Here are the good, the bad and the ugly things in President Obama’s important speech on counter-terrorism Thursday, and in the off-stage steps he has announced that mysteriously did not appear in the speech: The Good: President Obama seems determined to give responsibility for drone strikes to the Department of Defense, taking it away from […]
Archives for May 2013
Obama: US will Continue its Targeted Killing with Drones (Woods)
Chris Woods writes at the Bureau of Investigative Journalism Barack Obama has made it clear that the US will continue with its controversial targeted killing programme. In a major speech the US president also announced that he has signed into force a new – and secret – rule book for lethal action that provides ‘clear […]
Big Oil’s Hit Men have a Contract to Whack the Earth (Engelhardt)
Tom Engelhardt writes at Tomdispatch.com: We have a word for the conscious slaughter of a racial or ethnic group: genocide. And one for the conscious destruction of aspects of the environment: ecocide. But we don’t have a word for the conscious act of destroying the planet we live on, the world as humanity had known […]
Sen. Inhofe: “When a Disaster Occurs in America… Everyone … wants to pour Money on’em”
From last fall: Sen. Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma argues against relief aid for Hurricane Sandy, in part because working on it in the Senate would delay the beginning of his Christmas vacation. He admits that in Oklahoma “we do get some Federal help.”
Rafsanjani’s Exclusion from Iran’s Presidential Race a Sign of Creeping Totalitarianism
Iran’s Guardian Council startled that country when it announced that Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the former president (1989-1997) who was among the founders of the Islamic Republic, would not be allowed to run for president in the June election. Less surprising, it struck down the candidacy of Esfandiar Rahim Mashaie, a confidant of outgoing president Mahmoud […]
Dear Oklahoma: We Feel for you, we love you, but do us some favors
The immense, mindless violence of a tornado hitting a small Oklahoma town, turning houses into splinters and crushing people under rubble, including children, has rightfully dominated the American airwaves for the past few days. Oklahoma is a great state, a state with profound history, a place of big plans where Native Americans play an outsized […]
PBS and the Koch Brother Scandal (plus “Koch Brothers Exposed”)
PBS declined to show “Citizen Koch, a documentary about the Wisconsin public union issue, treating the influence of the dirty energy magnates who are destroying the world through climate change and funding climate change denial, among the various other nefarious things they do. This according to the New Yorker’s Jane Mayer. It points to the […]
Israel, Syria, Trade Fire, Threats in Golan Heights
The Increasingly desperate Baath regime in Syria appears to be seeking skirmishes with Israel as a way of shoring up its nationalist credentials. If the regime were under fire from Israel, that would put the rebels in the position of acting as allies of Tel Aviv and so discrediting them. Hence, Syria’s troops fired at […]
Revenge of the Bear: Russia Strikes Back in Syria (Cole @ Truthdig)
My column is out at Truthdig, looking at Russian President Vladimir Putin’s muscular new role in the Eastern Mediterranean and Syria: Excerpt: “Even as Damascus pushes back against the rebels militarily, Putin has swung into action on the international and regional stages. The Russian government persuaded U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry to support an […]
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