NORMAN SOLOMAN – [In late June] CIA whistleblower Jeffrey Sterling went to prison. If he were white, he probably wouldn’t be there.
Category: Analysis
What Do Americans Think About Economic Inequality?
LAWRENCE S. WITTNER – Academician Dr. Lawrence Wittner performed many literature reviews in his scholarly career; this essay is a mini-version of US citizen opinion on the questions surrounding our growing gap between rich and everyone else, as well as the decimation of the middle class. In this clear and objective logical survey of the wishes of the American people on serious questions, Wittner poses the unstated query: If we want it, why can’t we get it? The more times we ask this, the closer we come to saying it out loud and acting on it.
Obama and Osama: Where Does the Truth Lie?
IBRAHIM S. BAHATI – Since Osama bin Laden’s death 2 May 2011, the official account of the Navy Seals’ raid has been challenged, most recently and cogently by journalist Seymour Hersh, alleging that “Washington’s official account of the hunt for Bin Laden and the raid that led to his death was a lie.†In fact, there have been more “conspiracy-factual theories†about this event than there are on Illuminati. Was OBL there? Was he even alive then? Is he still?
In Iraq, I Raided Insurgents. In Virginia, the Police Raided Me.
ALEX GORDON – I had done this a few dozen times myself, 6,000 miles away from my Alexandria, Va., apartment. As an Army infantryman in Iraq, I’d always been on the trigger side of the weapon. Now that I was on the barrel side, I recalled basic training’s most important firearm rule: Aim only at something you intend to kill. I had conducted the same kind of raid on suspected bombmakers and high-value insurgents. But the Fairfax County officers in my apartment were aiming their weapons at a target whose rap sheet consisted only of parking tickets and an overdue library book.
Obama Must Ignore Middle Eastern Whiners About Iran
MEL GURTOV – One of the predictable outcomes of any US effort to reset relations with an adversary is that allies start whining about their vulnerability and demanding some sort of compensation for it. Thus, no sooner was the nuclear deal with Iran concluded than the Israelis, Saudis, and other Middle East partners criticize it as representing abandonment and emboldening Iran to become a stronger meddler in neighbors’ affairs. All sorts of dire predictions about horrendous consequences are already on record, clearly intended to influence the Obama administration to give these folks something for their pain—like money, arms (both of which they get in abundance), and especially new commitments.
NBC Dares Mention Climate in Spread of Lyme Disease, But Not Who Created Lyme Disease
DAVID SWANSON – Climate change is apparently encouraging the spread of Lyme disease, and a report by NBC News dares to say so. This may seem like a fresh breath of honest sanity in a media context in which even the weather reports usually avoid the topic of human global destruction. However, another topic is clearly still off limits: the topic of who created Lyme disease.
F16s for Iraq: Good for Profiteers; Bad for Everyone Else
TOM H. HASTINGS – The US has delivered the first batch of F16 fighter jets to Iraq. How long until ISIS grabs them? How long before Iraq’s BFF Iran reverse engineers them from nose to tail? How exactly is this even remotely in the interest of the security of the US citizens whose government approved this deal?
Heavily Armed Does Not Equal Being Secure
ROBERT KOEHLER – The more that people lose touch with their own humanity, the more, I fear, they will feel the need to be armed – desperately imagining it’s the same thing as being secure. And the news cycle will continue, endlessly bringing us more of the same.
Nonviolence Was an Important Part of the U.S. Struggle for Independence
STEPHANIE VAN HOOK – When Gandhi met with the British viceroy Lord Irwin after his imprisonment following the 1930 Salt Satyagraha, they shared a pot of tea. Gandhi, mischieviously took out a package of contraband salt, opened it and sprinkled a bit into his cup. Looking at the astounded Lord Irwin he told him he did so in remembrance of the Boston Tea Party.
