There are many good pieces out there at the moment, but not world enough and time today to dig into them properly. So here are some brief glimpses. In the immortal words of Rabbi Hillel: Go, and study. Nightmare Alley Arthur Silber is back from a long, illness-induced hiatus, and as usual, he is firing with both barrels. The piece deserves more comment, but for now, just go read the whole thing:  “Fools for Empire (Part I).” Patriotic Gore Another master sometimes laid low by illness these days has re-emerged with harsh words for the new Potomac regime. We speak,

One side is lying; the other side is not telling the truth. * Or to put it another way: One side is pretending that a wildly reactionary plan to further enrich rapacious corporations is really hardcore, gutbucket socialism from the Bolshevik trenches, while the other side is pretending that its "reform" is not really a wildly reactionary plan to further enrich rapacious corporations but something that will somehow, in some way, be good for some people at some point way down the line. * One often finds that dealing in such utter unreality makes it somewhat difficult to achieve workable

The new “Iran crisis” is such a sickening concoction of stupidity and lies that it almost defies comment. It certainly defies contemplation; even to think about it for thirty seconds is enough to bring on a bout of the dry heaves. Fortunately, several other writers — with iron-clad innards, no doubt — have boldly waded in and dismantled the deception behind the manufactured hissy fit over Iran’s “secret nuclear facility.” Jason Ditz at Antiwar.com gives a good overview of the case, which, shucked of all the warmongering frenzy, boils down to this little nubbin of reality: Iran was building a

These days, the always noxious air of the Beltway is astir with the machinations of the military junta that now dominates the gutted and looted ruins of the American republic. Two recent articles provide excellent guides to the brazen Pentagon squeeze play to ensure that the civilian government does not stray from the militarist agenda of more war, all the time, everywhere, always — a condition best captured in the marvelous title of the latest volume of Christopher Logue’s serial reworking of The Illiad: All-Day Permanent Red. First up, Tom Englehardt focuses on the powerful proconsul who is directing the

It is all too easy to get dazzled by the facades of high politics and state policy, to be taken up with tactics, metrics, movements, trends, with ideologies and philosophies, as if the life of the world was actually conducted on this elevated plane. But sometimes a glimpse of reality shows through the increasingly threadbare curtain, and we can see the grubby, petty, deadly truth of how the world really works. Two particularly telling glimpses came through this week, throwing harsh, glaring light on the all-pervasive corruption of American political system – and on the collusion of governments, business and

A few years ago, I won an award for a piece I’d written for The Moscow Times  (and CounterPunch.) By hook, crook and the kindness of others, I flew out to San Francisco, then caught the last night ferry to San Rafael, where the ceremony was being held the next day. I was one of several people being noted by Project Censored for their “Top 25 Censored Stories” volume of that year. The honorees were supposed to give speeches, so, weary with jet lag, I worked on mine in my motel room, while keeping one eye on the television, where

As Barack Obama continues his noble struggle to reform the wreck of America’s health care system by forcing millions of people to pay billions of dollars to the very insurance companies who wrecked America’s health care system – continuing his winning policy of reforming the wreck of America’s financial system by giving trillions of dollars to the scamsters who wrecked America’s financial system — his soldiers in the good and necessary war of good necessity in Afghanistan have been implenting their own reforms to health care practices in their "host" country. Dahr Jamail reports on the underreported story of an

America has “tea-baggers,” who channel the very real and justified anger felt by millions into partisan hackery in the service of Big Money; but in Germany, this is what the disaffected are doing: putting together a new “anti-capitalist, pro-social justice” that could “shake up the political landscape” in the upcoming national elections. As the Guardian reports: [Frank Spieth’s] anti-capitalist, pro-social justice Die Linke is striking a chord with an increasingly disenfranchised electorate, espousing causes – such as inequality, reunification issues and, crucially, the war in Afghanistan – that are finding a receptive audience in both east and west. “Our voters

I. At some point earlier this month, Barack Obama took a moment out of his busy day to sign an "execute order." That is, he ordered American agents to kill a man without any legal procedure whatsoever: no arrest, no trial, no formal presentation – and disputation – of evidence, no defense…and no warning. They killed him on the open road, in a sneak attack; he was not engaged in combat, he was not posing an imminent threat to anyone at the time, he had not been charged with any crime. This kind of thing is ordinarily regarded as murder.

The Economist — the veritable Bible of the Anglo-American Establishment — paints a grim portrait of the Iraqi regime installed at the point of American guns: a sinkhole of torture, execution, increasing repression and brazen power-grabs. The Shia-led government has overseen a ballooning of the country’s security apparatus. Human-rights violations are becoming more common. In private many Iraqis, especially educated ones, are asking if their country may go back to being a police state. Old habits from Saddam Hussein’s era are becoming familiar again. Torture is routine in government detention centres. “Things are bad and getting worse, even by regional