By DAHR JAMAIL and JASON COPPOLA Truthout Posted by Bulatlat Award-winning journalist and Associate Editor of the Nation Institute’s tomdispatch.com Nick Turse writes in his book “The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives”: “As a product of the 1980s G.I. Joe generation, I can attest to the seductive power of those three inch…
Category: International
Three Good Reasons To Liquidate Our Empire, And Ten Steps to Take to Do So
By Chalmers Johnson Tomdispatch.com International Posted by (Bulatlat.com) However ambitious President Barack Obama’s domestic plans, one unacknowledged issue has the potential to destroy any reform efforts he might launch. Think of it as the 800-pound gorilla in the American living room: our longstanding reliance on imperialism and militarism in our relations with other countries and…
Sri Lanka: The Urgency of Bearing Witness
By ALIYA MUGHAL Medical Foundation for the care of victims of torture International Posted by (Bulatlat.com) First they were captives of a conflict in which their freedom and security was thwarted at every turn. Now huge numbers of the Tamil population of Sri Lanka find themselves trapped again, unseen for the most part and wholly…
CounterPunch Diary: “A Damned Murder Inc.”
By ALEXANDER COCKBURN Counterpunch International Posted by Bulatlat Some time in early or mid-1949 a CIA officer named Bill (his surname is blacked out in the file, which was surfaced by John Kelly in the early 1990s) asked an outside contractor for input on how to kill people. Requirements included the appearance of an accidental…
Lessons From Hard Times Past
By JEREMY BRECHER, TIM COSTELLO, BRENDAN SMITH Truthout/Perspective International Posted by Bulatlat We’re all struggling with how to think – and what to do – in the face of the “great recession.” An initial progressive response was to advocate better regulation; then Keynesian economic stimulus; now nationalization; perhaps in the future some kind of socialism.…
How Constant War Became the American Way of Life
Younger generations of Americans are now being taught to expect no end of war — and no end of wars. It wasn’t always like that. By DAVID BROMWICH, Tomdispatch.com. International Posted by Bulatlat On July 16, in a speech to the Economic Club of Chicago, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said that the “central question”…
Afghanistan War Resister to ‘Put the War on Trial’
By DAHR JAMAIL truthout International Posted by Bulatlat US Army Specialist Victor Agosto served a 13-month deployment in Iraq with the 57th Expeditionary Signal Battalion. “What I did there, I know I contributed to death and human suffering,” Agosto told Truthout from Fort Hood, in Killeen, Texas, in May, “It’s hard to quantify how much…
The Cuban Five: a Cold War Case in a Post-Cold War World
President Obama, It’s Up to You to Rectify This Injustice By JOSÉ PERTIERRA Posted By Bulatlat.com The day the Court sentenced him to life imprisonment plus 10 years, in maximum security, Tony explained to Judge Lenard why Cuba sent him to the United States. “Allow me to explain my reasons, your Honor, in the clearest…
“Illegals” of the World Unite?
– an interview with David Bacon Against the Current, July/August 2009 http://www.solidarity-us.org/node/2262 THIS INTERVIEW WAS conducted on April 10, 2009 by Star Murray and Charles Williams on behalf of the Against the Current editorial board. Photojournalist David Bacon spent 20 years as a labor organizer and immigrant rights activist. He hosts a show on KPFA-FM…
The Dirty War
By Dahr Jamail Truthout/Perspective International Posted by (Bulatlat.com) On Friday, June 12, Harith al-Obaidi, leader of the Iraqi Accordance Front, the largest Sunni bloc in the Iraqi Parliament, was shot dead outside a mosque just minutes after giving a sermon condemning the Maliki government for human rights abuses. Obaidi, who was a leader in the…
Escalation Scam: Troops in Afghanistan
By Norman Solomon Truthout/Perspective International Posted by (Bulatlat.com) The president has set a limit on the number of US troops in Afghanistan. For now. That’s how escalation works. Ceilings become floors. Gradually. A few times since last fall, the Obama team has floated rising numbers for how many additional US soldiers will be sent to…