Roundup: Media's Take

Norman Solomon: Colin Powell ... Still Craven After All These Years

Newspapers across the United States and beyond told readers Wednesday about sensational new statements by a former top assistant to Colin Powell when he was secretary of state. After interviewing Lawrence Wilkerson, the Associated Press reported he “said that wrongheaded ideas for the handling of foreign detainees after Sept. 11 arose from a coterie of White House and Pentagon aides who argued that ‘the president of the United States is all-powerful,’ and that the Geneva Conventions were irrelev

Robert Dreyfuss: Political Islam vs. Democracy

[Robert Dreyfuss is the author of Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam. He covers national security for Rolling Stone and writes frequently for The American Prospect, Mother Jones, and the Nation. He is also a regular contributor to TomPaine.com, the Huffington Post, and other sites, and writes the blog, "The Dreyfuss Report," at his

E.J. Dionne Jr.: Unfettered Capitalism Can't Bring Prosperity

Decades ago, Walter Reuther, the storied head of the United Auto Workers union, was taken on a tour of an automated factory by a Ford Motor Co. executive. Somewhat gleefully, the Ford honcho told the legendary union leader: "You know, not one of these machines pays dues to the UAW." To which Reuther snapped: "And not one of them buys new Ford cars, either." The historian William L. O'Neill tells this story in "American

John O'Sullivan: Europe Must Face Ugly Truths of Communist Past

Last Friday in Warsaw the world saw for the first time exactly how the Soviet Union intended to fight a nuclear war in Europe. A top secret map for a 1979 Warsaw Pact war game -- entitled "Seven Days to the River Rhine" -- was published at a press conference that marked the opening up of the Poland's hitherto secret military intelligence files from the communist era. It was a chilling experience. The map showed large red mushroom clouds along a line going from the Danish b

Selwyn Parker: EU's Cutting of Sugar Subsidies Aids Australia

It took 40 years of pressure from Australia, among other nations, to make the European Union agree to cut massive subsidies to its sugar industry. But it finally happened with last week's agreement by EU agriculture ministers to end a system which has feather-bedded the sector at the expense of other major sugar-producing nations, at least since the 1960s. The decision, which was all but forced by a World Trade Organisation that had run out of patience, means that Queen

Nick Turse: The Many Many People Bush Has Pushed Out of Office

[Nick Turse works in the Department of Epidemiology at Columbia University and is the Associate Editor and Research Director of TomDispatch.com.] Over the years, presidents who have launched illegitimate military actions and pursued ruinous policies have often left a trail of wrecked careers in their wake. While he publicly defended Lyndon Johnson's policies, Undersecretary of State George Ball privately argued against military escalation in Vietnam, eventually resigning his post i

Howard Kurtz: For Bob Woodward, Proximity to Power Cuts Both Ways

... In the days since the Washington Post assistant managing editor apologized to his paper for failing to reveal his role in the CIA leak controversy, Woodward, 62, has found himself under fire not just over this incident but for his very approach to journalism. His unusual relationship with The Post, and whether he hoards newsworthy material for his books, have also come under fresh scrutiny. Although he has spoken to CNN's Larry King and the Village Voice in the past week, Woodwa

Philip Terzian: The Presidential Medal of Freedom ain't what it used to be

[Philip Terzian is Books & Arts editor of The Weekly Standard.] THE PRESIDENTIAL MEDAL OF FREEDOM, "the nation's highest civilian award," was established by Harry Truman in 1945 to recognize notable service in World War II. Eighteen years later, John F. Kennedy, prompted by White House aide Daniel Patrick Moynihan, decided to revive the moribund honor by awarding it to people of distinction--and not just U.S. citizens--who might otherwise remain unrecognized by the Ame

Mother Jones: The interplay of conservative Christianity and the U.S. government

“The government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion.” THOSE WORDS, PENNED IN ARTICLE 11 of the 1797 Treaty of Tripoli, are as succinct a statement as we have from the Founding Fathers on the role of religion in our government. Their authorship is ascribed variously to George Washington, under whom the treaty was negotiated, or to John Adams, under whom it took effect, or sometimes to Joel Barlow, U.S. consul to Algiers, friend of Thomas Jeffers

Vanessa Gezari: Young Russian Activists Love Their Government

MOSCOW - The day Maxim Kuvshinov got the call that would change his life, his first question was: Where did you get my number? The girl on the other end of the line had been asking around. At the university where Maxim studies law and serves on the student council, plenty of people know him. His cell phone number is not a secret. We're creating this new movement, she said. We thought you might be interested. That's how Maxim, a smugly handsome 18-year-old w

