Cora Currier writes at ProPublica: You might have heard about the “kill list.” You’ve certainly heard about drones. But the details of the U.S. campaign against militants in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia — a centerpiece of the Obama administration’s national security approach – remain shrouded in secrecy. Here’s our guide to what we know— and […]
Krugman: Only a Big-Spending Government can Get us out of our Depression (Moyers)
Bill Moyers interviews Paul Krugman, who attacks the GOP deficit hawks for interfering with our emergence from the Great Republican-caused Depression of the early 21st century. What we need, he says, is more government stimulus. But we’re not going to get it.
Bombings in Pakistan Kill over 100, as Shiites are Targeted
Pakistan on Thursday descended into the kind of violence that tends to occur in Iraq, with a distinct Sunni-Shiite cast to it. But the larger context was a spillover of enmities from Afghanistan. Three bombs were set off in Quetta. The first targeted a pool hall in a Hazara Shiite neighborhood. When people came to […]
How Zero Dark Thirty Taught us to Stop Worrying and Love Torture (Greenberg)
Karen J. Greenberg writes at Tomdispatch.com On January 11th, 11 years to the day after the Bush administration opened its notorious prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Zero Dark Thirty, Kathryn Bigelow’s deeply flawed movie about the hunt for Osama bin Laden, opens nationwide. The filmmakers and distributors are evidently ignorant of the significance of the […]
Cole : “The Syrian Regime Will Likely Fall, but it Could Take Time” (WorldView Show)
I was interviewed by Denis G. Campbell of the UK Progressive for his internet news and affairs program, the WorldView Show, and the exchange has just been posted. We mainly talked about the ongoing violence in Syria and its regional implications, and about the plight of the Palestinians.
8,775 Firearm Murders a Year in US, Equiv. of 290 in UK
Updated. 2013 Reprint edn. Number of Murders, United States, 2010: 12,996 Number of Murders by Firearms, US, 2010: 8,775 Number of Murders, Britain, 2011*: 638 (Since Britain’s population is 1/5 that of US, this is equivalent to 3,095 US murders) Number of Murders by firearms, Britain, 2011*: 58 (equivalent to 290 US murders) Number of […]
Alex Jones, Gun control, and White Terrorism
Alex Jones’s angry appearance on Piers Morgan’s CNN interview show on Tuesday has provoked a lot of discussion, but what strikes me is that Jones threatened to launch an armed insurrection (1776) if the government attempted to outlaw semi-automatic weapons (or as he put it “to take our guns.”) Of course, Jones got away with […]
Fundraiser Thanks
I cannot thank enough the hundreds of supporters who donated or proffered a voluntary subscription to Informed Comment this year! We had an ambitious goal, and we more or less met it (certainly it will be met this quarter). I and the Informed Comment support team of tech professionals who keep the site humming like […]
Afghanistan: The End of America’s Longest War?
Afghan President Hamid Karzai is in Washington for talks with the Obama administration on the gradual draw down of foreign troops from his country over the next two years. There are currently about 104,000 NATO and other outside troops in Afghanistan, including 68,000 Americans. In a recent piece for CNN, I wrote: “By summer of […]
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