US politics

MediaMatters4America | – [A study of the Sunday political television shows demonstrates that 87% of the single-person interviews are done with white males, and 66% of all interviews are, though white men are only 32% of Americans. Women of color were interviewed 6% of the time, though they’re about a fifth of Americans. White women […]

Barack Obama

Against Torture: American Heroes who Indicted Cheney’s Dark Side

contributors

By Rebecca Gordon | (Tomdispatch.com) Why was it again that, as President Obama said, “we tortured some folks” after the 9/11 attacks? Oh, right, because we were terrified. Because everyone knows that being afraid gives you moral license to do whatever you need to do to keep yourself safe. That’s why we don’t shame or […]

Barack Obama

Obama on his Foreign Policy: Between Realism and Idealism

contributors

By Matthew Iglesias | (Vox) – “When it comes to foreign policy, is President Obama a realist or an idealist? Turns out he rejects both terms.” Vox: “Obama on the goal of his foreign policy”

Barack Obama

When you’ve Lost Bernie Sanders: How Netanyahu destroyed the Israel Lobby

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) – Senator Bernie Sanders, the most consistent and prominent progressive in the US Senate, has decided to skip the speech of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to Congress on March 3, which was orchestrated by Israel’s ambassador to the US Ron Dermer and Speaker of the House John Boehner […]

Foreign Policy

Debating U.S. Foreign Policy: Where are the Women?

contributors

By Jasmin Ramsey | – WASHINGTON (IPS) – Women are running some of the United States’ most prominent foreign policy focused think tanks, leading groundbreaking foreign policy initiatives, and reporting from the front lines of the world’s most dangerous conflict zones. But there’s a dearth when it comes to women’s voices in U.S. media coverage […]

Bush

Williams Affair: Reagan and Bush Lied about Military Records but Get a Pass

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) – NBC nightly news anchor Brian Williams is under fire for repeatedly having told an embellished story of being in a Chinook helicopter that took RPG and small arms fire at the beginning of the Iraq War and was forced down. His critics, and military personnel present on the […]

Militarization

The Lone-Wolf Terror Trap: Why the Cure Will Be Worse Than the Disease

contributors

By Matthew Harwood | (Tomdispatch.com) The shadow of a new threat seems to be darkening the national security landscape: the lone-wolf terrorist. “The lone wolf is the new nightmare,” wrote Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer recently, and the conservative pundit wasn’t alone in thinking so. “I really see [lone wolves] as being a bigger threat […]

Bush

Is ISIL’s ‘Shock and Awe’ more Awe-ful because One Victim?

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) – The Daesh (ISIL or ISIS) burning of a captured Jordanian pilot alive produced justified revulsion globally, resulting in the terrorist organization being termed “barbarous” and similar epithets. Why did it behave this way? Because it wants to terrify its opponents into submission and underline that it is too […]

Militarization

How the Anti-War Movement was Demobilized; Remembering I.F. Stone

contributors

By Tom Engelardt | (Tomdispatch.com) Well, it’s one, two, three, look at that amputee,At least it’s below the knee,Could have been worse, you see.Well, it’s true your kids look at you differently,But you came in an ambulance instead of a hearse,That’s the phrase of the trade,It could have been worse. — First verse of a Vietnam-era […]