Beyond Obama

Obama accused of nuclear U-turn as guided weapons plan emerges

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 09:18:20 -0400

Obama accused of nuclear U-turn as guided weapons plan emerges: Plan to spend $10bn on updating...

Noam Chomsky: Obama Would Have Been Called a ‘Moderate...

Sun, 03 Feb 2013 14:49:55 -0500

Noam Chomsky: Obama Would Have Been Called a ‘Moderate Republican’ in Recent Decades - a 42-minute critique of Obama via the Young Turks:

January 31, 2013 | Noam Chomsky, Professor Emeritus at MIT, and one of the nation’s leading intellectual critics of the US political, corporate and national security apparatus. In this long interview, Cenk Uygur of TYT and Professor Chomsky discuss President Obama, the rightward shift of US politics over the past few decades, drone strikes, the labor movement, Aaron Swartz, the role of the media and what hope we have for the future

The Whistleblower Case of Thomas Drake and the Coming Scrutiny of the National Security Bureaucracy (The New Yorker)

Fri, 04 Jan 2013 12:17:00 -0500

The Whistleblower Case of Thomas Drake and the Coming Scrutiny of the National Security Bureaucracy...

George Zornick, The Nation — “How Walmart Helped Make the...

Thu, 20 Dec 2012 00:41:13 -0500

George Zornick, The Nation — “How Walmart Helped Make the Newtown Shooter’s AR-15 the Most Popular Assault Weapon in America”

Dreams in Infrared: the Woes of an American Drone Operator

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 11:00:43 -0500

Dreams in Infrared: the Woes of an American Drone Operator: “Did we just kill a kid?”...

(image by Reuters)

Sun, 16 Dec 2012 11:57:44 -0500

(image by Reuters)

R.T.W. laws terrible for workers and the economy, yet now spreading to 24th state

Tue, 11 Dec 2012 09:02:00 -0500

Tense protests and walkouts in Michigan this week as lawmakers fast-tracked what will soon become...

No parental consent required: hundreds of teenagers among thousands detained in Afghanistan

Tue, 11 Dec 2012 08:28:57 -0500

No parental consent required: hundreds of teenagers among thousands detained in Afghanistan: A...

Would you let your parents or your boss make copies of all your email "just in case" they suspect something later? Why let the central government do it now?

Wed, 05 Dec 2012 13:17:52 -0500

Warrantless wiretapping is not news — but the scope of what our national protectors are up to keeps...

“No country would tolerate…”

Fri, 30 Nov 2012 20:27:37 -0500

“No country would tolerate…”

Inspiring photo. Clergyman arrested today fighting for economic...

Mon, 26 Nov 2012 18:13:23 -0500

Inspiring photo. Clergyman arrested today fighting for economic justice of @Walmart workers. #WalmartStrikers pic.twitter.com/vb8r5m5j - via @OccupyCongress

Washington Post defends picture of dead Gaza child after...

Mon, 26 Nov 2012 13:16:00 -0500

Washington Post defends picture of dead Gaza child after complaints from ‘Jews in large numbers’

Mondweiss calls attention to a story about a photograph published by the The Washington Post in connection with an Israeli rocket that struck a house and killed a young infant:

Jewish groups and American Jews in large numbers wrote to the ombudsman and to Post editors, protesting the photo as biased… [They] asked why The Post didn’t balance the photo of the grieving father with one of Israelis who had lost a loved one from the Gaza rocket fire. That’s a valid question.

The answer is that The Post cannot publish photographs that don’t exist. No Israeli civilian had been killed by Gaza rocket fire since Oct. 29, 2011, more than a year earlier.

This little side-story is telling: it suggests that many Americans missed the stunningly disproportionate nature of the November conflict. As the ombudsman of The Post puts it:

I think we can all agree that the Gaza rocket fire is reprehensible and is aimed at terrorizing Israeli civilians. It’s disruptive and traumatic. But let’s be clear: The overwhelming majority of rockets fired from Gaza are like bee stings on the Israeli bear’s behind… Gaza, meanwhile, is almost entirely urban and densely populated; bombs there will kill civilians no matter how precisely targeted…

Palestinian health ministry sources estimate that 100 to 133 Gazans were killed, including militants. Amnesty International puts the civilian Gazan death toll at 66. In Israel, four civilians and two soldiers died.

Walmart strikes made a big bang on Black Friday, but they...

Mon, 26 Nov 2012 12:16:33 -0500

Walmart strikes made a big bang on Black Friday, but they haven’t stopped yet.

Israel bombards Gaza for fifth straight day with nearly 1,000 airstrikes paving the way for imminent invasion (?)

Mon, 19 Nov 2012 00:33:00 -0500

Israel bombards Gaza for fifth straight day with nearly 1,000 airstrikes paving the way for imminent...

In reality — a nation not so divided Gizmodo highlights some...

Wed, 14 Nov 2012 17:35:00 -0500

In reality — a nation not so divided

Gizmodo highlights some very poignant maps of Election 2012 results:

“This is the real political map of the United States of America after the presidential election. A fascinating view, much different from the maps you saw that night, which showed an artificial, binary divide. But these maps demonstrate that there is not such a huge gap between rural and urban America…”

Letter to a future Republican strategist regarding white people

Tue, 13 Nov 2012 23:28:45 -0500

Letter to a future Republican strategist regarding white people : White, suburban Eric Garland is...

Walmart workers are planning a major strike for Black Friday...

Tue, 13 Nov 2012 12:49:00 -0500

Walmart workers are planning a major strike for Black Friday this year, following recent and some ongoing strikes against the low-wage, bargain juggernaut.

Image courtesy of Occupy Wall Street.

Surprise Strike Against Owners of Wonderbread, Twinkies

Tue, 13 Nov 2012 12:37:52 -0500

Surprise Strike Against Owners of Wonderbread, Twinkies : Union members are convinced that the...

The real scandal here is that when the head of the CIA sleeps with someone who is not his wife, it causes a national scandal, but when the agency manages a drone program that serially violates the sovereignty of nations worldwide... it does not.

Tue, 13 Nov 2012 12:14:30 -0500

The real scandal here is that when the head of the CIA sleeps with someone who is not his wife, it...

The future journalism project fills us in on a cool...

Tue, 13 Nov 2012 11:54:14 -0500

The future journalism project fills us in on a cool project:

…Dronestagram posts a satellite view to Instagram showing the location of drone strikes before the attack…

The inventor and publisher, James Bridle, writes he’s “making these locations just a little bit more visible, a little closer. A little more real.”

…

There’s more on the project The Verge, and you can follow Dronestagram on twitter, tumblr or Instagram, of course.

Read Bridle’s full description of the project here. He is based in the UK.

“These are just images of foreign landscapes, still; yet we have got better at immediacy and intimacy online: perhaps we can be better at empathy too.”