Latest Hot
Picks
Book Excerpt: The Assault on Reason by Al Gore
How
to Lose the War on Terror Part 5: The Politics of Indignation
Welcome to Doomsday by Bill Moyers
An Army Program to Build a High-Tech Force Hits Cost Snags
A Science-Fiction Army
Report Says Pentagon Spending on Weapons to Soar
Army Will Restructure Modernization Contract
The
Immutable Nature of War: A Nova Interview with Lt. Gen Paul Van Riper,
who, as commander of the "enemy forces" in a recent $250 million war
game designed to test new technologies, used low tech devices and
strategies so effectively that the "American forces" were forced to
resurrect 16 sunken ships and restart the game.
US moves
to create a beachhead in space -- Satellite
weapons systems would give the US an edge but are costly and
controversial
After nine weeks of wrangling, Iraq has a new government
Adams: IRA must embrace peace
Trade
war: US vs the rest of the world
‘Arms and
Rights’ Perry Anderson on Rawls, Habermas and Bobbio in an age of
serial war
FRIEDMAN: Globalization has raised the notion that someone anywhere on
earth can do your job, more cheaply. Can Americans rise to the
challenge on this leveled playing field?
Judith
Miller's UN reporting -- a mole at the NY Times?
Previous Top Picks
The Atlantic Divide (post 9/11 and Spain's "M-11") by Jonathan Schell
Friedman: "Stop and think about this: We killed 26 of our prisoners of
war."
The Report: U.S. Military Says 26 Inmate Deaths May Be Homicide
Deconstructing Iraq: Year Three Begins
What Was the Third World Revolution? by Clifford Geertz
Fed signals concern on inflation
Left-Right Coalition Forms to Oppose Parts of Antiterrorism Law
Rampage in Minn. Mirrors Others
Pentagon
Reaffirms Globocop Role
Anti-Empire
Report: Democracy--or is it the US Military--on the March
Pro-Bush Group Overstates Social Security Shortfall
How to
Turn Your Red State Blue
NYC Peace March Veers Way Left --
Black-led protest challenges capitalism,
imperialism, and New York's very rich mayor
NY Times Op-Ed Contributor: The Return of Latin America's Left
White House authorized secret program to transfer suspected terrorists
to foreign countries for interrogation within days of 9/11 attack
A Year After Madrid Attacks, Europe Stalled in Terror Fight
Spaniards united in loss but divided on lessons
War on
Terror May Breed More Terrorism, Experts Tell Madrid Summit
Arianna Huffington: The Senate Opens Fire on U.S. Consumers
Hezbolla: Lebanon's force that can't be ignored
Appointments of John Bolton, John Negroponte, and possibly Paul
Wolfowitz to new high-profile jobs show just how radical the
Bush/Cheney clique has become
The president seems determined to ignore the biggest challenges and to
home in on politically charged side issues.
Maximum pain is aim of new US weapon
A Less Super Superpower by Jonathan Schell
Poll: Bush Out Of Step With Public
Syria seeks Arab solution in Lebanon
US demands full Syria exit
Bush: The
strategist in the shadows?
Krugman: "Does anyone still take Mr. Greenspan's pose as a nonpartisan
font of wisdom seriously?"
China lashes out at U.S. on human rights
Sen. Robert Byrd: 'Nuking' Free Speech
Geneva: Assassination of millionaire banker leaves police baffled
Scandal? What Scandal? -- Bush's
Iran-Contra appointees are barely a story
Inside the Committee that Runs the World
Newsweek
Investigation: Aboard Air CIA -- The agency ran a secret charter
service, shuttling detainees to torture friendly interrogation
facilities worldwide. Was it legal? What's next?
Trusting in Spitzer: New York's A.G. appears to mean
business for the Dems in 2008
R.I.P. Hunter S. Thompson -- The Dark Star: Why did he kill himself?
Maybe because America has finally become what he said it was, with
lie-awake fears of suitcase nukes, jails full of secret uncharged
prisoners with no legal recourse, and quiet applause for the
recreational torture of Arabs in Iraq.
Boston Review New Democracy Forum: "In the National Interest" By
Stephen M. Walt with responses from Richard Falk, Joseph S. Nye Jr.,
Ervand Abrahamian, Khalil Shikaki, Naomi Chazan, Robert Vickers Jr.,
Mahmood Mamdani, John Tirman, Ivo Daalder, James Lindsay, Mary Kaldor,
and Anne-Marie Slaughter
A
Corrupted Election -- Despite what you may have heard, the Nov.
election day exit polls were right
Today's
Europe: In a secular ocean, waves of spirituality
Creative Class War: How the GOP's
anti-elitism could ruin America's economy.
"America's Senior Moment" -- Paul Krugman reviews The Coming
Generational Storm: What You Need to Know About America's Economic
Future
New
allegations of prisoner abuse by US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan
have been revealed in documents released by the US Army.
How torture became acceptable
Controversial diplomat given job of overseeing CIA and FBI
Negroponte's Dark Past
CIA Director Porter J. Goss to the Senate Select Committee on
Intelligence: "Islamic extremists are exploiting the Iraqi conflict to
recruit new anti-U.S. jihadists."
3 from Deutsche Welle on NATO and Afghanistan:
NATO's Big Challenge: Afghanistan
Germany Opposes US Plan in Afghanistan
From Cold War Defense Shield To Global Peacekeeper
Bernie
Sanders: Censorship of the Media Creating Insidious Chill on Free
Expression on our Airwaves
Transcript of Harvard President's Contentious Speech Concerning
Women's Natural Inaptitude for the Sciences
(Remember, he is an FOB.)
Emile Durkheim, the great French sociologist, still speaks to us.
Blind
Faith by Bill Moyers: "One of the biggest changes in politics in my
lifetime is that the delusional is no longer marginal. It has come in
from the fringe, to sit in the seat of power in the Oval Office and in
Congress."
Britain accused of aiding CIA's secret torture flights
Jonathan
Schell on winners and losers in Iraq
The
Davos Report (pdf file)
While the
world's biggest CEOs and politicians gather in Davos, Switzerland to
network and negotiate, activists and NGO-workers meet halfway around
the world in Porto Alegre, Brazil to imagine other, more
humanity-focused possibilities.