Obama’s Legacy for Africa Needs Improvement
FODAY DARBOE – In light of President Obama’s 2015 trip to Africa, likely his last trip to Africa as the U.S. president, it is appropriate to evaluate his government’s foreign policies in Africa since he assumed office. Through this assessment, it is sadly plain to see that Obama’s policies have not helped the vast majority of Africans. Instead, the policies have allowed the suppression of the African people’s hoped-for democratic reforms while simultaneously bolstering the power of corrupt African elites.
Who Pays Taxes in the US? Everyone but the Super-Rich
THOM HARTMANN – Why are our seniors paying higher taxes on their social security benefits than billionaires pay on stocks? The IRS released a new report that reveals the staggering amount of money that the top one-thousandth of the 1% in the US is hoarding.
Are Nuclear Arms Control and Disarmament Agreements of Any Value?
LAWRENCE S. WITTNER – The recent announcement of a nuclear deal between the governments of Iran and other major nations, including the United States, naturally draws our attention to the history of international nuclear arms control and disarmament agreements. What accounts for their advent on the world scene and what have they accomplished?
Bang Bang! You’re Not Dead
CLANCY SIGAL – I hold no special brief for the British police at whose hands and batons I’ve split a lip or two. But here in Los Angeles, where our trimly athletic LAPD shoots fewer civilians than, say, in Albuquerque or Baltimore, we’re seeing a spike in “he was reaching into his waist band†or “coming at me with a knife (or rock).” Police in Gardena, LA, shot two unarmed Hispanics looking for their stolen bike, one died (you can see the police-camera video on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkjGBEbfKyo); a few days ago police in the beach city of Venice shot and killed a homeless guy who allegedly had a knife; police in Los Feliz, LA, shot an unarmed jogger who approached them. The dead guys tend to be black, brown or homeless. It’s a weekly sometimes daily occurrence. The city has paid victims’ families over $20m in recent years. From the WashPost and the UK Independent, I’ve put together one or two factoids for perspective.
Greek Financial Debacle is a Crisis of Soulless Economics
ROBERT C. KOEHLER – Austerity, the brutal tool of neoliberal capitalism, stands up to Greek democracy and stares it down. Oh well. We’re remarkably comfortable with soulless economics. Pope Francis, speaking this week in Paraguay, cried to the nations of Planet Earth: “I ask them not to yield to an economic model … which needs to sacrifice human lives on the altar of money and profit.â€
What’s Being Ignored in the Iranian Nuclear Deal?
WINSLOW MYERS – I’m not an expert, just another interested citizen who follows the news, but something genuinely bothers me about the U.S. negotiations with Iran, whether they are ultimately successful or not.
New Oil Drilling Threatens New Disasters
MEL GURTOV – On January 17 the New York Times reported that, to appease environmentalists, the Obama administration would “ban drilling in portions of the Arctic Ocean’s Beaufort and Chukchi Seas.†But in return, Republicans and the oil and gas industry got federal approval to drill in a large swath of the Atlantic Ocean, a move that I believe risks another BP-type disaster.
If U.S. Military Spending Returned to 2001 Level
DAVID SWANSON – The House of Representatives has headed out of town to memorialize wars without managing to achieve agreement with the Senate on reauthorizing some of the most abusive “temporary†measures of the PATRIOT Act. Three cheers for Congressional vacations! What if not just our civil liberties but our budget got a little bit of 2001 back?
How We Can Overcome Nuclear Apartheid
RICHARD LENNANE – At the closing session of the NPT review conference on 22 May, South Africa described the NPT regime as a form of “nuclear apartheid.” This certainly captures the idea of a privileged minority unjustly imposing its will on a disenfranchised majority. But in many ways, a better analogy is that of the struggle for civil rights in the United States in the 1950s and 60s.
Will There Be a Dawn of Justice?
