The revelation from the Snowden Papers that the National Security Agency had German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s personal cell phone under surveillance has produced a central fallout. Dueling leaks over the international embarrassment have forced the White House to a key admission: President Barack Obama did not know what the NSA was up to. Ever since […]
The World’s Fate hangs on Obama’s Keystone XL Decision (McKibben)
The great Bill McKibben writes at Tomdispatch.com: As the battle over the Keystone XL pipeline has worn on — and it’s now well over two years old — it’s illuminated the Obama presidency like no other issue. It offers the president not just a choice of policies, but a choice of friends, worldviews, styles. It’s […]
The American Quagmire in Afghanistan by the Numbers (21,565 US Troops Dead or Wounded)
Number of US military personnel killed in Afghanistan since 2001: 2,150 Number of US service members wounded in Afghanistan badly enough to go to hospital since 2001: 19,415 Current annual cost of keeping a US soldier in Afghanistan: $2.1 million Number of US troops now in Afghanistan: roughly 51,000 Annual average unemployment rate for Iraq […]
Saudi Arabia forces Women to Cancel Driving Protest, Asserts Authoritarianism in Region
A key group of Saudi feminists have called off their planned protests for Saturday against Saudi Arabia’s bizarre ban on women driving. (Some individuals may go ahead). They did so in response to dire threats from the Saudi Interior Ministry (i.e. secret police) of condign punishment against women who got behind the wheel today, and […]
Is the Arab World turning back to Russia? Egyptian Delegation heads for Moscow
An Egyptian delegation heading to Moscow just after the United States cut $300 million out of its aid package to Cairo to punish the July 3 military coup there has raised speculation that Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s military junta is shopping for a new superpower patron. In the 1960s at the height of the Cold […]
The Horrors of Peace for the US Elite: Bashing ‘Isolationism,’ Blaming it for War (Bacevich)
Andrew J. Bacevich writes at Tomdispatch.com: The abiding defect of U.S. foreign policy? It’s isolationism, my friend. Purporting to steer clear of war, isolationism fosters it. Isolationism impedes the spread of democracy. It inhibits trade and therefore prosperity. It allows evildoers to get away with murder. Isolationists prevent the United States from accomplishing its providentially […]
How the US Government Betrayed the Constitution and invented an Imaginary Fascist One
The idea of having a strong Federal government was controversial in the early United States, and one of the ways Federalists reassured Americans that it wouldn’t become tyrannical was to append a Bill of Rights to the Constitution. That attempt to prevent despotism has failed, because the Federal government and its various agencies have set […]
No, NSA snooping didn’t foil 50 Terrorist Attacks (Elliot & Meyer)
Claim on “Attacks Thwarted” by NSA Spreads Despite Lack of Evidence Justin Elliot and Theodoric Meyer write at ProPublica Two weeks after Edward Snowden’s first revelations about sweeping government surveillance, President Obama shot back. “We know of at least 50 threats that have been averted because of this information not just in the United States, […]
Why the US needs Electric Cars: Saudi Arabia threatens Pivot away from US
The royal family of Saudi Arabia, an absolute monarchy with no constitution and no elected legislature, is in a snit about US foreign policy. King Abdullah doesn’t like even the mild American criticism of the Sunni Bahrain monarchy’s brutal crackdown on the majority Shiite community in that country. He is furious that President Obama went […]
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