More
than 200 scientists employed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service say
they have been directed to alter official findings to lessen
protections for plants and animals
Tom
Friedman: Scribe for New Age Imperialism by Mike Whitney
The
New Colossus: William Greider explains why public pension funds might
be the real progressive power.
Fear of a Shia Planet: Ronald Reagan's old enemy
becomes George Bush's new friend in Iraq
Crimes of History -- Wilson Quarterly Review of
PAST IMPERFECT: Facts, Fictions, Fraud — American History from
Bancroft and Parkman to Ambrose, Bellesiles, Ellis, and Goodwin.
Less Perfect Union: William Hartung found the president lacking in
facts and the Democrats lacking in vision.
Africa prepares to celebrate the legacy of Bob Marley with an
anniversary concert celebrating his 60th birthday
Considering the Last Romantic, Ayn Rand, at 100
Manipulating digital images has never been easier or faster. So seeing
is no longer believing.
Word-watch: Orwell reborn
The
failed-state cancer By Henry C K Liu
Anatomy Of An Election
The Vietnam turnout was good as well
N.Y. Using Terrorism Law To Prosecute Street Gang
Nick Turse
on the Homeland Security State (Part I)
Nick Turse
on the Homeland Security State (Part II)
Kerry blames
defeat on Bin Laden
Bush, GOP Quietly Dismantling Employer-Provided Health Insurance
System
Study finds transcendental meditation really can lower hypertension.
In disaster zone, women are key By Swanee Hunt
and Don Steinberg
Latin America Stuck in Stage-Two Democracy
Righting Copyright:
Fair Use and "Digital Environmentalism"
The
Falling Dollar -- The solution, not the problem
Enlisted by
the feds, can police find sleeper cells and protect civil rights, too?
Money, Power and Modern Art – An ongoing series by Henry C K Liu
Shifting roles of US spies and special forces
Does America have apartheid vote-counting system? By Jesse Jackson and
Greg Palast
Newsweek:
Dream On America -- For years, much of the world did aspire to the
American way of life. But no longer.
Defense Espionage Unit to Work With CIA
Atrocities in Plain Sight -- Review of two books on Abu Ghraib torture
Nipping Orange Roses In The Bud -- Post-Soviet Elites Against
Revolution
Central banks shift reserves away from US
Commandos Get Duty on U.S. Soil
Official: Pentagon formed secret unit after 9/11
A driver's license as national ID?
Guardian UK: A fantasy of freedom -- If Bush wanted to tackle tyranny,
he could start with regimes under US control.
What Is
Wrong with Torture by Jonathan Schell
The full text of President Bush's second inaugural address
Bush's Words On Liberty Don't Mesh With Policies -- U.S. Maintains
Close Ties With Repressive Nations
Seymour Hersh: The Coming Wars -- What the Pentagon can now do in
secret.
Global Left Turn by David Held, professor of political science at the
London School of Economics and author of "Global Covenant: The Social
Democratic Alternative to the Washington Consensus"
Our Velvet
Revolution by Doris 'Granny D' Haddock
Terry Gilliam: This Python bites
Opinion: The World's Bush Dilemma
In Age of Security, Firm Mines Wealth Of Personal Data
Transcript of remarks between Boxer and Rice
Head
Start for Thought Police?: The US won't require mental-health testing
for all children - yet.
60s Civil
Rights Activist, Angela Davis, Gives Blistering Address at M L King
Celebration
A televisual fairyland -- The US media is disciplined by corporate
America into promoting the Republican cause
Fearful US TV networks censor more shows
Pentagon reveals rejected chemical weapons
Electronic
Privacy Information Center (EPIC): 2004 Privacy Year in Review
FBI
Keeping Records on Pre-9/11 Travelers
New Behavioral Profiling Techniques Help Target Suspicious Subway
Passengers
Human Rights Watch: Annual Report Paints Bleak Picture in Many Former
Soviet States
Internationalisms, etc. by Richard John Neuhaus: "Conflicting visions
of America’s role in the world—visions resulting in partisan
alignments and realignments—also have a powerful bearing on how we
think about questions of war and peace."
CIA Report: Iraq Is New Terror Breeding Ground - War Created Haven
Laws (and wealth) of nations -- A controversial theory blames
countries' lagging economies on Napoleon
Two new books document what was already public knowledge: the
incidents of torture were not restricted to one prison in Baghdad
A global gulag to hide the war on terror's dirty secrets -- Bush is
now thinking of building jails abroad to hold suspects for life
Interview with Tom Frank, author of the bestselling book, What’s
the Matter with Kansas? which investigates how conservatives won
the heart of America?
A Democratic
Blueprint for America's Future -- An Address by Senator Edward M.
Kennedy at the National Press Club
In new
report US intelligence agencies offer vision of the world in 2020
Living in Oblivion -- Reagan-era callousness sparked
an indie film renaissance. Will Bush II inspire another?
Striking
Similarity Between McCarthyism and George Bush's USA Patriot Act by
Leslie Liddell
Soros group raises stakes in battle with US neo-cons
The message, "This call may be monitored for quality assurance
purposes," is so common that many callers assume no one is listening.
But they would be wrong.
US considers 'Salvador option' in Iraq -- Plan
modeled on Reagan-era support for Central American 'death-squads.'
Many ominous things are happening in Britain, unchecked, that would
scandalize earlier centuries' freedom lovers
Foreign Affairs Book Review: Whither Political Islam?
Review:
The Art of Always Being Right by Arthur
Schopenhauer
Ratio
Nation by Curtis White: "While rereading the poetry of William Blake
recently, I realized very little had changed between the 18th century
and today"
Fritz Stern, a refugee from Hitler's Germany and a leading scholar of
European history, startled several of his listeners when he warned in
a speech about the danger posed in the US by the rise of the Christian
right.
Taxi Driver: Scorsese's Sordid Everyman Returns
Robert
McChesney: The Moment Has Come for Media Reform
Can
Latin nations build on 2004 gains?
The Ends of the World as We Know Them -- The United States is
seemingly at the height of its power, but how long will our ascendancy
last? By Jared Diamond, winner of the 1998 Pulitzer Prize in general
nonfiction
Sixteen Tons of Fun: Dave Eggers on “Spamalot,” the Broadway
musical-comedy adaptation of “Monty Python and the Holy Grail”
What would Thorstein Veblen, who took no prisoners in his 'Theory of
the Leisure Class,' make of today's consumer culture?
