. Once elected and inaugurated, however, a U.S. president’s politics become global literally overnight.
|
|
By Amy Goodman — Election Day approaches, and with it a test of our election system’s integrity. Who will be allowed to vote; who will be barred?
|
|
By William Pfaff — Military and economic disasters have caused Europeans and European governments to view the United States in a new, unflattering light.
|
AP photo / Gerald Herbert
|
By Chris Hedges — It is no longer our economy but our democracy that is in peril. Financial collapses lead to political extremism. The rage bubbling up from our impoverished and disenfranchised working class, glimpsed at John McCain rallies, presages a looming and dangerous right-wing backlash.
|
AP photo / Susan Walsh
|
By Bruce Fein — Would the Republican VP nominee vote for herself? During her debate with Joe Biden, Sarah Palin said “we have to fight for” and “protect” our freedom, but her party and the policies she seems to support have crippled American liberty.
|
AP photo / Jim Bourg, pool
|
By Scott Ritter — Ralph Nader is right: The two-party system is failing America. There isn’t time between now and Election Day to create a viable third-party candidate, and so the sad reality is one of two deeply flawed men, the byproduct of a deeply flawed political system, will serve as president for the next four or eight years.
|
|
By William Pfaff — There are only two real issues left in the foreign policy debate between John McCain and Barack Obama. Yet neither the Iraq nor the Afghanistan issue is within the power of any American president to resolve.
|
AP photo / Susan Walsh
|
By Chris Hedges — The passing of the $850-billion bailout pulled the plug on the New Deal. The Great Society is now gasping for air, mortally wounded, coughing up blood. It will not recover. It was murdered by the Democratic Party.
|
|
Former Time correspondent Andrew Meier presents a riveting exhumation of the previously unknown story of Cy Oggins, an early American-Jewish communist who spied for the Soviets and was killed by them in 1947.
|
|
By William Pfaff — Less apparent to most people than the economic crisis, but just as real, are the signs of an impending crash of an American military system in which, since the end of the Cold War, Pentagon dysfunction has metastasized so uncontrollably as to scandalize the men who have overseen it.
|
U.S. Navy / Cmdr. Michael Junge
|
Piracy has gotten so bad off the coast of Somalia that the European Union is prepared to form an anti-piracy force to police the region. The unresolved seizure of a freighter loaded with Russian tanks is the most recent in a spate of incidents involving more than 60 vessels and $30 million in ransom so far this year.
|
|
By Ellen Goodman — Why is a welfare mother to blame for her poverty while Wall Street fat cats can count on the federal government for $700 billion?
|
|
By Rep. Dennis Kucinich — America must move from the errant, retributive justice of 9/11 to a healing, restorative process of truth and reconciliation.
|
AP photo / Anja Niedringhaus
|
By Anna Badkhen — Many Iraqis struggle every day to find work, but a shortage of jobs, superimposed on a tradition of using personal connections to do business, has led to what Iraqis complain is an explosion in corruption and graft among their nation’s officials.
|
AP file photo / Loay Hameed
|
By Anna Badkhen — Walls have become ubiquitous in Baghdad, a place where barricades keep militias from one another and hungry shoppers from the nearest kebab. As Iraqis struggle with sovereignty, the barriers are a constant reminder of the American military occupation.
|
arcent.army.mil
|
Despite criticisms of the efficacy of the “surge” in Iraq, a U.S. commander in Afghanistan has dared to say that a planned “surge” in Afghanistan would in fact not help U.S. interests in the country. The commander did make sure not to completely deweaponize the Bush administration’s rhetoric, suggesting instead that a different type of surge is needed.
|
AP photo / Brennan Linsley
|
By Scott Ritter — The war between the United States and Iran is on. American taxpayer dollars are being used, with the permission of Congress, to fund activities that result in Iranians being killed and wounded, and Iranian property destroyed. This wanton violation of a nation’s sovereignty would not be tolerated if the tables were turned.
|
|
By Joe Conason — The strongest argument for Obama is the weak performance of the Republican regime’s vaunted “grown-ups,” including McCain and his advisers. They have gone far in proving that experience can be overrated.
|
AP photo / Ng Han Guan
|
Taking cues from past Olympic protests and the U.S.‘s notoriously ironic “free speech zones,” the Chinese government has declared its openness to dissidents criticizing the state—so long as dissent is contained in one of three areas, does not threaten vague notions of national unity, and is submitted five days beforehand to the local security bureau.
