Sanders Puts Single-Payer On the Agenda
by John Nichols
While the one reform that could cure what ails America's health care system has attracted plenty of adherents in the House -- 72 members have signed on as backers of House Judiciary Committee chair John Conyers' single-payer proposal and others back a plan introduced by Washington Democrat Jim McDermott's legislation -- there has not been a Senate proposal to rally around. |
Syria Calling
by Seymour Hersh
When the Israelis' controversial twenty-two-day military campaign in Gaza ended, on January 18th, it also seemed to end the promising peace talks between Israel and Syria. The two countries had been engaged for almost a year in negotiations through intermediaries in Istanbul. Many complicated technical matters had been resolved, and there were agreements in principle on the normalization of diplomatic relations. The consensus, as an ambassador now serving in Tel Aviv put it, was that the two sides had been "a lot closer than you might think." |
Not an Analogy: Israel and the Crime of Apartheid
by Hazem Jamjoum
In recent years, increasing numbers of people around the world have begun adopting and developing an analysis of Israel as an apartheid regime. (1) This can be seen in the ways that the global movement in support of the Palestinian anti-colonial struggle is taking on a pointedly anti-apartheid character, as evidenced by the growth of Israeli Apartheid Week.(2) Further, much of the recent international diplomatic support for Israel has increasingly taken on the form of denying that racial discrimination is a root cause of the oppression of Palestinians, something that has taken on new levels of absurdity in Western responses to the April 2009 Durban Review Conference.(3) |
No to War, No to NATO
by Katrina vanden Heuvel
With President Obama announcing his new strategy for US/NATO escalation in Afghanistan, the April 3-4 NATO Summit in Baden-Baden and Kehl, Germany, and in Strasbourg, France, takes on added urgency -- as will the demonstrations by thousands of protestors from over 20 European countries and the US. |
Climate Change Experts Call on G20 Members to Commit to Action
by Patrick Wintour, David Adam and Damian Carrington
• Last-ditch effort to gain specific promises at G20 • Leaked communique all but ignores green issuesA last-ditch effort is being made to insert clearer green commitments into the global economic recovery package. The move comes amid fears amongst some British government officials that the G20 summit is in danger of missing a unique opportunity to prevent the world from being locked into irreversible and catastrophic climate change. |
Vow to Fight Raises Question: Is Calm in Iraq Just the Eye of the Storm?
by Leila Fadel
GARMA, Iraq — Mohammed walked in disbelief through the rich green grass that carpets the farm behind his modest family home. For more than three years, he'd seen no green, no hanging branches in the orchards near his home in Garma, in Anbar province in western Iraq. |
Limbaugh 'failure' billboard debuts in West Palm Beach
by Angel Streeter
WEST PALM BEACH - The national Democratic Party unveiled its raspberry for Rush Limbaugh on Tuesday in Palm Beach County.A traveling billboard with the teasing message "Americans didn't vote for a Rush to failure" and an image of a cigar-smoking Limbaugh debuted in West Palm Beach, immediately causing a firestorm between supporters of Limbaugh and backers of President Obama. |
Guantanamo: Yemeni detainee will be released
by Aimee Kligman
Ayman Saeed Batarfi, a 38-year old Yemeni doctor will be the second prisoner from Guantanamo to be released. He was first detained in Afghanistan in 2001, where his lawyers had indicated he had been on a humanitarian mission.Bartafi was initially held at Bagram Airforce Base and then transferred to the infamous Guantanamo Bay Prison. We do not know what happened to him during those years, but if his experience parallels that of the recently released Ethiopian-born Binyam Mohamed, we can be almost sure that torture was on the menu. |
"Like We Were Dogs": The Story of Ryan Moats
by Dave Zirin
The first time Ryan Moats touched a football in an NFL game he ran it 40-yards for a touchdown. That was part of an 11-carry 114-yard debut for the Philadelphia Eagles rookie. Currently, Moats plays for the Houston Texans in the football mad Lone Star State. This would seem to be a charmed life. But none of that protected Moats from one of the uglier cases of DWB (driving while black) that's come across the wires. Moats' money and fame couldn't insulate him. A police dashboard video camera, however, recorded the ugly interaction shedding light on a practice all too common in these United States. |
Space Race Hikes Risk of Nuclear War
by Sherwood Ross
An unchecked race to militarize space is underway that is "increasing the risk of an accidental nuclear war while shortening the time for sanity and diplomacy to come into play to halt crises," an authority on space warfare says.By 2025, the space capabilities of the leading space powers---the U.S., Russia, India and China---will be roughly equal "due to information sharing in a globalized economy," says noted space researcher Matt Hoey in an exclusive interview. Hoey is international military space technology forecaster who provides analysis on issues related to technology proliferation and arms control. He is also a former senior research associate at the Institute for Defense and Disarmament Studies and has contributed to publications such as the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists and the Space Review. |
Two Degrees of Separation
by Stephen Fleischman
In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God."Let there be light: and there was light"It was Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels who taught us about the Class Struggle--the inexorable clash between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. |
Think Globally, Bank Locally
by Stephen Pizzo
I voted for Barack Obama, and I continue to wish him nothing but success. But I have to admit, his and Tim Geithner's solution to the banking crisis is exactly the wrong solution. The administration seems to believe the best thing to do is to throw the drunken "money center" bankers into detox, hose them off and put them back in the game. |
MoveOn Is Not New to Supporting War
by David Swanson
While General David "Betray Us" Petraeus must be thrilled with his conversion from traitor to saint in the eyes of the pseudo-left and amazed that such things can be accomplished simply by changing the political party of the president, the group that formerly bashed him with an ad in the New York Times and now supports whatever Obama does is not as new to supporting wars as this simple story suggests. |
Holy Howard ...Ahmanson Becomes a Democrat
by Bill Berkowitz
I have three jokes in my comic arsenal. The one I tell the most often -- in adult company only -- goes like this:On July 21, 1969, Astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin of Apollo 11 explored the surface of the moon. Armstrong, the first to set foot on the moon said: "That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind." |
Pretending to be civilized in an epidemic of institutional sadism
by Pierre Tristam
From the you-can't-be-serious department: Savana Redding was a 13-year-old honors student at a small Arizona middle school. In math class one morning the principal ordered her to pack up and follow him to his office. The principal interrogated her about a planner Savana had lent a friend, and a few ibuprofin pills sitting on the principal's desk, which were found in the planner. Savana knew nothing about the pills. |
Norm Coleman's a sore loser. Why won't the press say so?
by Eric Boehlert
Any day now, a three-judge panel in Minnesota will rule on Norm Coleman's lawsuit to overturn the results of the state's Senate election recount, which was completed in January. The complete hand recount concluded that the incumbent Republican lost to challenger Al Franken by 225 votes. Coleman demanded a full court case; today, almost nobody, including Coleman's own attorney, thinks the Republican will prevail in the judges' upcoming ruling, which follows a tedious seven-week trial. |
President Obama: Small Change and the Mendacity of Hope
by Dave Lindorff
We are witnessing one of the fastest betrayals of the Democratic Party base in modern memory, as President Barack Obama and the Democratic Party leadership in the Senate slither away from a crucial constituency, the labor movement, and from support of labor's key legislative agenda item: passage of a bill, "The Employee Free Choice Act," which would restore a measure of fairness to labor relations. |