What Went Wrong In Post-9/11 America? Rajan Menon reviews Imperial
Hubris and The 9/11 Commission Report
Winning Hearts, Losing Souls - Keith Gessen reviews What's the
Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won The Heart of America by
Thomas Frank
What do the CIA, the Pentagon and the UN Have in Common? by Katrina
vanden Heuvel
Democratic Providentialism by Michael Ignatieff
Scathing
Memory: Journalism faces up to the psychic costs of war reporting
Anti-war scholar Seymour Melman dies at 86
Ralph Nader
on the Death of Seymour Melman
Creeping Secrecy
George
W. Bush’s electoral victory is chilling proof that conservatives have
achieved dominance over the flow of information to the American people
Bush's
goals still big, bold
Dark side
to US intelligence reform -- the executive branch may be empowered to
create a "private army" for pursuing its policy of preventive war.
The War on What, Exactly?
Iraq's
Silent Dead by Jeffrey Sachs
The US
Army is prepping a squad of gun toting robots.
Iraq’s Chaos -- Why the insurgency won’t go away
Israel/Occupied Territories: Uncertain Times
Something's
Fishy in Ohio by Jesse Jackson
From
Guernica to Fallujah
Thought Police Alert: Brain scans show that the brains of people who
are lying look very different from those of people who are telling the
truth -- small study raises hopes for new lie-detecting technology.
Let's pass a bill to have our leaders publicly scanned
whenever they speak to us.
Pentagon Feeds Misleading Info To Networks
"Time Out of Joint: Western dominance, Islamist terror, and the Arab
imagination" by Sadik J. Al-Azm, emeritus professor of modern European
philosophy at the University of Damascus
Crisis
towers over the dollar
Dollar hit by signs that central banks in Russia and elsewhere could
step up sales of the ailing US currency to buy euros.
"Passage to China" by Amartya Sen
Who Lost Ohio?
Transatlantic divides: Questions for Timothy Garton Ash on his latest
book
The Diffusion of Prosperity and Peace by Globalization
The Two Americas by Andrew Arato
How to Fight Terror While Preserving Liberty by Harvard Professors
Juliette Kayyem and Philip Heymann
Holocaust Victim's Novel Finds a Readership at Last
The Making of Modern Iraq
Fallujah's Gruesome Story
UK: National identity database to be created
Religious Left faces tough challenge
Book Review: The Empire Has No Clothes: US Foreign Policy Exposed
-- Most Americans don’t think of their government as an empire, but in
fact the United States has been steadily expanding its control of
overseas territories since the turn of the twentieth century.
Text: U.S. Sen. Fritz Hollings' farewell Senate
address
Jonathan
Schell: What happened to winning hearts?
The
Corporatization of Elections
Ape discovery fills gap in evolutionary jigsaw
Howard Zinn:
The Missing Voices of Our World
Has the US Voting System Been Compromised?
Iraq: Winning in Fallujah, losing elsewhere?
Repost: A
poisonous geopolitical jungle -- A history of US engagement with Iraq
and the Middle East since WWII by Henry C K Liu
Afghanistan wants 'Dead Sea Scrolls of Buddhism' back from UK
Interview With a Frontline Interrogator in the "War on Terror"
Resistance blueprint -- The former head of Pakistan's Inter-Services
Intelligence gives an assessment of events in Iraq
On Media
and the Election by Robert W. McChesney
The Liberal Waterloo (Or, finally some good news from Washington!) By
Slavoj Zizek
Foreign Affairs: American Legitimacy
Foreign Policy: Bush's foreign policy is nothing new or revolutionary.
However, its goals are unachievable so long as its means and ends are
so out of sync.
The saddest
news: Kerry Won by Greg Palast
The
Nation: Stand and Fight
Another "non-lethal" weapon death: Man dies after police use stun gun
Gary
Wills: The Day the Enlightenment Went Out
Translated full transcript of Osama bin Laden's 18 minute video-taped
message
Cracks in
the Empire: Compilation of Insiders Who Have Taken Aim at Bush's Iraq
Policy
US-Muslim relations: hard choices ahead
Religion, State, and Fear in Central Asia
The Ten Worst
Media Distortions of Campaign 2004
Pentagon suppresses details of civilian casualties, says expert
Psst. President Bush Is Hard at Work Expanding Government Secrecy
Boston: Student's Death Returns Crowd Control to the Fore
100,000 Iraqi civilians have died in Iraq since the invasion according
to the first reliable study of the death toll from Iraqi and US public
health experts
Looking
Tough by Jonathan Schell
Interview with Seymour Hersh
Remembering Walt Kelly’s Pogo
The Scope of
Today's Successful Deception of the American People is Unprecedented
No change
in US torture policy
US gave date of war to Britain months in advance, court papers reveal
What the Terrorists Have in Mind -- Islamist Web sites and chat rooms
reveal a movement that is exuberant over recent world events
Abu Ghraib Guards Kept Notes in Log
After Terror, a Secret Rewriting of Military Law
CIA 'took
detainees out of Iraq' to hide them from Red Cross in violation of
Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention
Police Officer Kills College Student At Red Sox Celebration With
"Non-Lethal Weapon"
Who's running the show behind corporate media?
Afghanistan and Iraq: Two Wars That Collide
Senior US officials: Iraq insurgency movement has significantly more
fighters and far greater financial resources than had been estimated.
The Bush
Administration and Iraq: They knew ...
Boston Review: Could 9/11 have signaled the last gasp of Islamism
rather than the beginnings of its global challenge?
OPEN
SOCIETY REPORT: CASPIAN OIL WINDFALLS: WHO WILL BENEFIT?
Free Expression Policy Project Report on Fighting "Information
Enclosure"
Sen.
Carl Levin, the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee: senior
Pentagon official distorted intelligence information to back claims of
links between Iraq and al Qaeda in the run-up to last year's U.S.-led
invasion.
