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The Moral Force of OWS is Tackling the Devastating War on the Poor

Mon, 07 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0800

AlterNet - By Frances Fox Piven - Nov. 07 (News Analysis) - We’ve been at war for decades now -- not just in Afghanistan or Iraq, but right here at home. Domestically, it’s been a war against the poor, but if you hadn’t noticed, that’s not surprising. ... The Occupy Wall Street movement has already made the concentration of wealth at the top of this society a central issue in American politics. Now, it promises to do something similar when it comes to the realities of poverty in this country.

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How Washington Creates Global Instability

Mon, 19 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Tomdispatch.com - By Nick Turse - Sep. 19 (News Analysis) - It’s a story that should take your breath away: the destabilization of what, in the Bush years, used to be called “the arc of instability.” It involves at least 97 countries, across the bulk of the global south, much of it coinciding with the oil heartlands of the planet. A startling number of these nations are now in turmoil, and in every single one of them -- from Afghanistan and Algeria to Yemen and Zambia -- Washington is militarily involved, overtly or covertly, in outright war or what passes for peace.

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Massive Unemployment: Proof That Global Capitalism Doesn't Work

Mon, 12 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Steve Fraser, Joshua B. Freeman, - Sep. 12 (News Analysis) - In the coming years, might we see the return of a basic American horror at the phenomenon of joblessness? And might it drive Americans to begin to ask deeper questions about the system that lives and feeds on it? After all, we now exist in an under-developing economy. What new jobs it is creating are poor paying, low skill, and often temporary, nor are there enough of them to significantly reduce the numbers of those out of work. The 99ers are stark evidence that we may be witnessing the birth of a new permanent class of the marginalized.

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Playing Ball With the Pentagon

Sat, 30 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Tomdispatch.com - By Andrew Bacevich, - Jul. 30 (Comment) - In this theatrical production, the Red Sox provide the stage, and the Pentagon the props. In military parlance, it is a joint operation. In front of a gigantic American flag draped over the left-field wall, an Air Force contingent, clad in blue, stands at attention. To carry a smaller version of the Stars and Stripes onto the playing field, the Navy provides a color guard in crisp summer whites. The United States Marine Corps kicks in with a choral ensemble that leads the singing of the national anthem. As the anthem’s final notes sound, four U. S. Air Force F-15C Eagles scream overhead. The sellout crowd roars its approval.

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How to Arm a Dictator - Nick Turse | TomDispatch

Thu, 28 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Tomdispatch.com - By Nick Turse - Apr. 28 (News) - All told, over the past five years, the U.S. has provided more than $300 million in aid to Yemen’s security forces, with the dollars escalating precipitously under the Obama administration. In 2008, under President George W. Bush, Yemen received $17.2 million in baseline military assistance (which does not include counterterrorism or humanitarian funding). In 2010, that number had risen to $72.3 million while, overall, Yemen received $155.3 million in U.S. aid that year, including a “$34.5 million special operations force counterterrorism enhancement package.” These funds have provided Yemen’s security forces with helicopters, Humvees, weapons, ammunition, radio systems, and night-vision goggles.

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Who Owns the World?

Thu, 21 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

readersupportednews.org - By Noam Chomsky - Apr. 21 (Opinion) - 'The democracy uprising in the Arab world has been a spectacular display of courage, dedication, and commitment by popular forces - coinciding, fortuitously, with a remarkable uprising of tens of thousands in support of working people and democracy in Madison, Wisconsin, and other US cities. If the trajectories of revolt in Cairo and Madison intersected, however, they were headed in opposite directions: in Cairo toward gaining elementary rights denied by the dictatorship, in Madison towards defending rights that had been won in long and hard struggles and are now under severe attack.

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$1.2 Trillion: The Real U.S. National Security Budget No One Wants You to Know About

Tue, 01 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0800

AlterNet - By Chris Hellman - Mar. 01 (Opinion) - If Americans were ever presented with the real bill for the total U.S. national security budget, it would actually add up to more than $1.2 trillion a year.

