Articles by The Nation
We found 189 results.
Edward Snowden and Laura Poitras Take on America’s Runaway Surveillance State
Edward Snowden and Laura Poitras – The Nation,
12 May 2014
On April 30 [2014], in a ceremony at the National Press Club in Washington, the Nation Institute and the Fertel Foundation awarded their annual Ridenhour Prize for Truth-Telling to NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and filmmaker Laura Poitras.
→ read full article2014 Ridenhour Prize for Truth-Telling — Edward Snowden & Laura Poitras
The Nation Institute – TRANSCEND Media Service,
12 May 2014
Edward Snowden and Laura Poitras receive the ‘Ridenhour Prize for Truth-Telling,’ with introduction by James Bamford – April 30, 2014.
→ read full articleThe Change Within: The Obstacles We Face Are Not Just External
Naomi Klein – The Nation,
28 Apr 2014
The climate crisis has such bad timing, confronting it not only requires a new economy but a new way of thinking. This is a story about bad timing.
→ read full articleLet This Earth Day Be the Last
Wen Stephenson – The Nation,
28 Apr 2014
No, really. Fuck Earth Day. Not the first one, forty-four years ago, the one of sepia-hued nostalgia, but everything the day has since come to be: the darkest, cruellest, most brutally self-satirizing spectacle of the year.
→ read full articleA Very Serious Problem With Very Serious Journalism
Julia Carrie Wong – The Nation,
31 Mar 2014
27 Mar 2014 – Last week, Foreign Policy published a feature on the role of the Academy in foreign policy that asked, among other things, “Where are all the women?” Women journalists account for 20 percent or less of the writers at magazines and newspapers covering the economy, global politics, security and national politics.
→ read full articleWhy Is the US Military Averaging More Than a Mission a Day in Africa?
Nick Turse – The Nation,
31 Mar 2014
The officers running secret operations there have been calling Africa “the battlefield of tomorrow, today.”
→ read full articleThis Week in ‘Nation’ History: The Horrific Legacy of the Invasion of Iraq
Katrina vanden Heuvel – The Nation,
24 Mar 2014
This Monday [17 Mar 2014] marks the eleventh anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq—a solemn punctuation mark to the steadily increasing violence that has gripped that country over the past two years. There is no question that hatred of the US government is strong in Iraq, regardless of what people think of Saddam.
→ read full articleThe Dark Side of the Ukraine Revolt
Conn Hallinan – The Nation,
10 Mar 2014
Ukraine’s ultra-right-wing Svoboda party is no fringe organization. You’d never know from most of the reporting that far-right nationalists and fascists have been at the heart of the protests and attacks on government buildings. The most prominent of the groups has been the ultra-right-wing Svoboda or “Freedom” Party.
→ read full articleFeeding a Billion: Agriculture and Food Security in India
Sonia Luthra – The National Bureau of Asian Research,
3 Mar 2014
In this NBR interview, Suresh Babu (International Food Policy Research Institute) examines the dynamics facing Indian agriculture as the country seeks to meet its food security needs while moving more of its workforce to the industrial and services sectors.
→ read full articleReading Melville in Post-9/11 America
Greg Grandin – The Nation,
20 Jan 2014
The author’s half-forgotten masterpiece, Benito Cereno, provides fascinating insight into issues of slavery, freedom, individualism—and Islamophobia.
→ read full articleWhy I’m Voting to Boycott Israel
Alex Lubin – The Nation,
16 Dec 2013
The American Studies Association resolution has punctured a longstanding silence. The boycott movement has clearly defined goals of ending the occupation, ending discrimination against Palestinians with Israeli citizenship and ending forced exile and ongoing expulsion of Palestinians from their homes. All three of these place profound restrictions on Palestinian academic life.
→ read full articleNBA Player Jason Collins Broke Ground by Coming Out—Now He’s Being Dismissed as a Distraction
Dave Zirin – The Nation,
11 Nov 2013
Here is a man who made history last spring by becoming the first active player to come out of the closet and told the world that he was gay. He was praised by teammates, league officials, presidents and kings (OK, Bernard King). But now just for being himself, after a career as the epitome of a “team player”, he has been labeled “a distraction” and finds himself on the outside looking in.
