War in Context

Obama has made killing easy

News Sources — Tue, 22 May 2012 01:13:33 +0000

White House counterterror chief John Brennan and his team have implemented a new process through which they decide who they want to kill. In describing Brennan’s arrangement to the Associated Press, the officials provided the first detailed description of the military’s previous review process that set a schedule for killing or capturing terror leaders around [...]

How America’s death penalty murders innocents

News Sources — Tue, 22 May 2012 01:12:57 +0000

David A Love writes: The US criminal justice system is a broken machine that wrongfully convicts innocent people, sentencing thousands of people to prison or to death for the crimes of others, as a new study reveals. The University of Michigan law school and Northwestern University have compiled a new National Registry of Exonerations – [...]

Video: ‘No NATO, no war’

News Sources — Mon, 21 May 2012 17:42:03 +0000

U.S. war veterans tossing medals back at NATO was a heroic act

News Sources — Mon, 21 May 2012 12:55:36 +0000

Bernard Harcourt writes: “No amount of medals, ribbons, or flags can cover the amount of human suffering caused by this war.” “I have only one word, and it is shame.” “This is for the people of Iraq and Afghanistan.” “Mostly, I’m sorry. I’m sorry to all of you. I am sorry…” In the shadow of [...]

NATO talks security and peace, Chicago has neither

News Sources — Mon, 21 May 2012 12:50:20 +0000

Gary Younge writes: On Friday morning in Brighton Park, a neighbourhood in southwest Chicago, around half a dozen Latina volunteers in luminous bibs patrolled the streets around Davis Elementary school. The school sits in the crossfire of three gangs; the Kings, the 2/6s and the SDs (Satan’s Disciples). The trees and walls nearby are peppered [...]

In Yemen, as drones track targets, Twitter tracks drones

News Sources — Mon, 21 May 2012 12:45:02 +0000

The Bureau of Investigative Journalism reports: Though the hour was late, Yemen’s social media was still very much awake. A US drone’s missiles had just slammed into a convoy of vehicles in a remote part of Yemen, killing three alleged militants. The attack – like all other US drone strikes outside warzones – was supposed [...]

Video: BP coverup, coverup

News Sources — Mon, 21 May 2012 12:44:40 +0000

Lebanon boils after sheikh killing

News Sources — Mon, 21 May 2012 12:43:24 +0000

The Daily Star reports: Fears grew over the stability of north Lebanon Sunday after soldiers shot dead a prominent anti-Assad Muslim preacher and a companion at a Lebanese Army checkpoint in Akkar, triggering a wave of anger in several parts of the country. The gravity of the incident, which quickly led to the Army withdrawing [...]

TED talks that should have been censored? Not if you want to know how to tie your shoes

Paul Woodward — Mon, 21 May 2012 12:42:11 +0000

“With all the fuss over TED’s self-censorship, we searched through hours of footage to find 10 talks the organizers really should have excised” writes Foreign Policy associate editor Joshua Keating. Why? Just so that Foreign Policy readers could waste their time watching TED talks that in Keating’s view aren’t worth watching? Curious to find out [...]

Music: Bebel Gilberto — Momento

Attention to the Unseen — Mon, 21 May 2012 12:41:54 +0000

Ellen Cantarow: The new eco-devastation in rural America

TomDispatch — Mon, 21 May 2012 01:49:43 +0000

When workers drilling tunnels at Gauley Bridge, West Virginia, began to die, Union Carbide had an answer. It hadn’t been taking adequate precautions against the inhalation of silica dust, a known danger to workers since the days of ancient Greece. Instead, in many cases, a company doctor would simply tell the families of the workers [...]

Video: Does the G8 represent a modern world economy?

News Sources — Mon, 21 May 2012 01:49:02 +0000

Welcome, NATO, to Chicago’s police state

News Sources — Sun, 20 May 2012 19:50:22 +0000

Bernard Harcourt writes: With Nato delegates arriving Saturday night, the City of Chicago has been turned into a police state. Courtesy of Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who several months ago began implementing new draconian anti-protest measures, Chicago has gone on security lockdown. Starting early Friday night, 18 May 2012, the Chicago Police Department began shutting down [...]

