47 QuickLinks

Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Viewers of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert Test High for News Knowledge
(3 comments) Home bad is our news media? A poll shows viewers of "fake news" score higher on simple tests of news knowledge than consumers of network TV, news magazines, or daily newspapers.

Friday, August 1, 2008
Local vets oppose war
Ft. Wayne IN members of Iraq Veterans Against the War explain why they are willing to suffer harassment and ridicule to oppose the war.

Monday, July 21, 2008
So Goes the Newsroom, the Empire, and the World
Chris Hedges examines the not-so-slow death of the newspaper industry.

Wednesday, June 4, 2008
Peace Fills a Vacuum
The Bush administration's strategy of isolating its enemies in the Middle East have succeeded only in isolating itself.

Thursday, May 29, 2008
Class Dismissed
(1 comments) The truth is no Democrat in this century has done well with "hard-working white people," and Obama is polling better with this group than either Gore or Kerry.

Sunday, May 25, 2008
Utah Phillips: 1935-2008
(1 comments) The legendary folksinger, storyteller, and social activist dies late Friday night.

Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Iraqi Unit Flees Post, Despite American's Pleas
Maybe the message the Iraqis are trying to send is that they don't want a civil war, no matter how much it fits George Bush's and John McCain's political agenda. "Every house in Sadr City probably has one of their sons in the Mahdi Army," said an Iraqi major. "So it is hard to convince people to believe in the Iraqi Army." So they left, taking a truckload of furniture with them.

Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Al-Sadr Tightens the Screws
(1 comments) While Petraeus, Crocker, Lieberman, and McCain insist the US-backed Iraqi government is taking charge, TIME has a different take on who's really calling the shots.

Saturday, April 12, 2008
Iraq and the US economy: ills feeding off each other
Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz, the leading authority on the cost of the Iraq war, tells how it's dragging down the US and world economy. "Who would have believed that one administration could do so much damage so quickly? America, and the world, will be paying to repair it for decades to come."

Wednesday, April 9, 2008
Riding the Tiger: Muqtada al-Sadr and the American Dilemma in Iraq
(3 comments) Who is Muqtada al-Sadr? Is he just a "firebrand cleric," a description used so often in the US press that it seems to be part of his name? The Independent's Patrick Cockburn has the skinny.

Tuesday, April 8, 2008
Robert Fisk: The fearful lives in a land of the free
(2 comments) Why do Middle Eastern Muslims living in Europe and North America so freely criticize Western imperialism, but are so loathe to denounce their native countries' repressive regimes? Robert Fisk has some answers.

Tuesday, April 8, 2008
Sacrificed to the Surge
Polygamy, veils, and virtual imprisonment in their own homes. Such is the fate of women in "liberated" Iraq -- and this in the regions controlled by our "moderate" allies. On the bright side, it's brought out a newfound cultural sensitivity on our part. Says an Army colonel, "In terms of what they're doing within their own culture, I don't think we'd intervene in that."

Friday, April 4, 2008
Calm -- and Hope -- in Indianapolis
A testament to the power of a good speech from one who's neutral in the Obama-Clinton race.

Thursday, March 27, 2008
Exposure
(1 comments) Sabrina Harman, the woman behind the camera at Abu Ghraib, who one of her colleagues describes as "just too nice to be a soldier," bares all to The New Yorker about how it all happened.

Saturday, March 22, 2008
Things to Come
Paul Krugman has been seen by progressives as a light in the darkness throughout the Bush years. And for good reason. Revisit his thoughts on the eve of the invasion of Iraq, five years ago.

Saturday, March 22, 2008
Cuyahoga County elections board investigating 'crossover' votes
More than 16,000 erstwhile Republicans in Cleveland and its suburbs pledged loyalty to the Democratic Party to vote in the March 4 primary, one explicitly stating on his form, "for one day only." Turns out lying about your party loyalty is a felony. Thanks, Rush.

Saturday, March 22, 2008
Pentagon will not send Adm. Fallon to Congress on Iraq
Excuse me, but isn't it Congress that gets to decide who it wants to testify?