→ read full articlePlaying the Terrorism Card
Paul R. Pillar – The National Interest,
19 Aug 2013
Despite U.S. and European appeals for restraint, the Egyptian military slaughtered supporters of ousted President Mohamed Morsi, an atrocity rationalized by claims of combating Islamic “terrorism.” But the bloody crackdown is likely to make terrorism a self-fulfilling prophecy.
→ read full article68 Years Ago: The Nuclear Age Is Born—Amid Secrecy, Cover-up and Radiation Threat
Greg Mitchell – The Nation,
23 Jul 2013
While most people trace the dawn of the nuclear era to August 6, 1945, and the dropping of the atomic bomb over the center of Hiroshima, it really began three weeks earlier, in the desert near Alamogordo, New Mexico, with the top-secret Trinity test. Its sixty-eighth anniversary is marked—or mourned, if you will—on July 16.
→ read full articlePresident of International War Crimes Tribunal May Have Worked to Shield Israelis from Prosecution
Alison Weir – The Council for the National Interest,
24 Jun 2013
The NY Times says that the Israeli-American judge, Theodor Meron, “… has led a push for raising the bar for conviction in such cases, prosecutors say, to the point where a conviction has become nearly impossible.” Some analysts feel that Meron’s motivation may be to protect Israeli political and military leaders from prosecutions that could place them in legal jeopardy.
→ read full articleSeven Myths about Bradley Manning
Chase Madar – The Nation,
10 Jun 2013
Myth # 1: It is routinely asserted or implied that Manning declassified the field reports and diplomatic cables because he is a nut job, or because he is gay, or because he is a gay nut job. In fact, Manning’s motive was expressly political: “I want people to see the truth…regardless of who they are…because without information, you cannot make informed decisions as a public.”
→ read full articleObama: Walk Your Talk on Guantánamo
The Nation, Editorial – TRANSCEND Media Service,
20 May 2013
As the hunger strike reaches its 100th day on May 17 [2013], 100 prisoners are refusing food. The Pentagon, which once called prisoner suicides “asymmetric warfare,” has dismissed the hunger strike as a publicity stunt. Rather than “reward bad behavior,” the official response has been to throw the men into solitary confinement and keep the most weakened alive through torturous means.
→ read full articleWhat the UN Owes Haiti
Isabeau Doucet – The Nation,
22 Apr 2013
In Haiti, where there is no sewage system, and where access to water and sanitation is mostly privatized, cholera has been a death sentence: more than 8,000 people have died and 640,000 (and counting) made ill since it was imported by UN peacekeepers from Nepal in Oct 2010, according to a host of scientific studies. It is now the worst cholera epidemic in modern history.
→ read full articleChiquita Sues to Block Release of Files on Colombia Terrorist Payments
Michael Evans – The National Security Archive,
15 Apr 2013
Two years ago, the Archive published “The Chiquita Papers,” a declassified collection of more than 5,000 pages of internal Chiquita documents turned over to the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation as part of a criminal investigation of more than $1.7 million in payments to the AUC over six years, and for nearly three years after the group was formally designated as a terrorist organization. That case resulted in a 2007 sentencing agreement in which Chiquita admitted to more than ten years of payments to a variety of Colombian guerrilla and paramilitary groups.
→ read full articlePoll: Fox Is the Least-Trusted Name in News
Allison Brito – The National Memo,
11 Feb 2013
The poll found that 39 percent of voters identified Fox News as the news outlet they trust the least — this dwarfs the 14 percent who named MSNBC, followed by CNN at 13 percent, Comedy Central at 12 percent, ABC and CBS at 5 percent, NBC at 3 percent, and the 1 percent who said they least trust PBS.
→ read full articleGovernment Persecution, From Aaron Swartz to Bradley Manning
Chase Madar – The Nation,
28 Jan 2013
When 26-year-old Internet prodigy and freedom of information activist Aaron Swartz committed suicide on January 11 [2013], the tragedy was the direct result of US attorneys deciding to throw criminal charges at him for violating a website’s “terms of services” while accessing publicly subsidized academic research.
→ read full articleUBS Libor Manipulation Merits a Death Penalty
William D. Cohan, The National Memo – TRANSCEND Media Service,
31 Dec 2012
There is no point in mincing words: UBS AG, the Swiss global bank, has been disgracing the banking profession for years and needs to be shut down.
