By Juan Cole President Obama admitted on CBS’s “60 Minutes” on Sunday that the US had underestimated the military potential of ISIL. Obama understands that a generational struggle is going on in the Middle East, but some of his comments in the interview seemed to me to show insufficient appreciation for the true nature of […]
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Democratic Party
Right Wing on Holder: al-Qaeda, Black Panther, Stalinist
MediaMatters4America: mediamatters4america: The Worst Right-Wing Smears About Eric Holder
Apocalypse Now, Iraq Edition
By Peter Van Buren via Tomdispatch.com I wanted to offer a wry chuckle before we headed into the heavy stuff about Iraq, so I tried to start this article with a suitably ironic formulation. You know, a déjà-vu-all-over-again kinda thing. I even thought about telling you how, in 2011, I contacted a noted author to […]
‘We’re on edge of large war in MidEast’ – Daniel Ellsberg
RT: “With Washington wading into another war in the Middle East, one iconic US whistleblower says Americans are being kept in the dark about the risks of the latest intervention. And he called for more people to spill the beans, as RT’s Ameera David reports.” ‘We’re on edge of large war in MidEast’ – Daniel […]
The Plutocracy Strikes Back: The Pathologies of Rule by a Handful of Billionaires
By Steve Fraser via Tomdispatch.com George Baer was a railroad and coal mining magnate at the turn of the twentieth century. Amid a violent and protracted strike that shut down much of the country’s anthracite coal industry, Baer defied President Teddy Roosevelt’s appeal to arbitrate the issues at stake, saying, “The rights and interests of […]
Russia denounces Obama Plan for Syria Air Strikes as Violation of Int’l Law
By Juan Cole Russia on Thursday pushed back against President Obama’s state plans for taking on the so-called Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL or ISIS) in Syria. Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich remarked on television: “The US president has spoken directly about the possibility of strikes by the US armed forces […]
3 Years War? Obama to Bomb Syria in fight against ISIL
By Juan Cole Juliet Eilperin and David Nakamura at WaPo report on a Monday evening dinner at the White House attended by foreign policy experts, in which President Obama expressed confidence that he had the authority to bomb ISIL positions in Syria. In other reports, Obama officials have leaked that they think this is a […]
Elizabeth Warren: Taking on Entrenched Wall Street Interests that have Rigged the Game (Moyers)
Bill Moyers: “The Massachusetts senator talks to Bill about taking on the entrenched political and Wall Street interests that have rigged the game against the rest of us.”
Can Obama Resist Hawks’ Pressure to Rush to Syria Quagmire?
By Adam Quinn, University of Birmingham via The Conversation US president Barack Obama has yet to work out exactly what America’s strategy is in confronting Islamic State (IS), and has been foolish enough to say so in public. Cue the foreseeable torrent of point-scoring from opponents. As Vox’s Zack Beauchamp perceptively pointed out, however, a […]