17 Years of Getting Afghanistan Completely Wrong

We expect 17-year-olds to have learned a great deal starting from infancy, and yet full-grown adults have proven incapable of knowing anything about Afghanistan during the course of 17 years of U.S.-NATO war. Despite war famously being the means of Americans learning geography, few can even identify Afghanistan on a map. What else have we failed to learn?

The war has not ended.

There are, as far as I know, no polls on the percentage of people in the United States who know that the war is still read more

Tomgram: Engelhardt, In Search of the Victories People Don’t Even Know About

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In the Heart of a Dying Empire
The Adolts in the Room (and No, That Is Not a Typo!)
By Tom Engelhardt

When you think about it, Earth is a relatively modest-sized planet — about 25,000 miles in circumference at the Equator, with a total surface area of 197 million square miles, almost three-quarters of which read more

The Democratic Party Comes Out Against Foreign Military Bases

I confess that the idea of fighting for “the soul of the Democratic Party” has always sounded as sensible to my ear as fighting for the soul of a cow plop, and plans to improve the world through the Democratic Party about as strategic as a preemptive compromise. The following statement from the Democratic Party has given me second thoughts:

“We declare again that all governments instituted among men derive their just powers from the consent of the governed; that any government not based upon read more

100th Anniversary of the Dumbest Parade Ever

September 28, 2018, marks 100 years since the stupidest parade I’ve ever heard of. And this is a world awash in stupid. Donald Trump wanted to hold an insane weapons parade in Washington this November. That was dumb. But so was, on a far lesser scale, the move by various peace groups to de-prioritize going ahead with a massive celebration of having helped get the parade cancelled. I suppose the thinking is that we have got just too many victories for peace to be bothered with inspiring people read more

A confirmation hearing is a job interview, not a trial Candidates for Government Posts or Judgeships Don’t Have a ‘Presumption of Innocence’

By Dave Lindorff

 

Whatever your view of Brett Kavanaugh, let’s get one thing clear:  While he’s hoping to become the ninth justice of the US Supreme Court, he is not on trial. He is facing a confirmation hearing by the Judicial Committee of the US Senate.

Republican backers of this clearly flawed and truth-challenged candidate are insisting indignantly, in the case of mounting charges from alleged victims, that he’s entitled to a “presumption of innocence” as several read more

Talk Nation Radio: Hawes Spencer on Charlottesville’s Summer of Hate

Hawes Spencer is a journalist who has reported for the New York Times, NPR, the Hook, and other publications. He has taught journalism at Virginia Commonwealth University and James Madison University. For over two decades, Hawes Spencer edited two weekly newspapers in Charlottesville, Virginia, both of which he co-founded: C-ville Weekly and The Hook. As the editor of the Hook, his staff delivered 149 awards from the Virginia Press Association during read more

Speaking Truth to Empire

On Speaking Truth to Empire on KFCF 88.1 FM, Dan Yaseen interviews Joan Roelofs. She is Professor Emerita of Political Science, Keene State College, New Hampshire. She is the author of Foundations and Public Policy: The Mask of Pluralism and Greening Cities. A community education short course on the military industrial complex is on her website, and may be used for similar purposes. The topic of discussion will be the military industrial complex. Her website is www.joanroelofs.wordpress.com

Book Review — Pentagon on Alert: The Russian Peace Threat

By Dave Lindorff

            In the preface to his remarkable three-volume History of the Russian Revolution, Leon Trotsky, writing in 1930 about earth-shaking events in which he was a key actor, explains his view of writing history. Citing the reactionary French historian Louis Madelin, who wrote that “…the historian ought to stand upon the wall of a threatened city, and behold at the same time the besiegers and the besieged” in read more