via Lobe Log
by Marsha B. Cohen
Today hundreds of buses packed with what organizers claim are about a thousand citizen advocates departed from various pick-up points in and around New York and New Jersey for Washington, DC. They represent NORPAC (not an acronym for anything), a much smaller, localized grassroots [...]
via Lobe Log
by Charles Davis
US President Barack Obama today condemned the Guantanamo Bay prison camp run by US President Barack Obama, channeling the moral outrage last heard on the 2008 campaign trail.
“The idea that we would still detain forever a group of individuals that have not been tried, that is contrary [...]
Jeremy Scahill, Blowback Reporter
by Tom Engelhardt
via Tom Dispatch
Chalmers Johnson’s book Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire was published in March 2000 — and just about no one noticed. Until then, blowback had been an obscure term of CIA tradecraft, which Johnson defined as “the unintended consequences of policies [...]
via Lobe Log
by Jasmin Ramsey
Two conversations are presently occurring in Washington about Iran. Hawks and hardliners are searching for new ways to force the Obama administration to tighten or impose further sanctions, and/or discussing when the US should strike the country. Meanwhile, doves and pragmatists have been pointing out the ineffectiveness of sanctions in [...]
via Lobe Log
by Marsha B. Cohen
Americans will soon get to see their taxpayer dollars at work when Israel’s Iron Dome anti-rocket system, funded largely by the US, is deployed during President Obama’s Israel visit.
Unless the inauguration of Pope Francis I causes an abrupt change in his itinerary , Obama will land in [...]
via Lobe Log
by Henry Precht
Two US service members were killed and at least eight others injured Monday in an insider attack at a Special Forces site in Afghanistan. The Taliban asserted responsibility. This incident would seem to nullify President Hamid Karzai’s earlier charge that US and Taliban forces were colluding [...]
via Lobe Log
by Charles Naas
Not even a month in office, Secretary of State John Kerry took his first official trip to the troubled Middle East and immediately felt first-hand the pressures and metamorphosing power relationships in the region. He began his visit with a meeting in Rome with countries that provide assistance to [...]
via Lobe Log
by Mitchell Plitnick
The 2013 American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) Policy Conference wasn’t quite the same show of arrogant power that it usually is. There seems to have been a note of unusual concern among the 13,000 or so assembled activists. And those concerns echo some of [...]
via Lobe Log
by Marsha B. Cohen
Newly confirmed Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel is scheduled to meet with Israel’s Defense Minister Ehud Barak on Tuesday morning, March 5. There’s more to this meeting than one might infer from harrumphing members of the right who see this meeting as one more opportunity [...]
The Trillion-Dollar Concept That No One Can Define
by Mattea Kramer and Chris Hellman
via Tom Dispatch
Imagine a labyrinthine government department so bloated that few have any clear idea of just what its countless pieces do. Imagine that tens of billions of tax dollars are disappearing into it annually, black hole-style, since it can’t pass a [...]
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- U.S.-Russia Nuclear Arsenals Cling to Bygone Era
- Film on Sexual Abuse Wins at Colombia-Venezuela Festival
- Official Bullying Lurks Behind Prep for Olympics in Brazil
- Pioneering Italian Town Leads Europe in Waste Recycling
- Civil Society Under Attack Around the World