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Why Bradley Manning Is a Patriot, Not a Criminal

Thu, 10 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0800

truth-out.org - By Chase Madar - Feb. 10 (News Analysis) - Bradley Manning, a 23-year-old from Crescent, Oklahoma, enlisted in the U.S. military in 2007 to give something back to his country and, he hoped, the world. For the past seven months, Army Private First Class Manning has been held in solitary confinement in the Marine Corps brig in Quantico, Virginia. Twenty-five thousand other Americans are also in prolonged solitary confinement, read more

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Tomgram: Nick Turse, The Pentagon's Planet of Bases

Sun, 09 Jan 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Tomdispatch.com - By Nick Turse - Jan. 09 (Opinion) - There are more than 1,000 U.S. military bases dotting the globe. To be specific, the most accurate count is 1,077. Unless it’s 1,088. Or, if you count differently, 1,169. Or even 1,180. Actually, the number might even be higher. Nobody knows for sure.

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Invasion of the Democracy Crushers: Oil Industry Monsters Work to Destroy the Planet

Mon, 25 Oct 2010 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Rebecca Solnit - Oct. 25 (Opinion) - Oil industry monsters from Texas are preying on California, pumping money into a campaign that would kill the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006.

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The Bomb-Iran Debate From Hell

Wed, 25 Aug 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Tomdispatch.com - Aug. 25 (Other) - Two Minutes to Midnight? The Media's Bogus Bomb-Iran Debate America's march to a disastrous war in Iraq began in the media, where an unprovoked U.S. invasion of an Arab country was introduced as a legitimate policy option, then debated as a prudent and necessary one. Now, a similarly flawed media conversation on Iran is gaining momentum.

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Clueless in Afghanistan -- and Washington

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 04:34:18 -0700

Tomdispatch.com - Jul. 27 -

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Washington Drunk on War

Tue, 15 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Tomdispatch.com - By Tom Engelhardt - Jun. 15 (Opinion) - Mark it on your calendar. It seems we’ve finally entered the Soviet era in America. You remember the Soviet Union, now almost 20 years in its grave. But who gives it a second thought today? Even in its glory years that “evil empire” was sometimes referred to as “the second superpower.” In 1991, after seven decades, it suddenly disintegrated and disappeared, leaving the United States -- the “sole superpower,” even the “hyperpower,” on planet Earth -- surprised but triumphant. The USSR had been heading for the exits for quite a while, not that official Washington had a clue. At the moment it happened, Soviet “experts” like Secretary of Defense Robert Gates (then director of the CIA) still expected the Cold War to go on and on. In Washington, eyes were trained on the might of the Soviet military, which the Soviet leadership had never stopped feeding, even as its sclerotic bureaucracy was rotting, its economy (which had ceased to grow in the late 1970s) was tanking, budget deficits were soaring, indebtedness to other countries was growing, and social welfare payments were eating into what funds remained. Not even a vigorous, reformist leader like Mikhail Gorbachev could staunch the rot, especially when, in the late 1980s, the price of Russian oil fell drastically.

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BPing the Arctic?

Tue, 25 May 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Tomdispatch.com - By Subhankar Banerjee - May. 25 (Special Report) - If you’ve been following the increasing ecological devastation unfolding before our collective eyes in the Gulf of Mexico since BP’s rented Deepwater Horizon exploratory drilling rig went up in flames (and then under the waves), then you should know about -- and protest -- Shell Oil’s plan to begin exploratory oil drilling in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas this summer.

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The Relentless Pursuit of Extreme Energy

Thu, 20 May 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Tomdispatch.com - By Michael T. Klare - May. 20 (Opinion) - Yes, the oil spewing up from the floor of the Gulf of Mexico in staggering quantities could prove one of the great ecological disasters of human history. Think of it, though, as just the prelude to the Age of Tough Oil , a time of ever increasing reliance on problematic, hard-to-reach energy sources. Make no mistake: we're entering the danger zone. And brace yourself, the fate of the planet could be at stake.

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A Middle East Peace That Could Happen (But Won't): In Washington-Speak, "Palestinian State" Means "Fried Chicken"

Wed, 28 Apr 2010 00:00:00 -0700

chomsky.info - By Noam Chomsky - Apr. 28 (Opinion) - The fact that the Israel-Palestine conflict grinds on without resolution might appear to be rather strange. For many of the world's conflicts, it is difficult even to conjure up a feasible settlement. In this case, it is not only possible, but there is near universal agreement on its basic contours: a two-state settlement along the internationally recognized (pre-June 1967) borders -- with "minor and mutual modifications," to adopt official U.S. terminology before Washington departed from the international community in the mid-1970s.

