Writing on his Foreign Policy blog, Stephen Walt notes the uptick in war hysteria directed at Iran, and, like a good realist, looks at the US-Iranian military equation with a cold-eyed attention to facts and figures. He lists the huge military and economic disparities in favor of the US, bare numbers that speak truth to …
Continue reading “The Making of American Foreign Policy”
It’s hard to miss these days. The headlines tell the story – repetitively. Everyone, it seems, is on the take. The Securities and Exchange Commission has charged Goldman Sachs with securities fraud for creating and selling "a mortgage investment that was secretly intended to fail" – and then betting against its own customers. JPMorgan Chase, …
Continue reading “The Business of America Is Kleptocracy”
Updated at 6:06 p.m. EDT, April 20, 2010
A partial but controversial ballot recount ordered for Baghdad province is raising concerns over election manipulation and pushing Iraq towards instability at a time when politicians should be creating the next government. At least 11 Iraqis were killed and 29 more were wounded in violence across Iraq. Also, a third high-ranking al-Qaeda leader was killed during a raid this morning in northern Iraq.
Two Israeli Arab brothers have won $8,000 in damages from Israel’s national carrier, El Al, after a court found that their treatment by the company’s security staff at a New York airport had been "abusive and unnecessary." Abdel Wahab and Abdel Aziz Shalabi were assigned a female security guard who watched over them at the …
Continue reading “New York Airport ‘Blind’ to El Al Racial Profiling”
Kelley Vlahos on a liberal outfit deploying neocon tactics
The latest bunker mentality bunk to emanate from Gen. Stanley McChrystal, commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, is that he has too many civilian contractors hoofing around on his turf. Back in June 2009, a "civilian surge" was a key component of his strategy. What made him change his mind? Maybe his attitude …
Continue reading “Heart of McDarkness”
The Boxer-Isakson "Israel Support Letter" [.pdf] addressed to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and currently signed by 76 senators [.pdf] answers a question no one needed to ask: Does the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) have the support of the United States Senate? However, unlike the proverbial napkin former AIPAC bigwig Steven Rosen boasted …
Continue reading “Israel Support Letter Unsupported by Reality”
The confirmation of the deaths of two al-Qaeda figures on the U.S. most wanted list outweighed even the revelation of a secret Iraqi prison where hundreds of Sunni men may have tortured and the recount of votes from the national election. Meanwhile, at least four Iraqis were killed and 11 more were wounded in other attacks. Also, a U.S. soldier died of non-combat injuries in Basra.
An opinion survey of Afghanistan’s Kandahar province funded by the U.S. Army has revealed that 94 percent of respondents support negotiating with the Taliban over military confrontation with the insurgent group and 85 percent regard the Taliban as "our Afghan brothers." The survey, conducted by a private U.S. contractor last December, covered Kandahar City and …
Continue reading “94 Percent of Kandaharis Want Peace Talks, Not War”
The rise of an often militant right-wing populist movement – the tea partiers, the Ron Paulistas, the tenth amendment restorationists and the regionalists – has the powers-that-be in a tizzy. On the "progressive" left, we have Rachel Maddow sounding the alarm about hordes of armed militia types supposedly marching on Washington, in a populist version …
Continue reading “Populism, Left and Right” 