Divided America

News Sources — Sun, 20 May 2012 18:59:23 +0000

In The New Geography of Jobs, Enrico Moretti writes: Menlo Park is a lively community in the heart of Silicon Valley, just minutes from Stanford University’s manicured campus and many of the Valley’s most dynamic high-tech companies. Surrounded by some of the wealthiest zip codes in California, its streets are lined with an eclectic mix [...]

Chicago 2012 and 1968

Paul Woodward — Sun, 20 May 2012 16:00:14 +0000

Eighteen months ago, when President Obama selected Chicago to host the 2012 NATO Summit — the first NATO summit to be held in the U.S. since 1999 — we can guess that a number of issues would have been running through his mind. He knew that by the time of the summit he would have [...]

Congressmen seek to lift propaganda ban

News Sources — Sun, 20 May 2012 15:45:00 +0000

Michael Hastings reports: An amendment that would legalize the use of propaganda on American audiences is being inserted into the latest defense authorization bill, BuzzFeed has learned. The amendment would “strike the current ban on domestic dissemination” of propaganda material produced by the State Department and the Pentagon, according to the summary of the law [...]

Lunch with the FT: Cornel West

News Sources — Sun, 20 May 2012 15:35:41 +0000

The Financial Times‘ Anna Fifield has lunch with Cornell West: West says he lost faith in Obama when the president brought people with close ties to Wall Street and the financial crisis into his administration. West names the president’s former economic adviser Larry Summers, his current Treasury secretary Tim Geithner, and his budget chief, now [...]

Video: Inside Syria — An opposition divided

News Sources — Sun, 20 May 2012 15:32:26 +0000

Greek leftist leader Alexis Tsipras: ‘It’s a war between people and capitalism’

News Sources — Sat, 19 May 2012 18:53:51 +0000

The Guardian reports: “I don’t believe in heroes or saviours,” says Alexis Tsipras, “but I do believe in fighting for rights … no one has the right to reduce a proud people to such a state of wretchedness and indignity.” The man who holds the fate of the euro in his hands – as the [...]

Video: The One Percent

News Sources — Sat, 19 May 2012 18:51:36 +0000

Worse than Keystone

News Sources — Sat, 19 May 2012 18:49:18 +0000

Alyssa Battistoni writes: Coal is without question our dirtiest fuel source: When burned, it dumps toxins like mercury and nitrogen oxides into the air and packs an outsize punch when it comes to carbon emissions. Since America has a lot of it, though, we’ve tended to use a lot: Historically, around half our electricity has [...]

Drone filmmaker denied visa

News Sources — Sat, 19 May 2012 18:47:02 +0000

Glenn Greenwald writes: Muhammad Danish Qasim is a Pakistani student at Iqra University’s Media Science and is also a filmmaker. This year, Qasim released a short film entitled The Other Side, a 20-minute narrative that “revolves around the idea of assessing social, psychological and economical effects of drones on the people in tribal areas of [...]

Syria diary

News Sources — Sat, 19 May 2012 18:45:51 +0000

Layla Al-Zubaidi writes: ‘Welcome to Assad’s Syria,’ the signpost at the Lebanese-Syrian border still says, letting the visitor know who owns the country. The ceasefire had just been announced, but few Syrians I knew held out much hope that three hundred UN observers could keep an eye on the whole army. The journey from Beirut [...]

How FBI entrapment is inventing ‘terrorists’ – and letting bad guys off the hook

News Sources — Sat, 19 May 2012 14:30:45 +0000

Rick Perlstein writes: This past October, at an Occupy encampment in Cleveland, Ohio, “suspicious males with walkie-talkies around their necks” and “scarves or towels around their heads” were heard grumbling at the protesters’ unwillingness to act violently. At meetings a few months later, one of them, a 26-year-old with a black Mohawk known as “Cyco,” [...]