(Rep. Jan Schakowsky, Congresswoman from Illinois, May 28, 2010)
[CLICK the above credit line for the full article]

This month, we mark the seventh anniversary of President Bush’s declaration of “mission accomplished” in Iraq, yet five American soldiers have been killed there in May alone. Iraqis went to the polls nearly three months ago, but the political system remains so fractured that no party has been able to piece together a coalition. There are some indications that sectarian violence is again on the rise. . . . The only clear winner of the Iraq war is Iran. Their mortal enemy, Saddam Hussein, was taken out and fellow Shiites are in charge. Iran has been emboldened to the point of threatening the stability of the region and the world with its growing nuclear capability. . . . And then there’s Afghanistan, which, after nearly a decade of war, represents the longest continuous U.S. military engagement ever. Even the non-partisan Congressional Research Service recently declared the situation in Afghanistan as a “deteriorating security situation and no comprehensive political outcome yet in sight.” And the U.S. military just suffered its 1,000th casualty in Afghanistan on Friday. . . . So the real question is: What have we bought for $1 trillion? Are we safer?

Why the Gaza boat deaths are a huge deal

Video from the cowardly attack on a humanitarian convoy:

The technology that I find so amazing isn’t a failed oil well, which is basically a hole in the ground. The tech that I find so amazing is the technology that is bringing me a live video feed from a mile under the Gulf of Mexico and letting me watch this undersea tragedy unfold from a thousand miles away.

(Robert Dreyfuss, TheNation.com, May 25, 2010)
[CLICK the above credit line for the full article]

A secret military directive signed last September 30 by General David Petraeus, the Centcom commander, authorizes a vast expansion of secret U.S. military special ops from the Horn of Africa to the Middle East to Central Asia and “appears to authorize specific operations in Iran,” according to the New York Times. . . . If President Obama knew about this, authorized it, and still supports it, then Obama has crossed a red line, and the president will stand revealed as an aggressive, militaristic liberal interventionist who bears a closer resemblance to the president he succeeded than to the ephemeral reformer that he pretended to be in 2008, when he ran for office. If he didn’t know, if he didn’t understand the order, and if he’s unwilling to cancel it now that it’s been publicized, then Obama is a feckless incompetent. Take your pick. . » Continue reading “Is Obama Militaristic or Incompetent”

( Daniel Tencer, Raw Story, January 13th, 2010)
[CLICK the above credit line for the full article]

President Barack Obama’s appointee to head the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs advocated “cognitive infiltration” of groups that advocate “conspiracy theories” like the ones surrounding 9/11. . . . Cass Sunstein, a Harvard law professor, co-wrote an academic article entitled “Conspiracy Theories: Causes and Cures,” in which he argued that the government should stealthily infiltrate groups that pose alternative theories on historical events via “chat rooms, online social networks, or even real-space groups and attempt to undermine” those groups. . . . As head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, Sunstein is in charge of “overseeing policies relating to privacy, information quality, and statistical programs,” according to the White House Web site. . . » Continue reading “Has COINTELPRO Returned?”

(Coletta Youngers, Foreign Policy in Focus, May 11, 2010)
[CLICK the above credit line for the full article]

According to new U.S. “drug czar” Gil Kerlikowske, the Obama administration doesn’t use the term “drug war” because the government shouldn’t be waging war against its own citizens. . . . And in his trip to Peru this past April, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Arturo Valenzuela noted that the fundamental problem is not coca cultivation itself, but poverty and inequality. . . . Yet the indigenous and Afro-Colombian groups along the Naya River on Colombia’s Pacific coast tell a different story. For the past three months, coca fumigation operations have taken place in one of the most biologically diverse regions of the world. Despite myriad concerns – from its ineffectiveness to the damage done to human health and the environment – the Obama administration remains committed to this fumigation strategy as well as to the overall Plan Colombia. The rhetoric may have changed for the better, but the reality of the how the U.S. “war on drugs” is waged on the ground in Latin America has not. . . . the White House has little enthusiasm for taking on the entrenched “drug war” bureaucracy or in expending political capital in pushing for reform of international drug policy. . » Continue reading “Is Obama Serious About Ending the War on Drugs?”

(Norman Solomon, AlterNet, May 10, 2010)
[CLICK the above credit line for the full article]

If President Obama has his way, Elena Kagan will replace John Paul Stevens — and the Supreme Court will move rightward. The nomination is very disturbing, especially because it’s part of a pattern. . . . Now, the president has taken a step that jeopardizes civil liberties and other basic constitutional principles. . . . ”During the course of her Senate confirmation hearings as Solicitor General, Kagan explicitly endorsed the Bush administration’s bogus category of ‘enemy combatant,’ whose implementation has been a war crime in its own right,” University of Illinois law professor Francis Boyle noted last month. “Now, in her current job as U.S. Solicitor General, Kagan is quarterbacking the continuation of the Bush administration’s illegal and unconstitutional positions in U.S. federal court litigation around the country, including in the U.S. Supreme Court.” . » Continue reading “Progressives Must Fight the Kagan Nomination”

(Huffington Post, 05-13-10)
[CLICK the above credit line for the full article]

Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh says that US forces in Afghanistan are carrying out what he referred to as “battlefield executions” of prisoners. . . . “One of the great tragedies of my country is that Mr. Obama is looking the other way, because equally horrible things are happening to prisoners, to those we capture in Afghanistan,” Hersh said . . » Continue reading “US Troops Carrying Out ‘Battlefield Executions’ In Afghanistan”

(Ryan Grim, Huffington Post, May 12, 2010)
[CLICK the above credit line for the full article]

A group of 27 major donors is vowing to withhold campaign cash from lawmakers who stand in the way of legislation that would allow for public funding of congressional campaigns. Over their careers, the donors have contributed millions to Democratic candidates — and, on limited occasions, Republicans or independents — but they say they’ve had it. And they don’t mind if it means a lack of access. . . . Steve Kirsch kicked in roughly $10 million to try to elect Al Gore in 2000. “It is a trade off, because there are a lot of good things you can talk to them about, but most of the time they don’t do anything about it anyway. Given the choice, I’d rather have campaign finance reform than access,” said Kirsch, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur and founder of Infoseek, among other companies. . . . The millions that the donors have given is just the beginning, and doesn’t include the millions more they’ve funneled by organizing fundraisers or otherwise corralling contributions. . . » Continue reading “Rich Liberals Withhold Campaign Contributions”