→ read full articleOccupy Wall Street Activists Buy up Debt to Abolish It
Allison Kilkenny – The Nation,
19 Nov 2012
Strike Debt, a movement formed by a coalition of Occupy Wall Street groups looking to build a popular resistance to debt, plans to hold a telethon and variety show November 15 [2012] in support of the Rolling Jubilee, a system to buy debt for pennies on the dollar, and abolish it. Strike Debt hopes to raise $50,000, which the group claims can then be used to purchase, and eliminate, around $1 million in debt.
→ read full articleHow Low Can Honduras Go?
Dana Frank – The Nation,
22 Oct 2012
The Obama adminstration’s “partnership” with the ongoing coup regime in Honduras is getting harder to defend every day—with every act of brutality against the opposition committed by the corrupt government and its allies.
→ read full articlePalestinian Soccer Player Mahmoud Sarsak Won’t Play FC Barcelona’s Game
Dave Zirin – The Nation,
8 Oct 2012
Mahmoud Sarsak is the Palestinian national team soccer player jailed for three years without charges by the Israeli government. He refused an invitation sent by FC Barcelona to attend its Clasico [7 Oct 2012] against Real Madrid. Barcelona wants him there to mute planned protests against the presence of another invitee, former Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. “His slogan is the gun, whereas mine is football, whose message is love and peace. For this reason I will refuse.”
→ read full articleChris Kluwe and the Greatest Political Statement by Any Athlete Ever
Dave Zirin – The Nation,
17 Sep 2012
For the first time in football history, a punter is truly leading the way. Thank you Chis Kluwe, for the greatest political statement made by any athlete in decades. The fact that it happens to be about LGBT rights only shows how far we’ve traveled, in the streets and in the locker rooms.
→ read full articleFor Real: Torture America Style
Peter C. Baker – The Nation,
13 Aug 2012
Is torture simply less popular now than lynching was then? It seems more likely that one set of rituals—those involving violent subjugation—has become closely interwoven with another set: those designed to communicate a reassurance that every action of the US government is necessary, legal and, most of all, carefully thought out by well-intentioned officials.
→ read full articleNAFTA on Steroids
Lori Wallach – The Nation,
9 Jul 2012
While the Occupy movement has forced a public discussion of extreme corporate influence on every aspect of our lives, behind closed doors corporate America is implementing a stealth strategy to formalize its rule in a truly horrifying manner. The mechanism is the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Negotiations have been conducted in extreme secrecy.
→ read full articleGabriel Garcia Marquez Suffering From Dementia, Says Brother
The National – TRANSCEND Media Service,
9 Jul 2012
The 85-year-old author’s brother Jaime told El Universal newspaper in Mexico that he speaks to the 1982 Nobel winner nearly every day from their native Colombia, hoping to help keep some of his memories alive. “What he has are some memory issues; in our family, we all end up with senile dementia. I am starting to get some of the onset complications and he already is in the throes of it,” he said.
→ read full article‘Why Don’t We Try Peace?’: An Interview With Dennis Kucinich
George Zornick – The Nation,
4 Jun 2012
We tried war, we tried aggression, we tried intervention. None of it works. Why don’t we try peace, as a science of human relations, not as some vague notion—as everyday work. As diplomacy, as respect, as understanding the essential interconnectedness of all people, that we’re really one. This dichotomous thinking that causes us to think of people as others instead of aspects of undivided human unity is what causes our dilemma.
→ read full articleHonduras in Flames
Dana Frank – The Nation,
20 Feb 2012
The Comayagua fire must be understood in the context of the near-total breakdown of the Honduran state since the June 28, 2009, military coup that overthrew democratically elected President José Manuel Zelaya. The danger, now, is that the Honduran police and military will take advantage of the prison fire to further justify a rapidly increasing militarization of Honduran society, as Oscar Estrada, who has studied the Honduran prison system, warns. Indeed, the government already passed a controversial law in November 2011 allowing the military to take over ordinary police functions.
→ read full articleIs the World Really Safer Without the Soviet Union?
Mikhail Gorbachev – The Nation,
30 Jan 2012
I am convinced that it is time to return to the path we charted together when we ended the cold war. Once again, the world needs new thinking, based not just on the recognition of universal interests and of global interdependence but also on a certain moral foundation.