Thursday, March 20, 2008
Johann Hari: Has market fundamentalism had its day?
(1 comments) Now that the religion of deregulation which first took hold under Ronald Reagan has reached its logical conclusion, will some common sense return to economic thinking, or will Milton Friedman's disciples continue to scratch and claw for every last, increasingly worthless, cent?

Monday, March 17, 2008
Ohio's voting machines are now an official crime scene
More on the scandal that won't go away, by two of the leading watchdogs of Ohio politics.

Sunday, March 16, 2008
Iraq cuts oil price to Europe, ups US
This war is working out soooo well.

Thursday, March 6, 2008
The Man Between War and Peace
Centcom commander Admiral William Fallon has tried to tone down the saber rattling of the White House's neocon armchair warriors against Iran. And that just might get him fired. Can you say "General Zinni?"

Wednesday, March 5, 2008
Open Letter to Three Iraqi Women from an Oregon Mother
(7 comments) Victims, victims, everywhere.

Tuesday, March 4, 2008
I Was Kidnapped by the CIA
(2 comments) Peter Bergen tells the story of Abu Omer, snatched off the streets of Milan in 2003 and flown to Egypt to be tortured, and the Italian prosecutor whose investigation has led to the indictment of 26 US officials. The ironies -- the now-wanted head of the CIA mission opposed the operation but succumbed to White House pressure, and the kidnapping dramatically delayed the prosecutor's investigation of Middle Eastern terrorists.

Tuesday, March 4, 2008
The Gaza Bombshell
(5 comments) More Bush foreign policy follies: How a bungled "dirty war" led by Condie Rice and Elliott Abrams led to the Hamas takeover of Gaza. Said an Israeli security official at the time, "The president of the United States is making a strange judgment here."

Tuesday, March 4, 2008
Bob Herbert: The $2 Trillion Nightmare
The New York Times columnist on the unspoken issue of the 2008 campaign.

Saturday, March 1, 2008
The Commander-in-Chef Cooks Up a Storm
Tom Englehardt and Frida Berrigan examine President Bush's "recipes for disaster" in Iraq, and the many ways they are boosting our economy here at home. Includes a helpful list of the leading war profiteers.

Thursday, February 28, 2008
Obama's Ohio Grilling
Barack Obama's obviously aware of the realities of the American political landscape vis-a-vis the Middle East, but that didn't stop him from speaking at least a little truth to power at a meeting of Jewish community leaders in Cleveland this week.

Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Guantanamo guards suffer psychological trauma
From the what goes around comes around dept: Our guards at Gitmo are committing suicide as fast as the detainees. "It's not that we put bad apples in a good barrel," says a psychiatrist. "We put good apples in a bad barrel. The barrel corrupts anything that it touches." From the UK Guardian, of course -- you won't see this in an American newspaper.

Saturday, February 23, 2008
Inside the world of war profiteers
(3 comments) How do you spend $3 billion a week? With bribes of hookers and Super Bowl tickets, charging taxpayers $45 for a Coke, and hiring Bangladeshis with hepatitus to serve our soldiers. Only in George Bush's (and Dick Cheney's) America. But KBR has an answer: "Ethics and integrity are core values for KBR."

Friday, February 22, 2008
Winter Soldier preview
Iraq Veterans Against the War provides a video preview of next month's Winter Soldier campaign to educate Americans on the true costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. (Contains some graphic images)

Friday, February 22, 2008
GOP lobbyist had no work permit
Grover Norquist and the California Republican Party hired an illegal alien. But hey -- how could they have known? He was a white guy. The latest edition of hypocrites on parade.

Thursday, February 21, 2008
Rigged Trials at Gitmo
Like being "back in Mississippi representing a black man in front of an all-white jury," says a defense attorney. Prosecutors (since resigned) who complained their evidence was thin "were told by the chief prosecutor at the time that they didn't need evidence to get convictions."

Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Chet Edwards' Obama Endorsement
President Bush's Congressman, Texas Democrat Chet Edwards, endorses Obama. "(A)s a father of two young sons, I just felt this election was so important for our country's future and my children's future and their generation's future. And I felt that Bararck Obama had the integrity and the leadership and the ability to inspire our country to do better and to be better."

Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Ft. Hood soldiers breaking the silence in war in Iraq
Antiwar activism spreading among active duty soldiers. (includes video)

Wednesday, February 13, 2008
"Disgusted" army wife speaks out on Army's response to soldier suicide surge
(3 comments) A military wife describes the Army's response at Ft. Campbell to the surge of soldier suicides: Restrict leaves, assign a "buddy."

Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Researcher says Iraqi deaths vastly underreported
The author of the Lancet study on the deaths of Iraqi citizens in the war goes to the heart of George Bush's America -- Waco, TX -- to say why the true costs of the war are being ignored, and why it matters.

Thursday, February 7, 2008
Saudi woman jailed for illegal Starbucks meeting
She had coffee with an unrelated man, said the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice. That's the Taliban, right? Iran? No, our closest friends and allies in the fight to bring democracy and freedom to the Middle East -- the Saudis.

Wednesday, February 6, 2008
Market bombings: Baghdad locals want security, not Iraqi police
"The Americans asked to be our friends because we were the winners," says a Baghdad "Awakenings" commander. "We are an independent state; no police or army is allowed to come in." But pointing to a blast wall separating his neighborhood from the Shiites, he adds, "We can't go beyond that. I can't guarantee your security there."

Wednesday, February 6, 2008
Will Huckabee's campaign encourage evangelicals to vote for a Democrat?
The Huckabee campaign represents a return to the real old time religion, and that's good for Democrats, according to the Christian Science Monitor.

Monday, January 28, 2008
'Ancient civilization . . . broken to pieces'
When the final chapter is written about the tragic US invasion of Iraq, the rape of the art and archeological treasures of the world's oldest civilization will not be the least of our crimes.

Thursday, January 24, 2008
Iraq Veterans to Testify at Their Own 'Winter Soldier'
If they can't bring the troops home, Iraq Veterans Against the War plan to at least bring the war home with their "Winter Soldier" hearings in March. They believe Americans must know the realities of the occupation and what it is doing to our troops, and it's a picture that won't be easily spun by the administration. Remember those ubiquitous cell phone cameras that got Donald Rumsfeld's panties in a knot?

Sunday, January 6, 2008
Ramzy Baroud: What, me worry that Bush is coming?
After seven years, Al Arabiya commentator Ramzy Baroud has a simple request for President Bush. Please, don't bring us any more peace and stability. Stay home.

Sunday, January 6, 2008
For sale: West's deadly nuclear secrets
FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds charges top State Department and Pentagon officials have been selling US nuclear secrets to Pakistan and others through Turkish middlemen.

Monday, December 17, 2007
The Grim Reality in Gaza
Palestinian journalist Mohammed Omer examines the human cost of the shutdown of borders and the stand-off between Israel and Hamas, as his neighbors attempt to go about their daily lives.

Thursday, December 13, 2007
What's Really Happened During the Surge?
Patrick Cockburn of The Independent (UK) looks at the internal politics which have far more to do with the decline in violence in Iraq than the US troop surge. "The Americans will discover, as the British learned to their cost in Basra, that they have few permanent allies in Iraq. It has become a land of warlords in which fragile ceasefires might last for months and might equally collapse tomorrow."

Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Baghdad safer, but it's a life behind walls
What's behind the drop in violence in Baghdad? How is the surge "working"? "One road in and one road out, that's it," says Ghazaliya resident Muhammad Rajab. "Iraq is a prison, and now I live in my own little prison."

Tuesday, December 11, 2007
97 year old granny saves your spiritual life... in real time
"The very idea that you can have war on terror is as silly as the idea that you can have war on anger. War itself is insane anger. . . Love is the only truth that can save us from lies and from anger and sad living." Doris 'Granny D' Haddock on just about everything. Would that some of us younger than 97 could speak so plainly.