Posted on Jul 23, 2008
READ MORE
|
Wiki Commons
|
Stung by lawsuits, protests, government audits, criminal charges and negative media attention, executives from the mercenary firm Blackwater Worldwide say providing security in Iraq and elsewhere has become a drain on the company’s future and will be gradually all but phased out. However, there are no immediate plans to end the contract with the State Department which became so controversial after the company’s agents went on a deadly shooting spree in Baghdad last year.
|
|
By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — To win the presidency, Barack Obama needs only to battle John McCain to a tie on foreign policy and national security. That means Obama has no need for a great triumph during his trip this week to the Middle East and Europe. His goal is to look safe, sound and competent, and that’s how he’s playing things.
|
|
By Marie Cocco — Steven Wax’s new book provides an insider’s view of some of the most hideous practices our country has allowed since the 9/11 attacks. And that’s without giving accounts of torture and abuse of detainees.
|
AP photo / Ariel Schalit
|
Israel and Iran appear to be locked in a dangerous round of ¿Quién es más macho? On Thursday, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak responded to Iran’s new displays of military prowess—this week’s missile tests—by declaring that Israel is ready for action should Iran push the direct-threat level any higher.
|
AP photo / Petros Giannakouris
|
By William Pfaff — The endless debate about the U.S. withdrawing its army from Iraq and what will happen to the country once it does tends to ignore much of what we know about how the world works.
|
news.bbc.co.uk
|
A suicide bombing apparently tied to the one-year anniversary of the Red Mosque raid killed at least 15 in the Pakistani capital of Islamabad Sunday night. The next morning, a bomber drove an explosives-laden car into the Indian Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, killing 41—including India’s ranking defense attaché—and injuring more than 140 others.
Posted on Jul 7, 2008
READ MORE
|
Salon.com
|
The folks at Blackwater and other private security outfits in Iraq encountered a dramatic setback Wednesday after an Iraqi minister announced that private guards will no longer be given immunity from U.S military and Iraqi law, ending more than five years of unregulated mercenary violence in the country.
|
|
By William Pfaff — A basic argument in Washington’s war on terror, an argument that one might think settled by now, concerns whether al-Qaida is the powerful global organization the Bush administration says it is or whether it has been, since its retreat into the Pakistan tribal areas, mostly an Internet phenomenon.
|
|
Democrats and Republicans cut a deal in Congress on Thursday to rewrite controversial surveillance legislation. It’s being billed as a compromise, but civil rights advocates are groaning over concessions including virtual immunity for telecommunications companies and the ability to spy on Americans without a warrant.
|
|
By Nicholas von Hoffman — A new book by New York Times reporter Steven Greenhouse argues that the plight of American workers, both white-collar and blue-collar, is growing worse, putting the American dream out of the reach of tens of millions of citizens.
|
AP photo / LM Otero
|
By Robert Scheer — What should be the most important issue in this election is one that is rarely, if ever, addressed: Why is U.S. military spending at the highest point, in inflation-adjusted dollars, than at any time since the end of World War II?
|
boston.com
|
Gen. David Petraeus announced on Thursday the prospect of additional U.S. troop withdrawals from Iraq beginning in the fall, a move that contradicts his recommendation last month to halt withdrawals due to security concerns. The turnaround suggests political motivations, as conditions in Iraq remain chaotic and the U.S. presidential race looms in the distance.
|
View the most popular tags overall?
|
|
Greenland’s Great Melt Is Pinned on Climate Change
Newsletter 
Like Us
Follow Us
Get Our Feed