→ read full articleThank You, Anarchists
Nathan Schneider – The Nation,
26 Dec 2011
The radicals who lent this movement so much of its character have offered American political life a gift, should we choose to accept it. They’ve reminded us that we don’t have to rely on Republicans or Democrats, or Clintons, Bushes or Sarah Palin, to do our politics for us. With the assemblies, they’ve bestowed a refreshing form of grassroots organizing that, if it lasts, might help keep the rest of the system a bit more honest. There will, however, be tensions.
→ read full articleThe Death of Socrates: Celebrating a Sports/Politics Soccer Legend
Dave Zirin and Zach Zill – The Nation,
19 Dec 2011
International soccer lost a hero last weekend [4 Dec 2011] when Socrates, the masterful Brazilian midfielder who captained Brazil’s famed 1982 World Cup squad, died from an intestinal infection at age 57. Socrates’ interests, talents, and achievements were staggering. He was a medical doctor, a musician, an author and news columnist, a political activist, and a TV pundit. Somewhere in all of this, he managed not only to lead what may have been the most artful team to ever grace the pitch, but also to fearlessly challenge the decades-long military dictatorship that ruled Brazil.
→ read full articleTwo Scandals, One Connection: The FBI link between Penn State and UC Davis
Dave Zirin – The Nation,
28 Nov 2011
Over the last month, we’ve seen Penn State University President Graham Spanier dismissed from his duties and we’ve seen UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi pushed to the brink of resignation. Spanier was jettisoned because of what appears to be a systematic cover-up of assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky’s serial child rape. Katehi has faced calls to resign after the she sent campus police to blast pepper spray in the faces of her peaceably assembled students, an act for which she claims “full responsibility.” In 2010, Spanier chose Katehi to join an elite team of twenty college presidents on what’s called the National Security Higher Education Advisory Board, which “promotes discussion and outreach between research universities and the FBI.”
→ read full articleCapitalism vs. the Climate
Naomi Klein – The Nation,
21 Nov 2011
Responding to climate change requires that we break every rule in the free-market playbook and that we do so with great urgency. We will need to rebuild the public sphere, reverse privatizations, relocalize large parts of economies, scale back overconsumption, bring back long-term planning, heavily regulate and tax corporations, maybe even nationalize some of them, cut military spending and recognize our debts to the global South.
→ read full articleRediscovering Civil Disobedience
George Goehl – The Nation,
24 Oct 2011
“There comes a time when silence becomes betrayal,” proclaimed Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as he took a risk and spoke out forcefully against the War in Vietnam.
→ read full articleOccupy Wall Street: The Most Important Thing in the World Now
Naomi Klein – The Nation,
10 Oct 2011
I was honored to be invited to speak at Occupy Wall Street on Thursday night [6 Oct 2011]. Since amplification is (disgracefully) banned, and everything I say will have to be repeated by hundreds of people so others can hear (a k a “the human microphone”), what I actually say at Liberty Plaza will have to be very short. With that in mind, here is the longer, uncut version of the speech.
→ read full articleThe Rise of Unregulated Drug Trials in South America
Kelly Hearn – The Nation,
3 Oct 2011
Foreign clinical trials for US-bound drugs have been commonplace for decades, and ethical breaches are a frequent side effect. Last year, a professor at Wellesley College unearthed evidence of a particularly egregious case from the 1940s in which scientists working for the Public Health Service deliberately infected Guatemalan prisoners, mental patients and soldiers with syphilis and other sexually transmitted diseases in order to study the effects of penicillin.
→ read full articleDaylight Robbery, Meet Nighttime Robbery
Naomi Klein – The Nation,
22 Aug 2011
In early July, the Wall Street Journal, citing a new poll, reported that 94 percent of millionaires were afraid of “violence in the streets.” This, it turns out, was a reasonable fear. Of course London’s riots weren’t a political protest. But the people committing nighttime robbery sure as hell know that their elites have been committing daytime robbery. Saqueos are contagious. The Tories are right when they say the rioting is not about the cuts. But it has a great deal to do with what those cuts represent: being cut off.
→ read full articleWikiLeaks Haiti: The Aristide Files
Kim Ives and Ansel Herz – The Nation,
15 Aug 2011
US officials led a far-reaching international campaign aimed at keeping former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide exiled in South Africa, rendering him a virtual prisoner there for the last seven years, according to secret US State Department cables. The cables show that high-level US and UN officials even discussed a politically motivated prosecution of Aristide to prevent him from “gaining more traction with the Haitian population and returning to Haiti.”
