The Obama national security "team" -- part of that much-hailed "team of rivals" -- does not yet exist, but it does seem to be heaving into view. And so far, its views seem anything but rivalrous. Mainstream reporters and pundits lovingly refer to them as "cent rist," ; but, in a Democratic context, they are distinctly right of center. The next secretary of state looks t......
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tomdispatch.com If you want to catch something of the fears and hopes of Americans right now, go to News.Google.com and try searching for a few words. For instance, put in "FDR" — the well-known initials of the man who was president four times and took America through the Great Depression and all but the last months of World War II — and endless screens of references po......
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Readers will recall that on many occasions I challenged the idea that the recession was coming or may be coming or could be “staved off. “ I wrote about the National Bureau of Economic Research as a group which never forecasts anything on time. I noted that the investment bank economists all said that the recession was on in November 2008. Now, the NBER has finally spoken—sound the trump......
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... from the regular military budget, is already at $922 billion and quickly closing in on the trillion dollar mark.   continue reading this cheery thanksgiving piece by Frida Berrigan here http://www .tomdispat ch.com/pos t/175007/f rida_berri gan_who_ru les_the_pe ntagon _......
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A fascinating article telling about a group of pro-gay activists associated with the organization Soul Force that is visiting various evangelical colleges attempting to engage campuses with issues of equal rights, et al. With the various world crises related to costs and accessibility of food, the policies and general philosophy toward food issues taken by the new Obama administration take on ......
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The scripture for the Eucharist for Thursday: Luke 21:20-28 The Destruction of Jerusalem Foretold 20 ‘When you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then know that its desolation has come near. * 21Then those in Judea must flee to the mountains, and those inside the city must leave it, and those out in the country must not enter it; 22for these are days of vengeance, as a fulfilment of all......
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By Gary Kamiya | Barack Obama will confront a daunting list of priorities when he takes office on Jan. 20. Rescuing the nation’s economy — if there’s anything left to rescue by then — will obviously be at the top of the list. But it is just as important that Obama immediately declare an end to the “war on terror,” and reverse all of the policies that have been c......
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From tomdispatch : The Obama national security “team” — part of that much-hailed “team of rivals” — does not yet exist, but it does seem to be heaving into view. And so far, its views seem anything but rivalrous. Mainstream reporters and pundits lovingly refer to them as “cen trist,R 21; but, in a Democratic context, they are distinctly right of center......
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Three bombings in Baghdad on Monday left some 20 persons dead and many others injured. One bomb targeted a mini-bus with female Iraqi government employees on it. A woman suicide bomber detonated her payload in a crowd just outside the Green Zone. Although the Western press tried to tie these bombings to the vote on Wednesday on the security agreement with the US, such bombings are still comm......
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Afganistán ha estado en guerra permanente a lo largo de 30 años, más tiempo que el que sumaron juntas las dos guerras mundiales y la guerra con Vietnam. Cada ocupación del país ha imitado a su predecesora. Un corto intervalo entre guerras vio la imposición de un maligno orden social, el de los talibanes, con la ayuda de los militares paquistaníes y la difunta Benazir Bhutto, la primera mini......
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By Tom Engelhardt tomdispatch.com It’s the ultimate argument, the final bastion against withdrawal, and over these last years, the Bush administration has made sure it would have plenty of heft. Ironically, its strength lies in the fact that it has nothing to do with the vicissitudes of Iraqi politics, the relative power of Shiites or Sunnis, the influence of Iran, or even the riptide......
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The Iraq War is still hot in the northern city of Mosul (pop. 1.7 mn.) , where 10-12 car bombs still are detonated every day. On Thursday, McClatchy reports, "A suicide car bomber detonated in Mosul city around 8:30 pm. Police opened fire on the car before targeting a police station in the area that made its driver swerved away of its direction. Thirty five people were injured i......