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China's Global Shopping Spree

Thu, 01 Apr 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Tomdispatch.com - By Michael T. Klare - Apr. 01 (News Analysis) - More than that, anticipating the kind of voracious resource consumption that goes with anticipated future growth, and worried about the availability of adequate supplies, giant Chinese energy and manufacturing firms -- many of them state-owned -- have been on a veritable spending binge when it comes to locking down resource supplies for the twenty-first century. They have acquired oil fields, natural gas reserves, mines, pipelines, refineries, and other resource assets in a global buying spree of almost unprecedented proportions.

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Avatar: The Prequel

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Tomdispatch.com - By by Michael T. Klare - Feb. 24 (Dramatization) - The anticipation may be building, but we'll all have to wait for the 82nd Academy Awards on March 7th to find out just how many Oscars the global box-office smash Avatar will receive.read more

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When the Media Is the Disaster

Thu, 21 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Tomdispatch.com - By Rebecca Solnit, forward by Tom Engelhardt - Jan. 21 (News Analysis) - I’m talking, of course, about those members of the mass media whose misrepresentation of what goes on in disaster often abets and justifies a second wave of disaster. I’m talking about the treatment of sufferers as criminals, both on the ground and in the news, and the endorsement of a shift of resources from rescue to property patrol. They still have blood on their hands from Hurricane Katrina, and they are staining themselves anew in Haiti

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An American World of War

Mon, 04 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Tomdispatch.com - By Tom Engelhardt & Nick Turse - Jan. 04 (Opinion) - So, let's pause a moment as the New Year begins and take stock of ourselves as what we truly are: the preeminent war-making machine on planet Earth. Let's peer into the future, and consider just what the American way of war might have in store for us in 2010. Here are 10 questions, the answers to which might offer reasonable hints as to just how much U.S. war efforts are likely to intensify in the Greater Middle East, as well as Central and South Asia, in the year to come.

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Why Copenhagen May Be a Disaster

Sun, 06 Dec 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Tomdispatch.com - By Bill McKibben - Dec. 06 (Opinion) - the Copenhagen talks that open this week, almost no matter what happens, will be a disaster. Because climate change is not like any other issue we’ve ever dealt with. Because the adversary here is not Republicans, or socialists, or deficits, or taxes, or misogyny, or racism, or any of the problems we normally face -- adversaries that can change over time, or be worn down, or disproved, or cast off. The adversary here is physics. Physics has set an immutable bottom line on life as we know it on this planet.

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Obama's Choice: Failed War President or the Prince of Peace?

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

TruthOut - By Nick Turse - Oct. 22 (Opinion) - More than 100 years after their early counterinsurgency efforts on two tiny islands in the Philippines, U.S. troops are still dying there at the hands of Muslim guerillas. More than 50 years later, the U.S. still garrisons the southern part of the Korean peninsula as a result of a stalemate war and a peace as yet unmade. More recently, the American experience has included outright defeat in Vietnam, failures in Laos and Cambodia; debacles in Lebanon and Somalia; a never-ending four-president-long war in Iraq; and almost a decade of wheel-spinning in Afghanistan without any sign of success, no less victory.

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Pox Americana

Sun, 04 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Tomdispatch.com - By Matt Bivens - Oct. 04 (Opinion) - There are many possible responses to the news that we have committed more than four trillion public dollars to Wall Street. Mine is a roar of admiration. Four trillion dollars! Holy hell! I didn't even know that was possible! U.S.A.! U.S.A.!

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Afghanistan: NATO's Graveyard?

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Tomdispatch.com - By John Feffer - Sep. 30 (Opinion) - Celebrating its 60th birthday this year, NATO is looking peaked and significantly worse for wear. Aggressive and ineffectual, the organization shows signs of premature senility. Despite the smiles and reassuring rhetoric at its annual summits, its internal politics have become fractious to the point of dysfunction. Perhaps like any sexagenarian in this age of health-care crises and economic malaise, the transatlantic alliance is simply anxious about its future. Frankly, it should be.

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Fighting against ourselves in Afghanistan

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 01:34:02 -0700

Salon - Sep. 23 -

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