→ read full articleEurope’s Homegrown Terrorists
Gary Younge – The Nation,
1 Aug 2011
Two weeks after the fatal terrorist attacks of July 7, 2005, in London, and one day after another failed attack, a student, Jean Charles de Menezes, was in the London Underground when plainclothes police officers gave chase and shot him seven times in the head. Initial eyewitness reports said he was wearing a suspiciously large puffa jacket on a hot day and had vaulted the barriers and run when asked to stop.
→ read full articleHaiti: The Shelters That Clinton Built
Isabel Macdonald and Isabeau Doucet - The Nation,
25 Jul 2011
In the wake of Haiti’s earthquake, the Clinton Foundation promised hurricane shelters that would double as classrooms. But they delivered shoddy, formaldehyde-ridden trailers from the same company that supplied FEMA after Hurricane Katrina.
→ read full articleWikiLeaks Haiti: Let Them Live on $3 a Day
Dan Coughlin and Kim Ives – The Nation,
13 Jun 2011
New revelations from WikiLeaks show how the US micromanaged Haiti’s economy and politics to align it to US interests. The US Embassy aided Fruit of the Loom, Levi’s and Hanes contractors in their fight against an increase in Haiti’s minimum wage. The factory owners refused to pay 62 cents per hour, or $5 per day, as a measure unanimously passed by the Haitian Parliament in June 2009 would have mandated. And they had the vigorous backing of the US Agency for International Development.
→ read full articleThe New-Economy Movement
Prof. Gar Alperovitz – The Nation,
30 May 2011
The idea that we need a “new economy”—that the entire economic system must be radically restructured if critical social and environmental goals are to be met—runs directly counter to the American creed that capitalism as we know it is the best, and only possible, option.
→ read full articleJSOC: The Black Ops Force That Took Down Bin Laden
Jeremy Scahill - The Nation,
9 May 2011
The team of US Special Operations Forces who killed Osama bin Laden in a pre-dawn raid on a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, were led by elite Navy SEALS from the Joint Special Operations Command. Operators from SEAL Team Six, also known as the Naval Special Warfare Development Group, or just DevGru, are widely considered to be the most elite warriors in the US national security apparatus.
→ read full articleThe Credit Rating Hoax
William Greider – The Nation,
2 May 2011
Standard & Poor’s, the self-righteous credit-rating agency, has a damn lot of nerve. It provoked scary headlines by solemnly threatening to “short” America. That is, downgrade the credit-worthiness of US Treasury bonds unless Congress and the president oblige creditors by punishing the citizenry with severe budget cuts. What a load of crap.
→ read full articleChina Rethinks Nuclear Power
Lucia Green-Weiskel – The Nation,
2 May 2011
The world’s second-largest economy is emerging as a pacesetter in solar and wind technology.
→ read full articleThe Dangerous US Game in Yemen
Jeremy Scahill – The Nation,
4 Apr 2011
The day before US missiles began raining down on Muammar el-Qaddafi’s Libya, hundreds of miles away—across the Red Sea—security forces under the control of Yemen’s US-backed president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, massacred more than fifty people who were participating in an overwhelmingly peaceful protest in the capital, Sana. Some of the victims were shot in the head by snipers.
→ read full articleFrom Hiroshima to Fukushima
Jonathan Schell – The Nation,
21 Mar 2011
Some have suggested that in light of the new developments we should abandon nuclear power. I have a different proposal, perhaps more in keeping with the peculiar nature of the peril. Let us pause and study the matter. For how long? Plutonium, a component of nuclear waste, has a half-life of 24,000 years, meaning that half of it is transformed into other elements through radioactive decay. This suggests a time-scale. We will not be precipitous if we study the matter for only half of that half-life, 12,000 years. In the interval, we can make a search for safe new energy sources, among other useful endeavors. Then perhaps we’ll be wise enough to make good use of the split atom.
→ read full articleLibya and the Dilemma of Intervention
The Nation, Editorial - TRANSCEND Media Service,
21 Mar 2011
Our natural tendency is to want to help end Qaddafi’s despotic rule and to save the lives of those bravely resisting his onslaught. But it is a difficult challenge to take action that has a reasonable chance of success but that does not arouse popular—and well-founded—suspicions of neoimperial intervention.