Poor Intelligence Misled Troops About Risk of Drawn-Out War
London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies: the
invasion of Iraq aided al-Qaida
Financial Times: Burma (Myanmar) shakeup further strains Asean-EU
relations
Asia
Times: The ouster by Myanmar's military junta of premier Khin Nyunt,
architect of a tentative "roadmap to democracy", has dashed hopes for
reform and an end to military rule
What is this 'European Union'? by Anne-Marie Slaughter
International Institute for Strategic Studies: Westerners at greater
risk after Iraq war
Al Gore's final major pre-election speech: "The essential cruelty of
Bush's game is that he takes an astonishingly selfish and greedy
collection of economic and political proposals and then cloaks them
with a phony moral authority, thus misleading many Americans ... who
have a deep and genuine desire to do good in the world. And in the
process, he convinces them to lend unquestioning support for proposals
that actually hurt their families and their communities."
Full Transcript
How Many Iraqis Are Dying? -- Best estimates for civilian deaths in
Iraq over all since the war began in early 2003 place the number in
the 10,000 to 15,000 range
Bush Domestic Surveillance Operation Moves Offshore to Avoid U.S.
Privacy Protections
Beyond the
Vote: The Crisis of American Liberalism
America's
tortuous road to Abu Ghraib -- A history of US policy toward torture
since the start of the Cold War by Prof. Alfred W McCoy, University of
Wisconsin-Madison.
D.C. insiders expose own agencies -- From the EPA
to the Park Service, Washington whistleblowers raise policy questions
in a tense election year.
The polluted planet: A three-year global study revealed that almost a
third of known species of amphibians face extinction, with pollution
cited as the biggest cause
Israel/Palestine: It's the Occupation, Stupid
Analysis: Why the rude oil prices?
The
Election and America's Future: Comments by K. Anthony Appiah, Russell
Baker, Ian Buruma, Mark Danner, Ronald Dworkin, Michael Ignatieff,
Anthony Lewis, Norman Mailer, Edmund S. Morgan, Thomas Powers, Alan
Ryan, Brian Urquhart, Steven Weinberg, and Garry Wills.
An Open
Letter to the American People on the Iraq War from Security Scholars
for a Sensible Foreign Policy
List
of signatures
Deconstructing the war on terror: "Bush speaks of 'war', but he is in
fact incapable of identifying the enemy against whom he declares that
he has declared war." - Jacques Derrida
Christian Science Monitor: Three years after the attacks of Sept. 11,
the United States is still struggling to identify its main adversaries
in the war on terrorism.
Politics in the
'New Normal' America by Joan Didion
A World Neglected -- Sherle Schwenninger on the foreign-policy debate
we should be having.
The European Dream by Jeremy Rifkin
Review of Robert Reich's Reason: Why Liberals
Will Win the Battle for America.
CSPAN
Booknotes Interview with Richard Viguerie, Author of America's
Right Turn: How Conservatives Used New and Alternative Media to Take
Power
Air Force Looks at New Microwave Weapon
Foreign
Policy In Focus: A Secure America in a Secure World
Foreign Affairs: What Went Wrong in Iraq
ICG Report:
Saudi Arabia Backgrounder: Who are the
Islamists?
Bush administration still pushing the envelope on legal torture
Details
on Iraq efforts in little-seen government reports.
Policy leaders ‘misconstrue US public opinion’
In January 2003 the National Intelligence Council advised Bush Admin.
that an American-led invasion of Iraq would increase support for
political Islam and would result in a deeply divided Iraqi society
prone to violent internal conflict.
The Effect
of the War in Iraq on America's Security by Senator Ted Kennedy
Larry
Tribe Is The Third High Profile Harvard Law Prof. In One Year Forced
To Admit To Plagiarism
The super-rich are fleecing us by avoiding taxes
In the name of homeland security, America's spy imagery agency is
watching America.
Zarqawi's Grisly Path to Power
Jonathan
Schell: Why We Must Leave Iraq
Afghanistan, not Iraq, will likely be the primary focus of NATO's
fight against terrorism for a generation to come
No Time To Think: Americans work nearly nine full weeks or 350 hours
longer than their peers in Western Europe.
Towards a Postcolonial Modernity: AsiaSource Interview with
Subaltern Studies Group founder, Partha Chatterjee
Chicago moving to 'smart' surveillance cameras
We’re Not in Lake Wobegon Anymore by
Garrison Keillor: “Something has gone seriously haywire with the
Republican Party”
Journalism Under Fire by Bill Moyers
Could Truce After Intensifying Iraq War Be October Surprise?
The Terrorism
to Come -- Rules of law and warfare do not apply.
By Walter Laqueur, co-chair of the International Research
Council at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Bush Keeps Specifics Of His Religious Beliefs Private
Henry C K
Liu: Long history of US entanglement in the Middle East
Wolfowitz
and Bush's other advisers perceive the world in a light that ordinary
Americans do not. -- So what did they see on September 11, 2001?
9/11 letters
exchanged by Arthur Schlesinger and Timothy Garton Ash
September 11: What you 'ought not to know' by Greg Palast
Foreign Affairs: The Neglected Home Front
Predictions on the likely consequences of a second term for President
Bush from a panel of 16 writers.
As
nihilistic as it may be, al-Qaeda is a major success: three years
after September 11, it is a global brand and a global movement.
US 'hid' up to 100 Iraqi prisoners
Discussing Disgust and Public Policy. An interview with Martha
Nussbaum
THE
WILDERNESS CAMPAIGN -- David Remnick on Al Gore's life today
Alain de Botton: Workers of the World, Relax
The Rise of
the Homeland Security State - Fortress Big Apple, Revisited
CEO
Pay Soars at Companies That Send Jobs Overseas -- Biggest Convention
Sponsors & Political Donors Also Pay CEOs More
FBI investigates suspected Pentagon security breaches
USIP:
Donor Activities and Civil Society
Potential in Iraq
Interview with Elmore Leonard: The Dickens of Detroit
The Campaign
Conversation Ignores Media Ownership
Ian
Bremmer: Expect a Very Different War on Terror -- if the U.S. is
attacked again, the response will be mostly on the domestic front.
Revenge feels sweet, and Swiss researchers said on Thursday they have
the brain scans to prove it.
For 350 years
the Dutch had profound mercantile and colonial impact on Asia, still
felt today. -- Asia Times Book Review of Pirate King: Coxinga and
the Fall of the Ming Dynasty and The Dutch Encounter with Asia:
1600-1950
Nathan Glazer: Is then the association of "epic" with things American
all just a matter of merchandising, American hype, the spirit of P.T.
Barnum?
