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McCain had pledged to run a clean campaign, but like Mike Tyson when he’s in the mood to munch ear, the Republicans just can’t control themselves. First they tried to blame Barack Obama for the current price of energy, which is actually so high because Republicans have been in Big Oil’s back pocket and in […]

Russia just defeated the US in the race for Central Asian gas. The US bet on a gas pipeline through Taliban territory in Afghanistan and Pakistan to India while trying to sideline Russia and Iran! Putin is rivalling the emir of Kuwait as a fossil fuel master of the universe. The only question is when […]

Mark LeVine is disturbed by the tendency of Barack Obama and other US politicians to lump the Taliban together with al-Qaeda. The latter, he says is an international terrorist organization. The Taliban in contrast is a “territorially rooted” “ethno-nationalist” movement. Aljazeera International on Mawlana Fazlullah, the number 2 man in the Tehrik-i Taliban or Pakistani […]

One hundred Pushtun guerrillas launched a major offensive in an attempt to take Spera District center. They drew down on themselves the full fury of US and NATO air forces that gave support to Afghan National Police, which killed up to 70 of them. Jang reports in Urdu that Khost governor Arsala Jamal said that […]

Scott McClellan admits on Hardball that the White House fed Fox News hosts talking points. Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow point out that in the US, the government is forbidden to propagandize the public. It has long been known that Fox Cable News head Roger Ailes (a former Republican Party official) and other high executives […]

Obama Obama in Newsweek: ‘ Our success in Afghanistan is going to be deeply dependent not just on getting more troops there, which we need, but also some sustained high-level engagement with Pakistan—something that I discussed before but I think is significantly more urgent than even I had imagined. Basically there doesn’t appear to be […]

Obama addresses a crowd of 200,000 in Berlin. Some were shouting in English, “Yes we can!” Text transcript here.

Madhavi Bhasin writes in an IC Guest Editorial: The race to elect the successor to President George W. Bush is attracting more attention from across the globe than any previous Presidential contest in the United States. The next occupant of the White House is expected to manage the consequences of the infamous Bush Doctrine of […]

My Salon column, , “Obama is saying the Wrong things about Afghanistan,” , is now available online. Excerpt: ‘ The governor of the North-West Frontier province, Owais Ghani, immediately spoke out against Obama, saying that the senator’s remarks had the effect of undermining the new civilian government elected last February. Ghani warned that a U.S. […]