→ read full articleA Real Sharia Law Promoter for Peter King to Investigate
Jeremy Scahill – The Nation,
14 Mar 2011
Former Pentagon Inspector General Joseph Schmitz has tried to use Sharia law to fight lawsuits alleging corporate misconduct that led to deaths of US servicemen. As Representative Peter King begins his hunt for Islamic radicals in our midst, including infiltrators of the US government and military, I hope that part of his inquiry focuses on those who really advocate Sharia law in the United States.
→ read full articleA Prayer for America
Dennis Kucinich – The Nation,
21 Feb 2011
Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The anthrax attack. The Patriot Act. Those were the themes in a speech which I gave nine years ago in Los Angeles, entitled “Prayer for America.” Today the news is about…the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, the anthrax attack, the Patriot Act.
→ read full articleThe Most Feminist Place in the World
Janet Elise Johnson – The Nation,
14 Feb 2011
Iceland’s unique and powerful feminist traditions ensured that it would have a markedly different response to the financial crisis.
→ read full articleKilling the Internet Not Just a Problem in Egypt
Laura Flanders – The Nation,
7 Feb 2011
As we speak, Egypt is struggling with a near-total Internet and communications shut-off, and not just Egyptians are grappling with the implications. Can the flow of social media information to an entire country simply be cut? Apparently, yes. And that’s not just an Egyptian concern.
→ read full articleHaiti: Not for Amateurs
Amy Wilentz – The Nation,
7 Feb 2011
On election day in November, only 22.3 percent of Haiti’s eligible voters cast their ballots in what turned out to be an election plagued with fraud. The reason for the low turnout was apathy, coupled with the catastrophic loss of identity papers in the earthquake of January 2010. Given the miserable conditions of so many Haitians since the earthquake, the anemic turnout provided resounding evidence that Haitians don’t believe their vote matters.
→ read full articleThe Revolutionary Moment
Jonathan Schell – The Nation,
7 Feb 2011
If the world has a heart, it beats now for Egypt. Not of course, the Egypt of President Hosni Mubarak—of the rigged elections, the censored press, the axed Internet, the black-clad security police and the tanks and the torture chambers—but the Egypt of the intrepid ordinary citizens who, almost entirely unarmed, with little more than their physical presence in the streets and their prayers, are defying this whole apparatus of intimidation and violence in the name of justice and freedom. Their courage and sacrifice give new life to the spirit of the nonviolent, democratic resistance to dictatorship symbolized by the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
→ read full articleUS: Wrong on Honduras
Dana Frank – The Nation,
24 Jan 2011
Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, Venezuela and many other countries continue to oppose Honduras’s readmission to the Organization of American States (OAS)…. US. Representative Llorens’s leaked cable further calls into question the Obama administration’s eager embrace of current President Porfirio “Pepe” Lobo in a bogus November 2009 election, which was managed by the coup perpetrators and boycotted by most of the opposition and international observers. Since the coup, the United States has constructed two new military bases in Honduras (in Gracias a Dios and on the island of Guanaja), ramped up police training and, most recently, on December 27, announced that drones will be operating out of the joint US/Honduras air force base at Palmerola.
→ read full articleA New START Towards Nuclear Sanity
Katrina vanden Heuvel – The Nation,
10 Jan 2011
The herculean effort required to win Senate ratification of a modest arms reduction treaty is a stark reminder of how tough it will be to reach more far-reaching agreements on nuclear weapons in the 112th Congress.
→ read full articleJeremy Scahill Testifies Before Congress on America’s Secret Wars
The Nation – TRANSCEND Media Service,
13 Dec 2010
Editor’s Note: Nation national security correspondent Jeremy Scahill today [9 Dec 2010] testified before the House Judiciary Committee on the US’s shadow wars in Pakistan, Yemen, and elsewhere. His complete testimony is below. – While some of the Special Forces missions are centered around training of militaries in allied nations, that line is often blurred. In some cases, “training” is used as a cover for unilateral, direct action. As a former special ops guy told me: “It’s often done under the auspices of training so that they can go anywhere. It’s brilliant. It is essentially what we did in the 60s. Remember the ‘training mission’ in Vietnam? That’s how it morphs.”
