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Needed Now: a Peace Movement Against the Clinton Wars to Come
Barack Obama won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize –for not being George W. Bush. This seemed unseemly at the time, but not outrageous. Seven years later, it seems grotesque. As the steward-in-chief of the American empire, Obama continued Bush’s Afghanistan and Iraq Wars, and extended his “War on Terror” into Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan, More
The United States as Destroyer of Nations
In the aftermath of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 – an invasion which many Iraqis believe left their country in the worst condition it has been since the Mongol invasion of 1258 -- there was much discussion in the media about the Bush Administration’s goal for “nation-building” in that country. Of course, if there ever were such a goal, it was quickly abandoned, and one hardly ever hears the term “nation-building” discussed as a U.S. foreign policy objective anymore.
The stark truth is that the U.S. really has no intentions of helping to build strong states in the Middle East or elsewhere. Rather, as we see time and again – e.g., in Yugoslavia, Sudan, Libya, Yemen, Syria, Somalia, Ukraine – the goal of U.S. foreign policy, whether stated or not, is increasingly and more aggressively the destruction and balkanization of independent states. However, it is important to recognize that this goal is not new. More
Roaming Charges: Intimations of Apocalypse
All of a sudden Al Gore is back. Desperate to lure skeptical millennials to the polls, Hillary Clinton, whose animosity toward Gore dates back to West Wing power spats in 1993, has frantically summoned the former vice president from his sensory deprivation tank to hit the campaign trail with the assignment of issuing thundering jeremiads about the doomsday clock of climate change.
But Al Gore is a wicked messenger for a wicked candidate. Indeed, Gore, a man haunted by multiple allegations of sexual assault, is such a pathetic, skulking figure these days that he may yet prove to be a secret weapon for Trump. More
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Exclusively in the New Print Issue of CounterPunch
How Hillary Could Provoke a Nuclear War
Alan Nasser digs into Hillary Clinton’s horrifying nuclear weapons policy, where the use of a new generation of nukes is viewed as a legitimate tactic for conventional warfare. Hillary’s Mother Complex: Ruth Fowler dissects Hillary’s strange brand of feminism. Inside Our Camps: Lee Ballinger recounts the appalling history of the US internment camps for Japanese Americans; Up in Smoke: Josh Schlossberg investigates how the corporate environmental movement quietly promotes biomass energy; Beyond Progressivism: Andy Smolski charts how the progressive movement got coopted by Big Capital. PLUS: Jeffrey St. Clair on melting glaciers; Yvette Carnell on the meaning of Colin Kaepernick; Paul Buhle on Margaret Sanger; Mike Whitney on Janet Yellen and Big Money; Ed Leer on the films of John Carpenter; Chris Floyd on ISIS and the new neocons; Daniel Raventos and Julie Wark on Europe’s Rebel Cities; and Alan Wieder on Studs Terkel on Third parties.