KATHY KELLY – “Guantanamo Diary,†by Mohamedou Ould Slahi, is his story of being imprisoned in Guantanamo since 2002. In all his years of captivity, he has never been charged with a crime. He has suffered grotesque torture, humiliation and mistreatment, and yet his memoir includes many humane, tender accounts, including remembrances of past Ramadan fasts spent with his family.
War, Murder and the American Way
ROBERT KOEHLER – Every war and every mass murder spreads fear and hatred — and inspiration — in their aftermath. We can’t go to war without spawning imitators. The day after nine members of Charleston’s Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church were murdered, USA Today reported, the vigils at two South Carolina churches, in Charleston and Greenville, were disrupted by bomb threats and the churches had to be evacuated. “At some point,†President Obama said, “we as a country will have to reckon with the fact that this type of mass violence does not happen in other advanced countries. . . . ” Until we begin demilitarizing our relationship with the world, such words uttered by presidents are as empty as the words Dylann Roof uttered in prayer at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church that fateful night.
These Four Steps Could Help End Gun Violence
TOM H. HASTINGS – What can we imagine would be important to ending gun violence in our increasingly Tombstone Territory USA, where cars are getting safer and guns are getting more lethal? I’d offer four starter steps toward addressing a combination of necessary and contributory causes.
Supreme Court: Corporations Over People AGAIN
LAURA FINLEY – Here we go again. Another court decision favoring businesses over human rights. Sadly, it is no shock that the Supreme Court is friendlier to business more than anything or anyone else. From its 2010 Citizens United blunder that allowed even greater corporate influence on our political process to the 2014 Hobby Lobby case affirming the “religious beliefs†of private corporations, the court’s continual siding with corporate entities over individual rights is maddening and ludicrous, but not surprising. Now, we learn that the Colorado Supreme Court has ruled in favor of employers in a case that addressed whether persons with lawful medical marijuana cards can be fired for testing positive for the substance.
Corporate Welfare Fails to Deliver the Jobs
LAWRENCE S. WITTNER – For several decades, state and local governments have been showering private businesses with tax breaks and direct subsidies based on the theory that this practice fosters economic development and, therefore, job growth. But does it? New York State’s experience indicates that, when it comes to producing jobs, corporate welfare programs are a bad investment.
U.S.-China Crisis Looms in the South China Sea
MEL GURTOV – The long-running, multi-party dispute over control of islets in the South China Sea (SCS) is worsening both in rhetoric and provocative activity. Meeting in late May at the Shangri-La Dialogue on regional security, U.S. and Chinese defense officials sparred over responsibility for the increased tension, though they stopped short of issuing threats. In fact, all sides to the dispute say they want to avoid violence, prefer a diplomatic resolution, and support freedom of navigation.
A Misleading Moment of Celebration for a New Surveillance Program
NORMAN SOLOMON – The morning after final passage of the USA Freedom Act, while some foes of mass surveillance were celebrating, Thomas Drake sounded decidedly glum. The new law, he told me, is “a new spy program.†It restarts some of the worst aspects of the Patriot Act and further codifies systematic violations of Fourth Amendment rights. Later on Wednesday, here in Oslo as part of a “Stand Up For Truth†tour, Drake warned at a public forum that “national security†has become “the new state religion.†Meanwhile, his Twitter messages were calling the USA Freedom Act an “itty-bitty step†— and a “stop/restart kabuki shell game†that “starts w/ restarting bulk collection of phone records.â€
To Prevent War with Iran, Remember Deceptions of War with Iraq
REV. ROBERT MOORE and RICHARD MOODY – The question recently was raised to presumed presidential candidate Jeb Bush whether, knowing what he knows now, he would have started a war with Iraq, as his brother, President George W. Bush, did in 2003. His initial answer, on which he flip-flopped a number of times in the days following, was yes. We tend to believe his first answer, partly because it was unvarnished before any public blowback — but even more because many of his top foreign policy advisoes include those who championed the rush to war using manipulated intelligence on Iraq. It is crucial to remember the truth about what led to that war, as we may be on the verge of being neo-conned into another even more disastrous war — with Iran.