Alma
Guillermoprieto: Four years into Mexico's newly minted electoral
democracy, all is not as it should be with the body politic.
Venezuela: Divided Country, Biased Media
Abu Ghraib picture begins to fill in
Chávez's
Victory to Revitalise His 'Social Revolution'
Tomgram:
Jonathan Schell on the empire that fell as it rose
Antonio Negri: The nostalgic revolutionary
Media
Collusion in the Ramp- up to the Iraq War -- What parts of the war
story still are not being covered?
The Changing Face Of Al-Qaeda
Does Your
Government Really Have an Interest in Protecting You from Terrorism?
-- This more dangerous world is very much one of the U.S. government's
making.
Stabilizing the global 'greenhouse' may not be so hard
Film: "The Ister," loosely based on a wartime lecture delivered by
Martin Heidegger on one of Germany's most celebrated poets, Friedrich
Holderlin, is attracting festival crowds.
Press Corruption: The Source of the Trouble
Bagdhad: The war is a fraud.
Athens
goes 'sci-fi' for Olympics security
Tactics coming soon to a city
near YOU!!!
Britain's Environment Agency has found traces of the antidepressant
drug Prozac in rivers and groundwater
How big Al Qaeda's footprint is in the US
Palestine Report Online interviews Hisham Ahmed, professor of
political science at Birzeit University, on the recent security
situation and corruption in the Palestinian territories.
Let's rock the boat by Timothy Garton Ash - Or, why Europeans should
be wary of a President Kerry's war on terror
Jonathan
Schell: The Kerry Mandate: Strong and Wrong
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN: For the last 25 years I have always stayed away
from partisan politics, but this year the stakes have risen too high
to sit the election out.
Ron Reagan:
The Case Against George W. Bush
Jim
Hightower: Unveiling the corporate greed market
Origin of the Species -- a brief history of American political
evolution
The
Hollywood Campaign -- A miner's map for the liberal Gold Rush
Jasper Johns: Master of few words
CSPAN
Booknotes Interview with Mario Cuomo, author of "Why Lincoln Matters:
Today More Than Ever"
Africa's
new model for spreading oil wealth
For
the United States, fighting terrorism is proving to be very different
than containing the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
UK Foreign Affairs Select Committee: Iraq is now al-Qa'ida's
battleground
US Army
War College's Strategic Studies Institute Report contradicts the view
that Operation Iraqi Freedom proved the wisdom of transforming the US
military into a lighter, high-technology force
IBM to Build Supercomputer for U.S. Military
James
Carroll: Fight Terrorism With Law Not War
More
Americans seek God on their terms, and in their homes
9/11 Report Summary (PDF)
Report In Full (PDF)
Boston
Globe 7 Part Kerry Bio
The White House's obsession with secrecy has turned America into a
nation of conspiracy theorists
An
animated cartoon sending up the two US Presidential candidates is a
huge internet hit.
The CIA's Prisoners
America's Homegrown Terrorists (Part I) -- An interview with Daniel
Levitas, author of The Terrorist Next Door: The Militia Movement
and the Radical Right
Patrick
Leahy: There is No Justification for Torture
William Greider on high-level, patriotic leaks to the press.
Think
Again: Q & A on the Ideology of Al Qaeda
Pentagon seeks OK to spy on Americans
British police ready to link up to databases of US intelligence
Fear and
Favor: The Australia-Iraq-U.S. Equation
Vaclav Havel: Time to Act on N. Korea
What
would a John Kerry foreign policy look like? In some ways a lot like
one the current President's father could endorse
COLOMBIA:
Decades of War Over Land
Tiananmen: New story emerges of an infamous massacre -- A massacre did
take place in Beijing 15 years ago, eyewitnesses say - just not in
Tiananmen Square.
U.S. Public
Diplomacy (or Marketing America): A Tale of Two Who Jumped Ship
at State
A
Long Way From Home -- Johara Baker, editor-in-chief for East
Jerusalem's Palestine Report Online, reflects on the emotionally
charged issue of the right of return.
Whose
edifice is this? -- Spain is questioning what its religious and
cultural underpinnings are and to whom its history belongs.
Remarks by
Al Gore -- May 26, 2004
Amnesty: 'Bankrupt' war on terror is world's most damaging conflict in
50 years
Follow
Torture Trail at Abu Ghraib
(Lots of underreported details in this article)
What Have
We Done? by Susan Sontag
"Hubris and hypocrisy: America is failing to honor its own codes" By
Anne Marie Slaughter
CSPAN Video:
Greg Palast, Author of "The Best Democracy Money
Can Buy," on Washington Journal
Just watch at least the first 5 minutes!
Who
is Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith and Why has He
been "at the center of virtually everything that has gone wrong in
Iraq"?
Yahoo! Buzz
How
the Middle East is really being remade -- The Gulf states are in a
state of shock at the way in which the operation in Iraq has gone bad.
A
Constructive Vision for America's Role in the World by George Soros
New
Yorker: How a secret Pentagon program came to Abu Ghraib. By Seymour
Hersh
Book
Review: Philosophy in a Time of Terror, Dialogues with Jurgen Habermas
and Jacques Derrida
Conditions
of Atrocity by Robert Jay Lifton
Terry Eagleton reviews "The Anatomy of
Fascism" by Robert O Paxton
James Fallows: Blind Into Baghdad --
"The U.S. occupation of Iraq is a debacle not because the government
did no planning but because a vast amount of expert planning was
willfully ignored by the people in charge."
Arundhati Roy on India's Election Results:
Darkness Passed....
How to
Get Out of Iraq: A forum with articles by Jonathan Schell, Noam
Chomsky, Ann-Marie Slaughter and others
A
year before the Iraq invasion, the then-Army secretary warned his
Pentagon bosses that there was inadequate control of private military
contractors
The
Military Archipelago -- The road to Abu Ghraib began in 2002 at
Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, where the Bush administration began building up
a worldwide military detention system sheltered from public visibility
and judicial review.
The Bush administration is hiding vital information under the cloak of
national security — leaving the nation stumbling in the dark
Karen
Kwiatkowski, Lt. Col. USAF (ret.) on the Evil of Defense Outsourcing
Bernard Lewis talks about his seventy years spent studying the Middle
East—and his thoughts on the region's future
Lucian Freud's new exhibition proves he is Britain's greatest living
artist, says leading critic Robert Hughes
politicalgraveyard.com
Understanding the President and His God: "The Jesus Factor," on PBS
asks: Do most Americans realize just how fervent the president's
evangelical faith really is?
