The Wikileaks revelations are a spin problem to be solved, according to the White House mouth piece, Politico: The White House is dismissing the 92,000 Afghan war reports posted by WikiLeaks as old news — but the document dump poses a potent new threat to President Barack Obama’s delicately balanced Afghanistan policy. The field reports…
Showing all posts tagged Barack Obama
A day at Revolution Books
Yesterday’s event at New York’s Revolution Books alongside writer and author Michael Otterman – interviewed today about Iraqi casualties on NPR – was a unique opportunity to discuss Palestine and Iraq. We talked about the hidden civilian trauma, power of the US to wage war with little social cost inside the country, the power of…
Wikileaks blows open the Afghan disaster
The power of the internet to prick the most powerful government in the world, its corrupt war, its shameful allies (including Australia) and blow wide open the nature of the Afghan engagement: A huge cache of secret US military files today provides a devastating portrait of the failing war in Afghanistan, revealing how coalition forces…
Unregulated capitalism is out of the control but the rich feel fine
Independent US Senator Bernie Sanders writes in The Nation that there is something seriously wrong with the American way of life. Goodbye middle class: While the middle class disappears and poverty increases the wealthiest people in our country are not only doing extremely well, they are using their wealth and political power to protect and…
Tell us how Israel really helps the US
Chas Freeman was defeated by the Zionist lobby last year after the Obama administration tried to install him as chair of the National Intelligence Council. He wasn’t sufficiently pro-Israel, so they said. He’s given a speech this week at the Nixon Centre that continues the ongoing public debate about what Israel really offers Washington: It’s…
Interview with New York’s Indypendent on Palestine, peace, BDS and the MSM
Here’s my interview published today by a leading New York publication, The Indypendent. It was conducted by wonderful young journalist Alex Kane: With “peace talks” between the Palestinian Authority and Israel seeming more and more like a dead end, many people around the world, including dissident Jewish voices, are turning to grassroots activism to pressure…
Loewenstein and Abunimah on GritTV
I was interviewed yesterday on leading independent American television show GritTV alongside Ali Abunimah. We discussed the “peace process”, Palestine, BDS, the role of Barack Obama and the importance of the web: More GRITtv
Can we please have a grown-up conversation about Afghanistan?
So let me get this straight. Years of futile fighting, tens of thousands dead and now a realisation that the “enemy” must be engaged? The White House is revising its Afghanistan strategy to embrace the idea of negotiating with senior members of the Taliban through third parties – a policy to which it had previously…
America’s elites benefit from economic meltdown
What economic downturn? Such news only convinces those who question the robustness of globalisation (and probably helps the Tea Party movement, too): America is struggling with a sputtering economy and high unemployment — but times are booming for Washington’s governing class. The massive expansion of government under President Barack Obama has basically guaranteed a robust…
Twitter won’t really help America be more liked
A very revealing essay in today’s New York Times Magazine on the US State Department’s major use of the web, Twitter, Facebook and online tools to push Washington’s agenda globally. The article is curious for its almost complete lack of discussion about whether Obama administration policies are in fact useful or productive but instead focuses…