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Rand X: Experts Mark Target for Terror War Expansion

(Corrected.)

And now, from the people who brought you the Vietnam War, a brand-new, slam-bang extravaganza is on its way: “Good Morning, Pakistan!”

Yes, those old show-biz troupers at the RAND Corporation are it again, laying the groundwork for yet another intractable, interminable slaughterfest in Asia. This week, RAND (the original “think tank,” conceived in the very bowels of the military-industrial complex) announced that the “good war” in Afghanistan will surely be lost…unless Pakistan is scoured clean of its terrorist sanctuaries – and of its terrorist sympathizers in high places.<br style="font-family:

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Broken Engagement: Rare Honesty from Bush Gang

Human Rights Watch has issued a denunciation of the Bush Administration for its disengagement from the UN’s Human Rights Council. As HRW puts it:

The United States announced today at its daily State Department briefing that it will only participate in debates at the council when absolutely necessary and it feels compelled to do so by “matters of deep national interest.” The United States failed to take the floor today in a council discussion on Burma, indicating the broad scope of its withdrawal. Although
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Sex Crime: A New ‘Surge’ in the War Against Women

The organized “anti-abortion” movement has never been about “saving the pre-born”: it has always been about controlling women. Now this viciously misogynist agenda is coming out into the open more and more, as Cristina Page notes in the Madison Times (via the estimable Buzzflash):

Saturday, June 7, is the anniversary of Griswold v. Connecticut, the 1965 Supreme Court decision that granted married people the right to use contraception. To mark the day, anti-abortion groups will take to their normal
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White Like Them: The Transforming Power of Ambition

Arthur Silber is back, after a lengthy health-related layoff, and as usual, he is firing on all cylinders, with a powerful piece that explains why Obama (and Hillary too) are, well, white men, just like John McCain. As always, Silber’s post should be read in full — along with its many links, which provide an illuminating education in themselves. Do head over there and read the whole thing — and drop any spare change you might have in the tip jar; Silber’s unique insight deserves support. Here are a few choice excerpts to get

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“Like Trees Walking”: Obama and the Vision Thing

Last week, I wrote a piece on Barack Obama’s victory in the race for the Democratic nomination: “Degrees of Significance.” This has elicited a comment from a long-time reader whose views I respect; I’d like to respond at some length, because I think he brings up an important issue. For readers joining us from Air America, where I’m guest-blogging this week, you might want to check out the earlier piece first to get the whole picture. But here is the comment:

Chris…if you write
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Degrees of Significance: The Nomination of Barack Obama

The symbolic significance of Obama Barack’s nomination victory is not insubstantial. In a land where, not so long ago, having the slightest drop of “Negro blood” in your genetic inheritance was enough to bar you — legally and formally — from many jobs, educational opportunities, places of residence, medical care, full participation in society, etc. (and where these obstacles still persist, in practice if not in law, for many people), it is striking to see a man whose father was not only black but also a “full-blooded African” (cue the psychosexual “Mandingo” anxieties of generations of trembly white

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Main Core Blues: Stranger in a Strange Land

Everybody I met seemed to be a rank stranger;
No mother or dad, not a friend could I see.
They knew not my name,
And I knew not their faces.
I found they were all rank strangers to me.
— Albert Brumley

Posting here will be slow for a few days. I’m at large in the increasingly strange place

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An Agony Foretold: Bitter Roots, Bitter Fruits in the Middle East

Long before the Nabka, long before the Holocaust, the present-day agony in Israel and Palestine had already taken root. The ineradicable core of the conflict is brutally simple: the attempt by one people to take another people’s land. In this respect, the turmoil in the Middle East is just another chapter in one of the world’s oldest stories, for human beings have always been about the bloody business of conquest, dispossession and domination. The United States, for example, was built on this ancient principle. Its settling was cast largely in the same terms as those used later by

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Assassinationgate: The Self-Righteous Hit on Hillary Clinton

There is of course no point in paying too much attention to the U.S. presidential campaign, which is almost entirely a monstrous excretion of meaningless, bull-roaring noise. True, a few hints of the horrors to come can be gleaned in broad outline — chiefly by following the money behind each candidate, and also noting from which pool of imperial courtiers they draw their top advisors: i.e., the “kill ’em all” neocon crowd, the “more in sorrow than in anger” humanitarian interventionist school, the “let the poor eat dirt until they die” faction, or the “I feel your

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Hay Ride: Jimmy Carter Crosses the Line

Here’s a thought experiment. Try to imagine a major American political figure boldly calling on Europe to break with the United States, unilaterally lift the blockage on Gaza and negotiate directly with Hamas, the democratically-elected government of Palestine.

He then goes on to reveal — from his access to the most highly classified intelligence — that Israel, far from being at risk from “destruction” by Iran or anyone, possesses a minimum of 150 nuclear weapons: the first time that any such high-level U.S. official has ever publicly confirmed the existence of Israel’s

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