Part Four of Rethinking Afghanistan, directed by Robert Greenwald of Brave New Films, covering the issue of civilian casualties. A new study by America’s National Bureau for Economic Research looking at the circumstances around 4,000 civilian deaths in Afghanistan found a high correlation between NATO killing of even two civilians in an area and a […]
The Israel Lobbies and Breitbartism: Dirty Tricks, Taboos and the threat to American Democracy
Phil Weiss notes that another of the Dirty Tricks divisions of the Israel lobbies in the US, CAMERA, has denounced CNN´s Ben Wedeman for retweeting a post of mine on Turkey-Israel relations. By the way, I am particularly proud of that posting, which examines the political economy of “re-Ottomanization” and Turkey´s emergence as a significant […]
The $1 Trillion Cost of War: Rethinking Afghanistan, Pt. 3
Part 3 of Rethinking Afghanistan— on the cost of the war– directed by Robert Greenwald of Brave New Films. The wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, initiated by the Bush Minor administration as the “war on terror,” have now cost over $1 trillion, according to the Congressional Research Service. It is the most expensive conflict […]
Israeli Court Punishes Palestinian-Israeli for Passing
The conviction in Israel of a Palestinian-Israeli man on rape charges because he had consensual sex with an Israeli woman who thought he was Jewish is completely recognizable to anyone who knows the history of race relations in the United States as a punishment for passing. (pdf): Passing was the practice of light-skinned persons with […]
Pakistan: Rethinking Afghanistan, Pt. 2
Rethinking Afghanistan, Pt. 2, directed by Robert Greenwald of Brave New Films, treats the issue of the Taliban havens in northwest Pakistan and the use to which the country’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) cells may be putting them. In order to shore up Pakistani public support for the government, the US has pledged $7.5 billion in […]
Beck Subtext: Obama Planning to Assassinate Tea Partiers
Media Matters and Fair, day in, day out do an excellent job of refuting the often incorrect assertions made on Fox Cable News, which is a conspiracy of media multi-billionaire and far-right Australian mogul Rupert Murdoch to shift American politics in his direction. All societies (not least the United States) have racist and xenophobic strains […]
Rethinking Rethinking Afghanistan, Pt. 1
In honor of Tuesday’s major donor’s conference in Afghanistan, Informed Comment is beginning a series of reposts of the classic six-part documentary, Rethink Afghanistan by Robert Greenwald of Brave New Films. As the war grinds on, the questions the series raised are crucial to informed public discussion, and it is worth watching it again, or […]
Advice for General Petraeus on the Rules of Engagement:
It’s Neither/Nor, Not Either/Or
Tom Engelhardt, author of the recently-published The American Way of War: How Bush’s Wars Became Obama’s (Haymarket Books, July 2010) and editor of Tomdispatch.com, writes in a guest editorial for Informed Comment: Recently, we’ve been flooded with news stories and debate about the “rules of engagement” for U.S. troops in Afghanistan. Now-discredited war commander General […]
Palin on the Ground Zero Mosque vs. the Founding Fathers
Sarah Palin tweeted, “Ground Zero mosque supporters, doesn’t it stab you in the heart as it does ours throughout the heartland? Peaceful Muslims, pls. refudiate.” The tweet was later taken down and replaced with English, though to the same effect. Here is the original, courtesy twitpic. There are many things wrong with the original tweet. […]
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