Saudi Arabia has all the vices and none of the virtues of an oil rich state like Venezuela. The country is governed by a family dictatorship which tolerates no opposition and severely punishes human rights…
Category: Israel
The idea that government can’t do anything right has been trumpeted by the right wing for decades, particularly by its recently deceased leader Milton Friedman, a former economist at the University of Chicago. He campaigned…
The year 2013 was shockingly damaging to relations between the U.S. and the countries of Latin America. Edward Snowden’s revelations showed that in the Western Hemisphere, Washington is trying to play only by the rules it itself…
The neoconservative Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI), the successor organization of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), has just published another open letter (reproduced below) to Congressional leaders that implicitly endorses what I have called the “Kirk-Menendez Wag the Dog Act of 2013,” known officially as the Nuclear Weapon Free Iran Act of 2013 (S. 1881). I say implicitly, because it doesn’t come right out and urge support for the specific bill, which AIPAC and the Israel lobby, for which AIPAC is the vanguard, are flogging as hard as they possibly can. But the intention is pretty clear. This letter — like PNAC, FPI is essentially a “letterhead organization” that issues manifestos, rather than a real think tank or grassroots membership organization — was signed by 72 “former U.S. government officials and foreign policy experts,” the vast majority of whom are easily identified as neoconservatives, as opposed to “conservatives,” the highly questionable term used by the Daily Beast’s Josh Rogin, who reported on the letter even before it was published on the FPI website to describe the signatories. (One wonders whether Rogin was given the letter on the condition that the authors be described as “conservatives” rather than “neoconservatives,” which really has become something of a dirty word over the past decade due to its association with the Iraq war and their enthusiasm over other ill-advised military adventures.)
We are living through a chronically tense and, in wealthy parts of the world, a desperately self-indulgent era. Advertising teaches that fulfillment comes with compulsive consumption. News media trivialize history and turn current…
“At last the world knows America as the savior of the world!” – President Woodrow Wilson, Paris Peace Conference, 1919 The horrors reported each day from Syria and Iraq are enough to make one cry;…
The man who promised to restore hope and bring change to America, has announced a plan to open five corporate plantations in the United States. On Thursday, President Barack Obama, whose policies have resulted in…
In an interview with the reactionary right-wing Fox News network, former Central Intelligence Agency director James Woolsey said U.S. National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden «should be prosecuted for treason. If convicted by a jury…
Major media editors support what demands condemnation. Wall Street Journal editors are worse than most. They endorse Washington’s imperial agenda. They believe might makes right. On January 2, they headlined ”Victory in Okinawa,” saying: “…Japanese authorities will allow the US military to relocate an air base on the strategically significant island of Okinawa.” “Think of it as a triumph of democratic realism in the face of renewed regional threats.” America’s presence constitutes the most significant regional threat by far. Not according to Journal editors. They falsely accused China of “saber-rattling.” They want its “aggressive behavior deterred.” They claimed “nervous officials across Asia” want defense ties with America strengthened. Washington pressures them to do so.
From Syria to Stateside: New Al Qaeda Threat to US Homeland (ABC News) Dozens of people from the U.S. who fought in Syria have returned home and are under FBI surveillance, but American…