Politics and
Truth by Jonathan Schell
Face of
feminism in 2004
Take
Back Our Rights
"Fear is being used as re-election tactic" by
Sheldon S. Wolin. emeritus professor of politics at Princeton
University
Kevin Phillips interview with Bill Moyers on NOW talking about
corporate tax evasion and social unrest
The Phantom Sovereign by Jonathan Schell
Joseph S. Nye Jr.: Why 'Soft Power' Matters in Fighting Terrorism
State-Mosque Relations in Iraq, 1968-2004
The
American Mission? NY Review of Books on The Choice: Global
Domination or Global Leadership by Zbigniew Brzezinski
Scientific American: Does Race Exist? Politically, No. Medically, Yes.
ICG Report: Devolution in Pakistan: Reform
or Regression?
Iraq on the record: Rep. Henry A. Waxman presents the Bush
administration's public statements on Iraq.
Relationship with US at center of El Salvador's political debate once
again.
Dean Forms Progressive Organization
democracyforamerica.com
The
Battle Over the Pledge of Allegiance -- A Brief History (It's offended
people from the start)
The
Empire Backfires -- Jonathan Schell explains why Iraq is a cautionary
lesson in the folly of imperial rule.
The
Lie Factory -- Only weeks after 9/11, the Bush administration set up a
secret Pentagon unit to create the case for invading Iraq. Here is the
inside story of how they pushed disinformation and bogus intelligence
and led the nation to war.
US-Haiti by Noam Chomsky
Jeffrey
Sachs: The Fire This Time in Haiti was US-Fueled
Wall St.
Journal: Is Military Creeping Into Domestic Law Enforcement?
Iraq's Transitional Constitution
Interim Iraqi Constitution's Bill of Rights
Foreign Affairs: Illusions of Empire: Defining the New American Order
by G. John Ikenberry
Christopher Browning, the author of The Origins of the Final Solution,
explains how ordinary Germans came to accept as inevitable the
extermination of the Jews
Spiritual neurology: A small band of pioneers is exploring the
neurology of religious experience
THE
"TWICE-BORN" -- Charles Taylor from "Varieties of Religion Today:
William James Revisited"
The Hispanic Challenge By Samuel P. Huntington
Non-lethal Weapon Watch: U.S. soldiers in Iraq have new gear for
dispersing hostile crowds and warding off potential enemy combatants.
It blasts earsplitting noise in a directed beam.
John B. Anderson on Nader and the U.S. voting system: Creating an open
electoral process
The Passion of the Christ and George Bush's America
Big Brother Watch: Anti-Terror System Launches
Big Brother Watch: The US Supreme Court has given a
green light for the government to conduct certain federal court cases
in total secrecy.
Big Brother Watch: Total Information Awareness projects transferred to
other agencies.
Big Brother Watch: U.S. Pressing for High-Tech Spy Tools
No End to War
by Patrick J. Buchanan: "The Frum-Perle prescription would ensnare
America in endless conflict."
Civil
Liberties: The 2004 Forecast
Bill of Rights Defense
Committee
Killing the Music By the Eagles' Don Henley
A controversial technique for identifying a criminal mind is about to
take centre stage in a last-chance court appeal
Now
They Tell Us: Beginning in the summer of 2002, the "intelligence
community" was rent by bitter disputes over how Bush officials were
using the data on Iraq. Many journalists knew about this, yet few
chose to write about it.
America: An empire to rival Rome? -- In six-part series entitled "Age
of Empire," the BBC's Jonathan Marcus sets out to examine America's
place in the modern world.
The Costs of Empire by David Isenberg
Part 1
- Starting with a solid base - US bases now cover the globe
Part 2:
Counting the dollars and cents - think billions and billions in US
taxes for global "pacification"
KRUGMAN in the New York Review of Books: The Wars of the Texas
Succession
The Pentagon is worried about global warming
CLIMATE COLLAPSE: Growing Evidence of Scary
Change
"Kant is the most influential thinker of the Modern Age" - interview
with German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer
Not Everyone Got it Wrong on Iraq's Weapons by Scott Ritter
A chronology of how the Bush Administration repeatedly and
deliberately refused to listen to intelligence agencies that said its
case for war was weak
"There Was
No Failure of Intelligence" by Sidney Blumenthal
Making Money on Terrorism by William D. Hartung
Robert McNamara breaks his silence on Iraq: "It's just wrong what
we're doing"
The real difference between red states and blue states: In the 2000
election, Bush received 78 percent of his electoral votes from states
that benefit from the federal govt.'s redistribution of income. Gore
received 76 percent of his from states that suffer from it.
Uranium in Your
Koolaid: an interview with cancer specialist Dr Jawad Al Ali on the
effects of the depleted uranium in the weapons used by the U.S. and
U.K. in the Iraq wars on the Iraqi people.
"US and British officials must expose their leaders' lies about Iraq -
as I did over Vietnam" by Daniel Ellsberg
Panic Spells Are Traced to Chemical in the Brain
Rep. Henry Waxman taking on Bush on the Web:
Homepage
Committee
on Government Reform: Minority Office
Politics
and Science: Investigating the State of Science under the Bush
Administration
"INSTEAD OF WAR: The Urgency and Promise of a
Global Peace System" By Timothy A. McElwee
Bernie
Sanders: We Are the Majority -- "It is not acceptable that the
wealthiest 1 percent of the population owns more wealth than the
bottom 95 percent. That's not America."
Center for National Security Studies: a brief list of key civil
liberties and human rights links
Biotechnology: How far should researchers go? -- interview with Leon
Kass of the President's Council on Bioethics
'The Democratic Facade' -- Outlook India interview with Noam Chomsky:
"It has often been pointed out by political scientists that the US is
basically a one-party state -- the business party. with two factions,
Democrats and Republicans."
Text
of Al Gore Speaking on Global Warming and the Environment, January 15,
2004
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Report: WMD in Iraq -
Evidence and Implications -- what the Bush administration really knew
about Iraqi WMD before the war
Occupation case studies: Algeria and Turkey -- More likely to resemble
Iraq than Vietnam
The Law of War in the War on Terror: The Bush administration has
literalized its "war" on terrorism, dissolving the legal boundaries
between what a government can do in peacetime and what's allowed in
war.