Here Are the Navy’s Plans to Bomb the Arctic
DAHR JAMAIL – The waters of the Gulf of Alaska are some of the most pristine in the world. That will change next month.
Errors and Lies: How the U.S. Was Lied into War
PAUL KRUGMAN – Surprise! It turns out that there’s something to be said for having the brother of a failed president make his own run for the White House. Thanks to Jeb Bush, we may finally have the frank discussion of the Iraq invasion we should have had a decade ago. But many influential people — not just Mr. Bush — would prefer that we not have that discussion. There’s a palpable sense right now of the political and media elite trying to draw a line under the subject. Yes, the narrative goes, we now know that invading Iraq was a terrible mistake, and it’s about time that everyone admits it. Now let’s move on.
Jeffrey Sterling vs. the CIA: An Untold Story of Race and Retribution
NORMAN SOLOMON – A dozen years before his recent sentencing to a 42-month prison term based on a jury’s conclusion that he gave classified information to a New York Times journalist, former CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling was in the midst of a protracted and fruitless effort to find someone in Congress willing to look into his accusations about racial discrimination at the agency. ExposeFacts.org has obtained letters from Sterling to prominent members of Congress, beseeching them in 2003 and 2006 to hear him out about racial bias at the CIA. Sterling, who is expected to enter prison soon, provided the letters last week. They indicate that he believed the CIA was retaliating against him for daring to become the first-ever black case officer to sue the agency for racial discrimination.
Did We Almost Lose New York?
HARVEY WASSERMAN – For the third time in a decade, a major fire/explosion has ripped apart a transformer at the Indian Point reactor complex.
A Preview of Coming Wars: Do Black Lives Matter in Africa?
DAVID SWANSON – Reading Nick Turse’s new book, Tomorrow’s Battlefield: U.S. Proxy Wars and Secret Ops in Africa, raises the question of whether black lives in Africa matter to the U.S. military any more than black lives in the United States matter to the police lately trained and armed by that military.
Iran Nuclear Talks. A Fresh Tone in Washington with a Breath of Oregon
PATRICK T. HILLER – It is easy to be a cynic listening to some of the more nonsensical chatter coming out of Congress. Despite the most comprehensive international agreement between the United States and its P5+1 partners (the members of the UN Security Council and Germany) with Iran on its nuclear program, the calls to bomb Iran are still too loud for them to be dismissed.
U.S. Bill of Rights Rewritten to Match Today’s Reality
DAVID SWANSON – There just might be a big boost in government honesty soon, as both houses of Congress have now passed with two-thirds votes and sent to the states for ratification a potential 28th amendment to the U.S. Constitution bearing the unofficial title “The Truth in Advertising Amendment.” This is the text as passed by Congress: Amendment 28.
The Limits of U.S. Missile Defense
STEVEN PIFER – On March 23, 1983, Ronald Reagan announced the Strategic Defense Initiative, popularly known as “Star Wars.†After thirty-two years and tens of billions of dollars, defending the U.S. homeland against attack by strategic ballistic missiles still poses a daunting challenge. Missile defense ambitions have been regularly scaled-back. The United States should make prudent investments in missile defense as part of its overall force mix. But Washington should bear in mind the limits of technology and the nature of the relationship between offense and defense, in which offense has and, for the foreseeable future will retain, the advantage.
Seeking Truth Together: Challenging the Silence Racism Creates
DAVID RAGLAND – When racial bias occurs it is customary to suggest that such practices are out of the norm or something only done by an individual out of touch with prevailing social values, but racism is part of American social ecology, often as unrecognized as the air we breathe.
Could Iran be Just the Start?
ERIKA SIMPSON – The most high-profile nuclear issue is the interim accord between Iran and six world powers to restrict Iran’s development of nuclear power. And if the fundamentals of the Iranian deal could be treated as a template for all countries, the international community would be well on its way to choking off the supply of weapons-usable material everywhere.
