President Obama, in his visit to China, held a “town meeting” with Chinese students in which he praised openness and lectured them on the value of freedom of information, saying that he is a “supporter of non-censorship” and that open access to information was a “source of strength.” And yet America is hardly free of censorship. Heck, the president himself has gone to court to prevent the release of photographs of US troops torturing captives in Iraq, Afghanistan and at Guantanamo.
November 16, 2009 | Filed under
Commentary |
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With word being leaked out over the weekend that our Nobel Peace Prize President is close to announcing plans to escalate the US troop level in the Afghanistan War by 50 percent, we are about to have perhaps the ultimate of ironies—a president announcing a big step-up in American war-making on November 11, the day known around much of the Western world as Armistice Day.
November 11, 2009 | Filed under
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Around the United States, peace groups are engaged in effective campaigns against proposed new military installations, local funding of weapons companies, and the routine destruction of the environment and of workers’ health by such companies. Activists are building better media outlets, educating young people, educating old people, keeping military testing and recruiting out of schools, and discouraging the Army from building real-weapon video arcades in shopping malls. But when it comes to stopping our wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, our citizens are less clear how to go about it.
November 8, 2009 | Filed under
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Country Joe McDonald said it best in his iconic “Fixin’ to Die” Rag: “Oh, it’s one, two, three, what are we fightin’ for? Don’t ask me. I don’t give a damn.” In fact, we were fighting for nothing in Vietnam. It was a war that started out because the US didn’t want the Commies to win a battle in the so-called Cold War, and even though it was on the farthest side of the world, in a poor nation of peasants, even though they had been struggling to throw off colonialism for years and we had simply become the new colonists, no president dared to admit the obvious–we had no business being there, and all the killing and dying had no point.
November 2, 2009 | Filed under
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The United Nations cannot account for tens of millions of dollars provided to the troubled Afghan election commission, according to two confidential U.N. audits and interviews with current and former senior diplomats.
October 29, 2009 | Filed under
World |
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Next time you see a junkie sprawled at the curb in the downtown of your nearest city, or read about someone who died of a heroin overdose, just imagine a big yellow sign posted next to him or her saying: “Your Federal Tax Dollars at Work.”
October 28, 2009 | Filed under
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Daniel Ellsberg says that as President Obama decides what to do in Afghanistan he must learn the lessons of Vietnam.
October 26, 2009 | Filed under
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The horrors of the US Agent Orange defoliation campaign in Vietnam, about which I wrote on Oct. 15, could ultimately be dwarfed by the horrors caused by the depleted uranium weapons which the US began using in the 1991 Gulf War (300 tons), and which it has used much more extensively–and in more urban, populated areas–in the Iraq War and the now intensifying Afghanistan War.
October 19, 2009 | Filed under
World |
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Presidential power has been on a pathway of expansion beyond what the Constitution outlined, and what a government of, by, and for the people requires, since George Washington was president. That expansion, which hit the highway after World War II, got a turbo boost during the co-presidency of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.
October 17, 2009 | Filed under
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Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top commander of U.S. military forces in Afghanistan, has reportedly told President Obama that at least 40,000 additional troops are needed. CBS News’ Chip Reid reports.
October 8, 2009 | Filed under
TPRvideo |
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