→ read full articleChalmers Johnson and the Patriotic Struggle against Empire
John Nichols – The Nation,
29 Nov 2010
With one word, “blowback,” Chalmers Johnson explained the folly of empire in the modern age. Johnson, who has died at age 79, was no liberal idealist. He was the old Asian hand who had chaired the Center for Chinese Studies at the University of California-Berkeley from 1967 to 1972 and then served as president and co-founder of the Japan Policy Research Institute. In other words, he was a man of the world who knew how the world worked. And what he tried to explain, to political leaders and citizens, was that the old ways of empire building (and maintaining) no longer worked in an age of instant communications, jet travel and doomsday weaponry.
→ read full articleWhat We Learned From WikiLeaks
Jonathan Schell – The Nation,
15 Nov 2010
Perhaps here in the United States, when the country has found its moral bearings again, there will be recognition of the integrity and bravery of Bradley Manning and Julian Assange. For now, the war- and torture-system rolls on, and it’s all found to be “nothing new.”
→ read full articleShifting the “War on Terror” to Pakistan: The Real Target is Pakistan’s Nuclear Potential
A R Jerral –The Nation (Pakistan),
25 Oct 2010
One can understand now why President Hamid Karzai vents his anger on Pakistan from time to time. Herman suggests that if Pakistan government is further destabilised “the only thing keeping the country’s nukes out of the hands of Al-Qaeda may have to be the US troops.” So, the thrust is Pakistan’s nukes. It is a tacit way to tell the policymakers in Washington to keep the pressure on our country, which will weaken the Pakistani government’s standing causing instability. That will provide the reason for the US troops to move in.
→ read full articleWikiLeaks and Hacktivist Culture
Peter Ludlow – The Nation,
20 Sep 2010
In recent months there has been considerable discussion about the WikiLeaks phenomenon, and understandably so, given the volume and sensitivity of the documents the website has released. What this discussion has revealed, however, is that the media and government agencies believe there is a single protagonist to be concerned with—something of a James Bond villain, if you will—when in fact the protagonist is something altogether different: an informal network of revolutionary individuals bound by a shared ethic and culture.
→ read full articleAn Unsettling Protest in Israel
Tony Kushner and Alisa Solomon – The Nation,
20 Sep 2010
Toward the end of August, a group of theater artists in Israel provoked an uproar when they declared that they would not perform at a new stop added to government-funded theatrical tours around the country. That actors, directors and playwrights have sparked controversy is nothing new in a nation where theater has always participated in the feisty public discourse. But this time, with Washington trying to resuscitate Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, their offstage action holds a mirror up to society with especially urgent exactitude.
→ read full articleBlackwater’s Black Ops
Jeremy Scahill – The Nation,
20 Sep 2010
Over the past several years, entities closely linked to the private security firm Blackwater have provided intelligence, training and security services to US and foreign governments as well as several multinational corporations, including Monsanto, Chevron, the Walt Disney Company, Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines and banking giants Deutsche Bank and Barclays, according to documents obtained by The Nation.
→ read full articleWikiLeaks and War Crimes
Jeremy Scahill – The Nation,
30 Aug 2010
Four months before WikiLeaks rocketed to international notoriety, the Robin Hoods of the Internet quietly published a confidential CIA document labeled “NOFORN” (for “no foreign nationals”)—meaning that it should not be shared even with US allies. That’s because the March “Red Cell Special Memorandum” was a call to arms for a propaganda war to influence public opinion in allied nations. The CIA report describes a crisis in European support for the Afghanistan war, noting that 80 percent of German and French citizens are against increasing their countries’ military involvement.
→ read full articleEvil Inequality in the Works for the Web
Laura Flanders, GRITtv – The Nation,
16 Aug 2010
Google’s corporate motto, it’s been noted, is “Don’t Be Evil.” They’re going to be sorry they ever said it. By siding with Verizon vs. those fighting for a free and equal Internet — that may be exactly what they’re doing.
→ read full articlePress Censorship: How the Truth Was Hidden About Nagasaki
Greg Mitchell – The Nation,
16 Aug 2010
Nagasaki, which lost over 70,000 civilians (and a few military personnel) to a new weapon sixty-five years ago today, has always been The Forgotten A-Bomb City. No one ever wrote a bestselling book called Nagasaki, or made a film titled Nagasaki, Mon Amour. Yet in some ways, Nagasaki is the modern A-bomb city. For one thing, when the plutonium bomb exploded above Nagasaki it made the uranium-type bomb dropped on Hiroshima obsolete. In fact, if it had not exploded off-target the death toll in the city would have easily topped the Hiroshima total.
