Guantánamo Forever? by Andy Worthington January 10, 2011 On the 9th anniversary of the opening of Guantánamo, it may sound uncharitable to President Obama to be asking whether all plans to close the prison have failed, and to be asking whether it might remain in operation for as long as anyone can foresee. After all, the president may have failed to close it within a year ...
Afghanistan: War of Choice Not Necessity by Sheldon Richman January 7, 2011 In December President Barack Obama received his annual assessment of the war in Afghanistan, then reported to the American people that the mission is “on track” and troops would begin to withdraw next July. But the semi-upbeat assessment was less than persuasive because, as the Washington Post reported, “The overview of the long-awaited report contained no specifics or data ...
US Invasion of Panama: Just Another American Imperialist Enterprise (Video) by Jacob G. Hornberger January 4, 2011 Jacob Hornberger and Jeff Cohen with Dina Gusovsky RT Russia Today //
Can U.S. Foreign Policy Be Fixed? by Laurence M. Vance January 3, 2011 The WikiLeaks revelations have shined a light on the dark nature of U.S. foreign policy. As Eric Margolis recently described it: “Washington’s heavy-handed treatment of friends and foes alike, its bullying, use of diplomats as junior-grade spies, narrow-minded views, and snide remarks about world leaders.” As much as I, an American, hate to say it, U.S. foreign policy ...
Why WikiLeaks Leaks Matter by Sheldon Richman January 3, 2011 Why should anyone care about the secret diplomatic cables WikiLeaks has disclosed? So what if State Department bureaucrats say unflattering things about other world “leaders”? Some people may be asking those questions in response to WikiLeaks’s latest disclosures. Okay, they say, leaks about atrocities on the battlefield (such as the first WikiLeaks disclosure, the “Collateral Murder” video) tell us ...
Thank Goodness for WikiLeaks by Sheldon Richman January 1, 2011 WikiLeaks has released close to 400,000 U.S. classified military documents relating to the Iraq war. The American people, the theoretical masters of the government, were not supposed to see them. So, just as it was when the website released 77,000 documents on the Afghan war in August, WikiLeaks was roundly condemned. Unnamed officials in the Obama administration are reported ...
Misdefining Liberty by James Bovard January 1, 2011 The definitions of liberty devised in ivory towers and elsewhere have a profound impact on political and judicial thinking. Regardless of how wrongheaded some concepts of liberty prevalent early last century may now appear, America’s legal structure is now based on those ideas. And that legal structure continues binding today’s citizens to the intellectual follies of previous generations of ...
Forget Reform by Bart Frazier January 1, 2011 Reforming federal programs that have bestowed upon Americans a multitude of problems would seem to be a good idea, but it’s not. The problem is not only that the programs will never work no matter how much they are reformed, but also that what the programs do falls outside the legitimate functions of government. The programs need to be ...
Where Is the Tea Party Revolution on Foreign Policy? by Stephen Kinzer January 1, 2011 America’s latest populist movement, which reaches back to revolutionary history by calling itself the “Tea Party,” helped shape the remarkable results of last November’s midterm election. Some dare to hope that candidates elected in that political uprising might help arrest America’s alarming decline. Others see the uprising as no more than a cover for the corporate power that lay ...
How Will the Empire End? by Anthony Gregory January 1, 2011 Dismantling the Empire: America’s Last Best Hope by Chalmers Johnson (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2010); 212 pages. Most Americans would very likely deny that their government is a global empire, horribly destructive to national security, liberty, and wealth. But whatever we call this U.S. system of ubiquitous military bases, satellite regimes throughout the world, ever-growing “defense” budgets, and an ...
Hoekstra Receives CIA’s Bootlicking Award by Jacob G. Hornberger December 28, 2010 On December 21, the Central Intelligence Agency gave its Agency Seal Medal to Rep. Pete Hoekstra, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee. Hoekstra has labored almost ceaselessly to assure that the CIA can break federal laws with impunity. CIA Director Leon Panetta announced at the ceremony for Hoekstra at CIA headquarters: “To honor your service, I want to ...