Growing the US Military

Robert Dreyfuss writes in TomDispatch:
Nothing underlines the tacit alliance between so-called foreign-policy realists and hard-line exponents of neoconservative-style empire-building more than the Washington consensus that the United States needs to expand the budget of the Defense Department without end, while increasing the size of the U.S. Armed Forces. In addition, spending on the 16 agencies [...]

When College Ends, So Does Activism

Adam Doster writes in In These Times:
Why selling out is a depressingly rational choice for many graduates.
Jaime Nelson could make anyone feel lazy. Over the past four years, Nelson, an undergraduate activist at the University of Michigan, has led writing workshops with Michigan’s incarcerated, organized voter registration drives to battle the anti-affirmative action ballot initiative [...]

Life in a CIA Torture Cell

Stephen Soldz, a psychoanalyst and clinical psychologist, researcher, and an associated professor at the Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis, has written a short piece on CIA secret prisons in Poland and Romania. He writes:
Late last week the Council of Europe released a report on the CIA’s secret prisons in Eastern Europe. The report concluded that, [...]

Scottish Nationalism

Below is an excerpt of an article by Colin Kidd, written for the London Review of Books:
Since the rise of Scottish Nationalism in the 1970s various prophets have foretold the imminent break-up of Britain. All too often, however, the signs and portents seem to have misled political seers – nationalist dreamers and unionist Cassandras alike [...]

Antonio Gramsci on Sesame Street

Below is an excerpt of an article by Paul Street, posted in ZNet:
The hegemonic ideology of the ruling class, Antonio Gramsci once observed, becomes all too much like the “air we breathe.” It comes to define the “common sense”of ordinary daily consciouness and experience, with tragic consequences all around.
Here is a small and [...]

Iraqi Workers Strike

Below is an excerpt of an article by David Bacon, posted in truthout:
The Bush administration has no love for unions anywhere, but in Iraq it has a special reason for hating them. They are the main opposition to the occupation’s economic agenda, and the biggest obstacle to that agenda’s centerpiece – the privatization of Iraq’s [...]

News in Brief: 12 June 2007

A brief list of news for the day:
Turkey not done with the Kurds. “Any decision by the Turkish Army to move into northern Iraq in pursuit of Kurdish terrorists operating out of that region will not be based on security considerations alone… They know a like-minded government in power in Ankara is a prerequisite. Last [...]