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Tom Englehardt of Tom Dispatch has finally answered the question of why we have so many bases around the world. We are such a materialistic and consumer society that when we go somewhere with our military, they take the kitchen sink, the trash compacter, a forty-year supply of coffee filters, and Melmac for generations. We cannot get out of Iraq without leaving the poor Iraqis, whose country......
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By Mike Davis tomdispatch.com cross posted at AlterNet.org No one should be shocked to discover that, in his transition to the presidency, the "inex perienced& quot; former senator from Chicago has turned to the last Democratic administration that had experience in Washington. It seems, however, that the Obama team is doing so big time. Looking at lists of early appointees for th......
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By David Swanson Half the story has been told. On Tuesday the Washington Post reported that Bush is creating civil service positions for loyal appointees, in order to make it hard for Obama to get rid of them. Bush has also, for some time now, been terminating large numbers of employees in the federal government, people known as whistleblowers, people suspected of disloyalty. Some of the......
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Obama is appointing lots of Clintonians –does that means he will NOT bring us the transformative New Deal we need ?  HAROLD MEYERSON will explain — he is op-ed columnist for the Washington Post and editor at large of The American Prospect magazine.  (New Yorker illustration: Richard Thompson) Also: Will Obama get us bogged down in an endless war in Afghanistan ? ......
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So many issues, so little time. Something that I am sure you have noticed is the fact that the killing and dying done in our names has been grossly under reported. It has become no more than a blip on the screen when compared to the economy and elections. Now this could be understandable except for the fact that it is not just the MSM that have ignored what is taking place in our names but the blo......
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Tariq Ali writes for Tom Dispatch from time to time. His view of Afghanistan is likely to give you a headache. It did so to me. Could it be that the Bush Administration saw the Afghans as an unruly bunch whose fate would be better managed by removing American arms to Iraq, where (on paper) we would be assured a tidier victory? It is pretty clear that so far Americans have done almos......
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As Barack Obama assembles his foreign policy team, he appears to be drawing from two primary sources: the Clinton faithful and Republican renegades. These old dogs might be up for some new tricks, but one risk of relying on such "expe rience&quo t; could be the triumph of conventional thinking in Washington -- when the world expects, and the times demand, fundamental change. These foreign p......
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Why Americans Shouldn’t Go Home Origin: tomdispatch.com , November 12, 2008. By Tom Engelhardt . On the day that Americans turned out in near record numbers to vote, a record was set halfway around the world. In Afghanistan, a U.S. Air Force strike wiped out about 40 people in a wedding party. This represented at least the sixth wedding party eradicated by American air powe......
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link Don’t Let Barack Obama Break Your Heart Why Americans Shouldn’t Go Home By Tom Engelhardt On the day that Americans turned out in near record numbers to vote, a record was set halfway around the world. In Afghanistan, a U.S. Air Force strike wiped out about 40 people in a wedding party. This represented at least the sixth wedding party eradicated by American air p......
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On the day that Americans turned out in near record numbers to vote, a record was set halfway around the world. In Afghanistan, a U.S. Air Force strike wiped out about 40 people in a wedding party. This represented at least the sixth wedding party eradicated by American air power in Afghanistan and Iraq since December 2001. American planes have, in fact, taken out two brides in the last ......
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A suicide car bomber hit a US convoy near the eastern Pushtun city of Jalalabad, killing one US soldier and at least 20 civilians and wounding 67 other persons. Earlier, another suicide bomber had attacked a government intelligence office in the southwestern Pushtun city of Qandahar , killing 6 and wounding 42. There is a special place in hell for the Taliban in Qandahar who threw acid on t......
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Don’t Let Barack Obama Break Your Heart: Why Americans Shouldn’t Go Home By Tom Engelhardt On the day that Americans turned out in near record numbers to vote, a record was set halfway around the world. In Afghanistan, a U.S. Air Force strike wiped out about 40 people in a wedding party. This represented at least the sixth wedding party eradicated by American air power in Af......
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