US politics

The Drones Team at the Bureau of Investigative Journalism writes: The Bureau is launching an ambitious new investigation, which will seek to identify as many as possible of those killed in US covert drone strikes in Pakistan, whether civilian or militant. The Bureau is raising some of the money for this project through a crowd-funding […]

al-Qaeda

Paranoia Strikes Deep: A Cowering America still Haunted by Bin Laden’s Ghost (Engelhardt)

Juan Cole

Tom Engelhardt writes at Tomdispatch.com Consider Inauguration Day, more than two weeks gone and already part of our distant past. In its wake, President Obama was hailed (or reviled) for his “liberal” second inaugural address. On that day everything from his invocation of women’s rights (“Seneca Falls”), the civil rights movement (“Selma”), and the gay rights movement (“Stonewall”) to […]

Drones

Leaked Obama Memo Shows Assassination of U.S. Citizens “Has No Geographic Limit” (Democracy Now!)

Juan Cole

Amy Goodman’s “Democracy Now!” reports on the leaked drone memo authorizing killing of American citizens abroad at the president’s order: The blurb for the show: “The Obama administration’s internal legal justification for assassinating U.S. citizens without charge has been revealed for the first time. In a secret Justice Department memo, the administration claims it has […]

Africa

US Covert Drone War in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia – Jan. Update (Woods et al.)

Juan Cole

Chris Woods, Jack Serle and Alice K Ross write at the Bureau of Investigative Journalism Yemen was hit by the highest number of airstrikes in one month since June 2012, though none have been formally confirmed as US operations. No US operations were reported in Somalia. The United Nations also launched a major investigation into […]

Arab Spring

Will a declining America Start Having to Obey the same Rules as Everybody Else? (Chomsky)

Juan Cole

Noam Chomsky writes at Tomdispatch.com: [This piece is adapted from “Uprisings,” a chapter in Power Systems: Conversations on Global Democratic Uprisings and the New Challenges to U.S. Empire, Noam Chomsky’s new interview book with David Barsamian (with thanks to the publisher, Metropolitan Books). The questions are Barsamian’s, the answers Chomsky’s.] Does the United States still […]

US politics

Matt Taibbi on Big Banks’ Lack of Accountability (Moyers Video Interview)

Juan Cole

Bill Moyers interviews Rolling Stone journalist Matt Taibbi on why banksters who clearly engaged in illegal activity that crashed the American economy have been held harmless from prosecution. This is the blurb at Bill Moyers’ indispensable site: “Matt Taibbi on Big Banks’ Lack of Accountability February 1, 2013 Rolling Stone‘s Matt Taibbi joins Bill to […]

Iran

Chuck Hagel Mauled in Bizarro World of US Senate

Juan Cole

The confirmation hearing in the Senate for Chuck Hagel, President Obama’s nominee for Secretary of Defense, was painful to watch because it displayed the tomfoolery, pretense, self-righteous know-nothingism, and embarrassing lack of contact with reality that dominate the landscape of America’s broken democracy. It was like watching a Nebraska ordinary Joe set upon by circus […]

US politics

Why the Senate should Confirm Chuck Hagel as SecDef

Juan Cole

Reprint edn.: this appeared earlier, but is a propos of today’s Senate confirmation hearings. A future column will treat that process: I doubt Chuck Hagel, the former Republican senator from Nebraska, and I would agree about almost anything with regard to domestic US politics . . . But he isn’t being nominated for secretary of […]

US politics

Immigration and the Future of America (Chart)

Juan Cole

Immigration to the US is if anything accelerating. The 1924-1965 immigration law had been racist and set strict quotas for everyone but northern Europeans. Since 1965, up to 25,000 immigrants can come from each country in the world. Increasingly, immigrants come not from Europe but from Latin America & the Caribbean, from Asia, and from […]