Earth Day Means Leave It Better than You Found It
TOM H. HASTINGS – How many holidays do we have? MLK Day in January, Valentines Day in February, Easter in March or April, Earth Day in April, Memorial Day in May, and so forth. Of those few examples, two were declared in my adulthood. New holidays take time to catch on and embed themselves in the culture. They can stray from their roots. Christmas is for consumerism. Veterans Day is to promote war. Thanksgiving is for football. The first Earth Day, in 1970, was the launch of a new holiday with deep challenges and social meaning for many of us.
Can War Be Ended?
JOHN HORGAN – Fisticuffs have broken out in The Guardian between two intellectual big shots, philosopher John Gray and psychologist Steven Pinker. The fight, which features lots of rhetorical flourishes and high dudgeon, addresses a serious issue: Is humanity achieving moral progress? Or, as Gray would put it, “progressâ€? More specifically, are we becoming less violent? I’ve written about this question myself, so in this post I’ll try to adjudicate the dispute, indicating what each scholar gets right and wrong.
Meeting Einstein’s Challenge: New Thinking about Nuclear Weapons
ROBERT R. HOLT – In May 1946, The New York Times reported that Albert Einstein had sent a telegram appeal to several hundred prominent Americans, asking for contributions to a fund “to let the people know that a new type of thinking is essential†in the atomic age. Einstein wrote in his telegram: “The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.†It is clear from other statements made by Einstein that the new thinking he called for was to abandon competition and the preparation for war, and to focus instead on cooperation and the peaceful resolution of conflicts. Einstein added that, to be successful, such changes presupposed the eventual creation of a world government.
$56 Billion to be Spent on Nuclear Weapons This Year
ROBERT F. DODGE, M.D. – Following the arrival of spring each year, our nation renews its commitment to our priorities on Tax Day, April 15th, from education to health care, infrastructure and national defense. Included among these expenditures are nuclear weapons programs—weapons that can not and must not ever be used. The funding for these programs, while more transparent than in the past, is still quite secretive. From the beginnings of our nuclear programs in 1940 we have spent as a nation in excess of $6 trillion dollars on them. This Tax Day we will spend ~$56.3 billion more on these same programs. From Los Angeles County’s expenditure of $1.785 billion to our nations capitol at $107 million, these are monies that we can ill afford to spend.
Bacevich: National Security ‘Experts’ Are Bullshitting Us Into Another Quagmire
ANDREW J. BACEVICH – Policy intellectuals — eggheads presuming to instruct the mere mortals who actually run for office — are a blight on the republic. Like some invasive species, they infest present-day Washington, where their presence strangles common sense and has brought to the verge of extinction the simple ability to perceive reality. A benign appearance — well-dressed types testifying before Congress, pontificating in print and on TV, or even filling key positions in the executive branch — belies a malign impact. They are like Asian carp let loose in the Great Lakes.
Why Corporate America is Reluctant to Take a Stand on Climate Action
MARC GUNTHER – The EPA’s Clean Power Plan might be the only hope the US has to make a real dent in the climate change battle. So why aren’t more companies onboard? Many environmental groups consider the Obama administration’s plan to regulate carbon-spewing coal plants, which aims to cut carbon pollution by 30%, as one of our last chances to win the fight against climate change. But the vast majority of their top corporate partners – companies like Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, FedEx, UPS, Target and Walmart, which have worked with environmental NGOs for years – aren’t backing them up, according to a Guardian survey.
Applying The Golden Rule to All Animals
CRAIG CLINE – We humans are the most powerful members of the animal kingdom. Let us unite in both seeing “animal wrongs†and in acting to DO SOMETHING about them. Let’s become vegans and apply our Golden Rule to ALL animals, humans and non-humans alike.