Hector Tobar and Cecilia Sanchez: Mexico's Presidential Election Harkens Back To 1994 Race

Anyone interested in knowing how much uglier Mexico's presidential campaign could get need only travel to this city in the oil-patch state of Tabasco. People here still argue about the battle royal that Roberto Madrazo and Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador waged 11 years ago in the Tabasco gubernatorial race. Now the two tabasquenos are front-runners in the three-way campaign to win the July 2006 presidential election, with ruling-party candidate Felipe Calderon third in most

Ronald Brownstein: Washington Needs to Break Out Jumper Cables for Big Three

No industry did more to build the American middle class than the big domestic auto manufacturers. The rise of the automobile in the 20th century provided Americans unprecedented personal mobility. But the social mobility the industry offered may have changed the nation even more. Detroit's assembly lines not only transformed rubber and steel into Buicks and Chryslers, they also carried men with strong backs but little education -- whites and blacks, immigrants and native-born worker

Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman: Why can't the left face the Stolen Elections of 2004 & 2008?

[Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman are co-authors of HOW THE GOP STOLE AMERICA'S 2004 ELECTION & IS RIGGING 2008, available at Freepress.org and harveywasserman.com. Their upcoming WHAT HAPPENED IN OHIO, with Steve Rosenfeld, will be published by The New Press in spring, 2006.] If some of its key publications are any indicator, much of the American left seems unable to face the reality that the election of 2004 was stolen. So in all likelihood, unless something radical is done,

Lawrence F. Kaplan: Liberals for Scowcroft

... Lest there be any confusion about the inclinations of the former general [Brent Scowcroft] with whom so many "progressive" voices have found common cause, his approach to foreign policy resembles that of a man who, on seeing an elderly woman being bludgeoned on the sidewalk, crosses to the other side of the street. This is the man, after all, who toasted the architects of the Tiananmen Square massacre not six months after they perpetrated it. Who found it "painful to watch Yel

Jonathan Schell: The Fall of the One-Party Empire

[Jonathan Schell, author of The Unconquerable World, is the Nation Institute's Harold Willens Peace Fellow. The Jonathan Schell Reader was recently published by Nation Books.] For some time, I have been suggesting that the aim of Republican strategy has been a Republican Party that permanently runs the United States and a United States that permanently runs the world. The two aims have been driven by a common purpose: to steadily and irreversibly increase and consolidate power in Re

Max Boot: Iraq's a lost cause? Ask the real experts

WHEN IT COMES to the future of Iraq, there is a deep disconnect between those who have firsthand knowledge of the situation — Iraqis and U.S. soldiers serving in Iraq — and those whose impressions are shaped by doomsday press coverage and the imperatives of domestic politics. A large majority of the American public is convinced that the liberation of Iraq was a mistake, while a smaller but growing number thinks that we are losing and that we need to pull out soon. Those sentiments

Jay Mathews: Fired for Teaching Too Much?

Joe Enge, an 11th grade U.S. history teacher at Carson High School in Carson City, Nev., says his district is trying to get rid of him because he disobeyed orders to stop teaching most of what happened in his country before 1865. Mary Pierczynski, superintendent of the Carson City schools, says that is nonsense. She says she is treating Enge as she would any teacher with a series of unsatisfactory classroom evaluations. She says her district prefers a relatively quick review of Ame

Matthew Schofield: Germany's Angela Merkel To Become Germany's First Female Chancellor

Angela Merkel today will become Germany's first female chancellor and the first former East German to lead this country's government. She's also likely to be first in line for heavy criticism as Germany's new "Grand Coalition" government moves to cut or reform cherished social programs in an effort to combat high unemployment, low consumer confidence and a scarcity of recent private investment. "Her victory will be an important moment, but she won't have

Leon Hadar: Founding Father Hamilton Could've Predicted Current Mess In Iraq

Since I've been spending so much time in recent months reading and writing about US President George W Bush, his neoconservative advisers and the mess in Iraq, I decided to take some time off these current topics and read a very well-written and very well-researched life history of one of America's Founding Fathers, Alexander Hamilton. But I had to read only a few pages of the massive biography by Ron Chernow (Alexander Hamilton, Penguin Books, 2004) before I was transported from th

Judith Coburn: Worse than Watergate?

[Journalist Judith Coburn has covered war and its aftermath in Indochina, Central America, and the Middle East for the Village Voice, Pacifica Radio, the Far Eastern Economic Review, Mother Jones, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, and the San Francisco Chronicle, among others. She co-anchored (with David Gelber) Pacifica Radio's live, gavel-to-gavel coverage of the Watergate hearings.] On July 31, 1973, while the Vietnam war was still being fought, Representative Robert Dri