"US Secretary of State John Kerry on Wednesday called for the release of two American dual citizens jailed in Iran, saying Washington was 'deeply concerned' about their fate. He also again requested information on an American who went missing in Iran in March 2007. The United States is 'deeply concerned about the fate of dual US citizens Amir Hekmati and Saeed Abedini,' Kerry said in a statement." Continue reading →
"Executive Director of the Black Agenda Report, Glen Ford, sits down with us to revisit Martin Luther King Jr.'s historic March on Washington August 28, 1963, and how the Obama administration addresses its 50th anniversary. Marching in the streets for the right to vote, protestors were greeted by police with tear gas and dogs. That demonstration, led by Doctor Martin Luther King, happened fifty years ago this week. Its most famous moment came with the delivery of MLK's 'I Have a Dream Speech.'" Continue reading →
"Today is National Go Topless Day, 'a celebration of women's legal right to bare their breasts in public.' In NYC, topless women were hanging out in Bryant Park and Times Square all afternoon." Continue reading →
"A 50-year-old Colorado man has reportedly confessed to authorities that he attacked a pair of raccoons in a bid for revenge for the death of his cat years ago. KCNC-TV reported on Tuesday that Richard Moller told police he suffered a 10-minute 'glitch' of anger on Monday that caused him to jump into a trash bin and use a piece of wood to hit the animals. He also reportedly said to officers that did not intend to use the nails protuding from the board to stab them, but instead wanted to cause 'blunt force trauma.' Though Moller faces two counts of felony animal cruelty, one of his co-workers at a Boulder, Colorado liquor store defended his character to KCNC, saying he was well-liked by customers." Continue reading →
"If they had known then what they know now, they assured us, they would have acted differently. This, of course, is false. The war boosters, especially the 'liberal hawks'—who included Hillary Clinton, Chuck Schumer, Al Franken and John Kerry, along with academics, writers and journalists such as Bill Keller, Michael Ignatieff, Nicholas Kristof, David Remnick, Fareed Zakaria, Michael Walzer, Paul Berman, Thomas Friedman, George Packer, Anne-Marie Slaughter, Kanan Makiyaand the late Christopher Hitchens—did what they always have done: engage in acts of self-preservation. To oppose the war would have been a career killer. And they knew it." Continue reading →
"I write this letter, my last letter, to you, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney. I write not because I think you grasp the terrible human and moral consequences of your lies, manipulation and thirst for wealth and power. I write this letter because, before my own death, I want to make it clear that I, and hundreds of thousands of my fellow veterans, along with millions of my fellow citizens, along with hundreds of millions more in Iraq and the Middle East, know fully who you are and what you have done. You may evade justice but in our eyes you are each guilty of egregious war crimes, of plunder and, finally, of murder, including the murder of thousands of young Americans—my fellow veterans—whose future you stole." Continue reading →
"Shortly after the 2003 intervention into Iraq I remember viewing a TV interview with Noam Chomsky where he compared America's pre-emptive actions there with Nazi Germany's invasion of Poland in 1939. At the time I thought his language was over-the-top and quite disingenuous. America was not National Socialist Germany. But Chomsky was precisely and prophetically correct. Everything from the time of 9/11 has been propelling the United States into an authoritarian fascist state. Our American dream has become the world's nightmare. Where other nations once viewed us with emulation and envy, now it is with fear, loathing, and revulsion. We have become what our parents fought WWII against." Continue reading →
"Witness Rep. Trent Franks, who jumped upon his Twittering high horse to machine gun his 'pro-life' position into the faces of his 'opponents' on the pro-death side. The tens of thousands of innocent children killed by the US invasion of Iraq do not bother Rep. Franks in the slightest, because they had the misfortune of being born in a country where the US dislikes the leader. They don't count -- just like the live babies stabbed to death by Doctor Death Gosnell. They don't count. That puts him in the 'the price was worth it' camp, i.e. the same relativistic camp that argues that some lives are more important than others." Continue reading →
"For Young, the war, the wound, the paralysis, the wheelchair, the anti-war demonstrations, the wife who left him and the one who didn’t, the embolism, the loss of motor control, the slurred speech, the colostomy, the IV line for narcotics implanted in his chest, the open bed sores that expose his bones, the despair—the crushing despair—the decision to die, have come down to a girl. Aleksus, his only niece. She will not remember her uncle. But he lies in his dimly lit room, painkillers flowing into his broken body, and he thinks of her. He does not know exactly when he will die. But it must be before her second birthday, in June. He will not mar that day with his death." Continue reading →
"After 9/11, President George W. Bush turned to Civil War precedents to create military tribunals for trying alleged 'terrorists.' But in applying those draconian rules to a worldwide battlefield, he created the nightmarish potential for a global totalitarianism, as retired U.S. Army JAG officer Todd E. Pierce explains." Continue reading →