Don Watson's new book charts how "managerial language" has infiltrated
the English of politics, business, bureaucracy, education and the
arts.
CSPAN
BOOKNOTES INTERVIEW: MICHAEL MOORE, AUTHOR, "DUDE, WHERE`S MY
COUNTRY?"
A
Tract for the Times – NY Review of Books on "Inventing a Nation:
Washington, Adams, Jefferson" by Gore Vidal
Samantha Power: Life in Mugabe-Ville
Biometrics: Prepare to be scanned
Dissent
Under Attack
Bush's
Religious Language
U.S.
Military's creeping domestic mission: the supposedly inviolate wall
keeping the military out of traditional civilian activities is eroding
Benjamin
Barber: Democracy Cannot Coexist with Bush's Failed Doctrine of
Preventive War
STROBE TALBOTT: A historical perspective on America's strength.
Interview: Iraqi Kurdish leader, Jalal Talabani
The
Bubble of American Supremacy by George Soros
Lula
Raises the Stakes by William Greider and Kenneth Rapoza
"Noble lies and perpetual war: Leo Strauss, the neo-cons, and Iraq" by
Danny Postel
Two recent pieces by military historian Frederick W.
Kagan. (Just in case anyone thought we might learn something from
history.)
THE
ART OF WAR
WAR AND
AFTERMATH: "If the U.S. is to undertake wars that aim at regime change
and maintain its current critical role in controlling and directing
world affairs, then it must fundamentally change its views of war."
"Humiliation or Solidarity? The Hope for a Common European Foreign
Policy" by Richard Rorty
TV has made nation complacent, Gore says
Text
of Al Gore's Iraq Speech
Text
of Al Gore's Freedom and Security Speech
Inside the C.I.A.: Iraqi Insurgents Take a Page From the Afghan
Freedom Fighters
(Worth paying to read -- tells how the U.S. wrote the playbook the
Afghani and Iraqi insurgents are using.)
Promoting Democracy in the Middle East: The Problem of U.S.
Credibility -- Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Report
highlighting the lack of credibility that the United States has in the
Arab world when it presents itself as a pro-democratic actor.
Amartya Sen: "Closing The Gap" -- Full text of speech to the
Commonwealth education conference, Edinburgh, on October 28, 2003
Antiglobalism’s Jewish Problem
The United States in the World – Just Wars and Just Societies: An
Interview with Michael Walzer
Russell Baker on Paul Krugman's "The Great Unraveling: Losing Our Way
in the New Century"
India’s North-South Divide
The Friedman Principle: The influential New
York Times columnist's vision of spreading democracy through the Arab
world is this era's domino theory—and it is just as misguided
CSPAN
Booknotes Interview with Jessica Stern, author of "Terror in the Name
of God: Why Religious Militants Kill"
War of Words -- George Orwell: "Political language...is designed to
make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an
appearance of solidity to pure wind."
Latin
America Looks Left
"The fragile alliance: Europe and America" -- Susan Sontag's
acceptance speech at the Frankfurt book fair where she was awarded the
prestigious Friedenspreis (peace prize).
"The Falseness of Anti- Americanism" by Fouad Ajami
Orwell on writing
Applying brain science to marketing
"What
was Leo Strauss up to?" By Steven Lenzner & William Kristol
War
on the Poor
How the Frankfurt School might unlock the postmodern mysteries of
The Matrix
The Secrets Clark Kept: What the General Never Told
Us About the Bush Plan for Serial War
The Widening Crusade: Bush's War Plan Is Scarier
Than He's Saying
Rumsfeld's Roots: James Mann talks about the political evolution and
influences of Donald Rumsfeld
Michael Moore: Face it, you'll never be rich
JONATHAN SCHELL: Not Vietnam, But...
Taking Arabs Seriously
‘Rods
from God’: The Bush administration is ramping up the space-based
branch of the armed services
Why Bush
Likes a Bad Economy by James K. Galbraith
Three of a
kind: India, China and Russia
Understanding the Real Europe by Ulrich Beck
Censored 2004: The Top 25 Censored Media Stories of 2002-2003
Censored!:
Annual list of 25 stories ignored or downplayed by the mainstream
media.
Outsourcing War -- An inside look at Brown & Root,
the kingpin of America's new military-industrial complex
Interview with Mark Bowden, the author of "The Dark Art of
Interrogation," a comprehensive survey of the world of torture and
coercion
Why Are We In Iraq? (And Liberia? And Afghanistan?) by Michael
Ignatieff
Making the
United Nations Function by the late Sergio Vieira de Mello
In
Search of the Buy Button: What makes some products irresistible?
Neuroscientists are racing to find the answer to that question--and to
pass it along to consumer marketers.
The Collapse
of the Middle Class by Representative Bernie Sanders (VT)
Armies of the North -- Philip Gourevitch talks about the unparalleled
cult of personality around the leader, and the threat that the country
poses to international peace.
The attacks of 9/11 galvanized a phalanx of
scholars to dissect terrorism from every angle. What they've learned
so far may surprise you.
Dream Amid Nightmares by GÜNTER GRASS: "Despair shouldn't stain the
voice of resistance in these times of cynical war"
Bush's Lootocracy: "This is not normal
government policy. What we have here is a form of looting." -- 2001
Nobel economics laureate George Akerlof
Spiritual
Refugee: "In a society that does not allow for the existence of
individuality, the effort to become an individual invites persecution.
Although this sort of persecution is not as visible as political
persecution it is nevertheless fatal to one’s spiritual being, so the
persecuted person becomes an exile."
A new coalition of progressive groups representing some 18 million
Americans has come together to fight the corrosive effects of
corporate-backed legislation.
Public
Trust Partnership
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace compilation of major
statements by senior Bush Administration officials on Iraq's
capabilities to manufacture and hide chemical, biological, and nuclear
weapons and delivery systems.
The Art of the False Impression: Some of the points Al Gore is
raising, especially with regard to President Bush's credibility
regarding the war, deserve much closer attention.