Obama Admits Global Scale of U.S. Militarism
PATRICK MARTIN – [January 3, 2015] Last month President Obama dispatched a formal letter to the Speaker of the House, John Boehner, listing a series of countries where US troops were or have been engaged in military operations during 2014. The preamble explains that the document is “consistent with the War Powers Resolution (Public Law 93-148), as part of my efforts to keep the Congress informed about deployments of U.S. Armed Forces equipped for combat.†If one combines the operations reported in this letter with published reports about the deployment of US troops in supposed noncombat situations, as well as joint military exercises with NATO countries and other US allies, it is possible to present a picture of the vast worldwide scope of US military activities in the course of last year.
Interconnected Struggles: Jeju Island, Detroit, Sao Paulo
KATHY KELLY – Living, as I briefly do, in a world of imprisoned beauty, on an island inside that archipelago of U.S. prisons so unacceptably similar to that of our old superpower rival, it’s no wonder I’m thinking of Prof. Yang Yoon Mo. What we do to the environment, we’re doing to each other. What we let our state impose on those walled beyond our borders we will tend to inflict on more and more people walled up within them, until there is no world of beauty left to keep safe for our own use, and no trust left on which any safety can be built. Until it all dries up. Whereas if we recommit to risk and beauty, refusing paths of alleged safety which only avoid temporary danger by leading us toward certain doom, if we seek our security in treating other people fairly, we may find our way to decent lives, along the way toward “decent human survival.”
Great Speech in Selma, Mr. President!
WINSLOW MYERS – Very stirring and eloquent words at the Edmund Pettus Bridge, Mr. President, commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Selma to Montgomery march. President Obama: “What they did here will reverberate through the ages. Not because the change they won was preordained; not because their victory was complete; but because they proved that nonviolent change is possible, that love and hope can conquer hate.†Not only that nonviolent change is possible, Mr. President, but that nonviolence is by far the most effective route to change both at home and abroad. So stop sending those drones to kill innocent children in faraway desert lands, murders that create more terrorists than they eliminate!
How Obama’s Aggression in Ukraine Risks Nuclear War
ROBERT ROTH – I voted for Barack Obama for president twice, for one reason: I thought he would not get us into a nuclear war. Now I’m afraid even that reason for my vote is wearing thin, threatened by US and NATO aggression in Ukraine. As the US continues threatening to send so-called “defensive†weapons to the Ukraine government and to impose yet more economic sanctions against Russia – despite the recent ceasefire agreement beginning to take hold – the prospect of Armageddon by accident increases. Moreover, Russian president Vladimir Putin has said he would (understandably) regard the US arming the Ukrainian military an act of war, to which Russia would respond. I don’t think that means he would resort to nuclear weapons, at least initially. But if the already tense situation continues to heat up, anything could happen.
Will the U.S. Government Stand Alone in Rejecting Children’s Rights?
LAWRENCE S. WITTNER – Within a matter of months, the U.S. government seems likely to become the only nation in the world still rejecting the 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Sometimes called “the most ratified human rights treaty in history,†the Convention has been ratified by 195 nations, leaving the United States and South Sudan as the only holdouts. South Sudan is expected to move forward with ratification later this year. But there is no indication that the United States will approve this children’s defense treaty.
Petraeus won’t serve a day in jail for his leaks. Edward Snowden shouldn’t either.
TREVOR TIMM – The sweetheart deal the Justice Department gave to former CIA director David Petraeus for leaking top secret information compared to the stiff jail sentences other low-level leakers have received under the Obama administration has led to renewed calls for leniency for NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. And no one makes the case better than famed whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg.
Money Pipeline Flowing Between U.S. Congress and Big Oil
KATHERINE “KITTY” STAPP – With battle lines sharpening over the stalled Keystone XL pipeline, a new analysis details the intense industry lobbying of both houses of the U.S. Congress since 2013 – to the tune of 58.8 million dollars by five refinery companies alone.