Over at Econlog, Arnold Kling directs us to this interesting and much needed article arguing that the IMF has "outlived its purpose." Excerpt: Now, before Tunisia and Egypt even have new governments in place, the IMF has jumped to offer them loans for vast...
Jeremy Scahill's excellent report at The Nation magazine exposes secret CIA prisons which confine uncharged individuals in terribly inhumane conditions without access to legal council, a Somali intelligence agency supported and trained by the CIA, and on the ground...
The case of Manadel al-Jamadi, the Abu Ghraib prisoner who in 2003 was hung from his arms twisted behind his back, beaten, and tortured to death at the hands of U.S. interrogators in Iraq, is in the news again. AP reports: A CIA officer who oversaw the agency's...
Lebanon and Israel are becoming even more hostile to one another in disputes over natural gas deposits in the Mediterranean. The recent hostilities are due to maritime borders that were approved by Israel's cabinet and sent to the United Nations for approval. This...
Recent reports of Iranian "interference" in Iraq again note a central tendency in imperial culture: we own the world. The talk about Iraqi Shiites using Iranian weapons to fight their American occupiers (which is by no means an established fact) was first, but then...
Despite his campaign promises (a trite phrase at this point), Obama has relentlessly tried to blanket the United States government in secrecy in order to both protect the abusive injustices it engages in from public scrutiny, as well as to ensure the continuance of...
Stephen Walt asks a good question: Whatever happened to the war in Libya? The front-page-worthy Obama War #4 has flickered out a bit in the past week or two, yes. This is indicative of a few things. First, it is hard to decide what to focus on when the national...
In response to the Obama administration's "pause" in U.S. military aid to Pakistan, China has slipped in to fill the gap. This is just the latest development in the passive aggressive power war between the U.S. and China; any new regional allies for China represents a...
Ideally, all members of the France-based Flytilla would have been allowed entry into Israel and Palestine. Because of Israel's policy of forbidding vocal and prominent opponents of Zionism and the Israeli state, such as Noam Chomsky and Norman Finklestein, most of the...
Yesterday the House spent an hour "debating" a resolution condemning efforts to gain support for a Palestinian state via the UN General Assembly, and demanding that the Palestinians negotiate on Israel's terms. (It is worth noting that UN recognition of Israel came as...