Mad Mel: The Gospel According to Mel Gibson. By
Paula Fredriksen
The Politics of Christianity: A Talk with Elaine Pagels
Analysts
at the RAND Corporation lay out ten international-security
developments that aren't getting the attention they deserve
Put
Controls on Emerging 'Surveillance State'
The U.S. prison and jail population increased to 2,033,331 people at
the end of last year, one out of every 143 residents
BERKELEY: Researchers help define what makes a political conservative
Congressional Reports: Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community
Activities before and after the Terrorist Attacks of September 11,
2001
(links to report sections in .pdf files)
U.S. Attacked Iraqi Defenses Starting in 2002
U.S. Moved Early for Air Supremacy
2 from Commentary:
New website to
provide public surveillance of government officials
Foreign Affairs: New portraits of Richard Helms and William Colby show
how the Central Intelligence Agency evolved into the major player it
is today
Lessons of the Past: The United States has conducted more than 200
military interventions abroad since its founding. Sixteen of these
interventions, or about 8 percent, can be categorized as
nation-building attempts. Of these, only four (Japan, Germany, Panama
in 1989, and Grenada in 1983) qualify as successes. History suggests
that "going it alone" virtually ensures failure for the U.S. in
Afghanistan and Iraq.
U.S. Develops Urban Surveillance System
Humanitarian Intervention: A Forum
The invasion of Iraq has been sold as a "humanitarian
intervention." Twelve leading thinkers from around the world examine
this emerging doctrine.
The
Public Is the Enemy -- The militarization of law enforcement is a
national trend in U.S.
Which
Patriots Exactly Does The Act Protect?
Clifford Geertz: "Since the end of the cold war, when
a lot more collapsed than walls and regimes, many of the large-scale
concepts by means of which we had been accustomed to sorting out the
world have begun to come apart."
Which
Way to Mecca? Part 1
Which
Way to Mecca? Part 2
Foreign Affairs book review: "The Mind and the
Market: Capitalism in Modern European Thought." By
Jerry Z. Muller.
Ranking Rich Nations' Commitment to Development -- Find out why the
Netherlands ranks first and why the world's two largest aid givers—the
United States and Japan—finish last.
We
live in a divided world. The division, however, is not between north
and south, East and West or First World and Third World, but between
two different factions, each led by Western, industrialized nations.
LESSONS FROM THE PAST: The American Record of Nation Building
The
Coming Anarchy (February 1994) by Robert D. Kaplan: How scarcity,
crime, overpopulation, tribalism, and disease are rapidly destroying
the social fabric of our planet
Extracts from Jonathan Schell's new book,
The Unconquerable World: Power,
Nonviolence, and The Will of the People
Road Map vs. Reality by Gareth Evans and Robert Malley
"America's Global Role" by George Soros: Why
the fight for a worldwide open society begins at home
Rules
for the World Stage by Martha Nussbaum
In Harvard and the Unabomber: The Education of an American
Terrorist, Alston Chase details
Harvard's 1950s Cold War atmosphere in which university science
departments conducted research secretly funded by the CIA and in which
Ted Kaczynski participated
Interview with British filmmaker Peter Greenaway
Questions for documentary filmmaker D. A. Pennebaker
The Anarchist in the Library
US Policy and the UN
Links to archived articles on the
GLOBAL POLICY FORUM
website.
Today,
the global military presence of the US encompasses more than 1,000
bases in nearly 100 countries.
New Left
Review Editorial by TARIQ ALI: "The history of the rise and fall of
Empires teaches us that it is when their own citizens finally lose
faith in the virtue of infinite war and permanent occupations that the
system enters into retreat."
Some background on the philosopher behind the Islamist
movement
Sayyid Qutb, the father of modern Islamist fundamentalism -- Is this
the man who inspired Bin Laden?
SAYYID QUTB AND HIS INFLUENCE -- Interview with Professor Ibrahim
Abu-Rabi
Sayyid Qutb (Quotes and books for sale online)
The Philosopher of Islamic Terror
(This article is strangely formatted, but it's worth the effort.)
The Roots
of Muslim Rage by Bernard Lewis
CSPAN
Booknotes interview with Amy Chua, author of "World on Fire: How
Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global
Instability"
War Stories:
The Hardest War -- The Okinawa Nightmare
Germany’s Sunken Memories
Kim Sengupta: The eye of the storm
Bodies? What Bodies? There was plenty of
killing in the Gulf War, but very few corpses: thanks to the Pentagon,
which literally buried the truth.
Radio Netherlands Series: "War of Words" -- an inside look at the
making of wartime propaganda
"Propaganda
in a Democratic Society" by Aldous Huxley
Reagan's Liberal Legacy: A sober review of Reagan's presidency doesn't
yield the seamlessly conservative record being peddled today.
False memories can be planted under interrogation, according to US
scientists
The fuzzy ethics of nonlethal weapons: Pentagon
wants to use riot-control agents in Iraq, but critics say it's
chemical warfare.
Flashback: "A Sense of the Transcendent" (1995 talk by Václav Havel):
"By once more taking nourishment from their life-giving spiritual
roots, East and West can open an era of mutual inspiration. The
precondition is readiness to step beyond dead habits and deadly
prejudice."
Iraq: The
Middle East's kaleidoscope
Explaining Frog Deformities
DEBATE: Is Globalisation Unethical? Moderated by Ernesto Zedillo
Anti-Europeanism in America by Timothy Garton Ash
The New Republic's David Bromwich nails
down the problem with Louis Menand: "For those of us who have been
following him on and off, the puzzle has been to decide what exactly
he cares about."
All That You Know Not to Be Is Utterly Real, Part I
All That You Know Not to Be Is Utterly Real, Part II
"The problem that art helps us face, and great art
helps us face best, is the problem of creating social stability
without creating a state of administered conformity."
Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll, Chapter 6 - Humpty
Dumpty: "`Of all the unsatisfactory -- ' (she repeated this aloud, as
it was a great comfort to have such a long word to say) `of all the
unsatisfactory people I ever met'"
American Gnostic -- Harold Bloom's
"post-Christian nation" ten years on.
Under western eyes -- David Rieff on the motives of writers in war
zones
Sidney
Hook, an Intellectual Street Fighter, Reconsidered
Three Interesting Biographies From The Website "Books
and Writers":
Franz
Kafka (1883-1924)
George Orwell (1903-1950)
Aldous Huxley (1894-1963)