→ read full articleWikiLeaks in Baghdad
Sarah Lazare and Ryan Harvey – The Nation,
9 Aug 2010
One by one, soldiers just arriving in Baghdad were taken into a room and questioned by their commanding officers. “All questions led up to the big question,” explains former Army Spc. Josh Stieber. “If someone were to pull out a weapon in a marketplace full of unarmed civilians, would you open fire on that person, even if you knew you would hurt a lot of innocent people in the process?” It was a trick question. “Not only did you have to say yes, but you had to say yes without hesitating,” explains Stieber.
→ read full articleKashmir on Fire Again as Indian Troops Shoot to Kill
Barbara Crossette – The Nation,
9 Aug 2010
As Indians prepare to celebrate the country’s sixty-third Independence Day on August 15, an eruption of deadly violence in the picturesque countryside and towns of Kashmir is a reminder that many Kashmiris still do not consider themselves part of India, and profess that they never will.
→ read full articleIsrael Paves the Way for Killing by Remote Control
Jonathan Cook, Foreign Correspondent – The National,
19 Jul 2010
It is called Spot and Shoot. Operators sit in front of a TV monitor from which they can control the action with a PlayStation-style joystick. The aim: to kill. Played by: young women serving in the Israeli army. Spot and Shoot, as it is called by the Israeli military, may look like a video game but the figures on the screen are real people – Palestinians in Gaza – who can be killed with the press of a button on the joystick.
→ read full articleCrisis of Legitimacy in Honduras?
Dana Frank – The Nation,
5 Jul 2010
A long, brutal year after the June 28, 2009, military coup that deposed President Manuel “Mel” Zelaya, official Honduras is collapsing under the weight of its own illegitimacy. On the anniversary of the coup, the opposition took over the nation’s highways and bridges in overt resistance to Porfirio “Pepe” Lobo’s new government, while his own appointees are openly defiant of the slightest concession. The Obama administration, meanwhile, remains insistent that Lobo is the only path forward.
→ read full articleOffset Buyers Beware
Heather Rogers – The Nation,
26 Apr 2010
Even though climate legislation is stalled in Congress, the business of voluntary carbon offsets is thriving, thanks to the abundant guilt and concern of the world’s most wasteful consumers. Not only does Al Gore pay to counteract his heat-trapping gases; so do Hillary Clinton, Arnold Schwarzenegger and high-profile gatherings including the Oscars. Companies have formed mostly in the United States, Europe and Canada to sell the notional product that is offsets. Now it seems easy for celebrities, businesses and regular consumers to neutralize the damage from burning electricity, hopping a plane or hitting the highway.
→ read full articleClimategate Claptrap, II
Johann Hari – The Nation,
26 Apr 2010
At last! The controversy is over. It turns out the “scientific” claims promoted for decades by whiny self-righteous liberals were a lie, a fraud, a con–and we don’t need to change after all. The left is humiliated; the conservatives are triumphant and exultant.
→ read full articleREACHING ZERO
Jonathan Schell – The Nation,
12 Apr 2010
What is the purpose, if any, of the nuclear bomb, that brooding presence that has shadowed all human life for sixty-five years? The question has haunted the nuclear age. It may be that no satisfactory answer has ever been given. Nuclear strategic thinking, in particular, has disappointed. Many of its pioneers have wound up in a state of something like despair regarding their art.
→ read full articleWASHINGTON’S INDONESIAN BULLY BOYS
Allan Nairn – The Nation,
23 Mar 2010
According to senior Indonesian officials and police and details from government files, the US-backed Indonesian armed forces (TNI), now due for fresh American aid, assassinated a series of civilian activists during 2009. The killings were part of a secret government program, authorized from Jakarta, and were coordinated in part by an active-duty, US-trained general in […]
→ read full articleTHE WRONG KIND OF GREEN
Johann Hari – The Nation,
5 Mar 2010
Why did America’s leading environmental groups jet to Copenhagen and lobby for policies that will lead to the faster death of the rainforests–and runaway global warming? Why are their lobbyists on Capitol Hill dismissing the only real solutions to climate change as "unworkable" and "unrealistic," as though they were just another sooty tentacle of Big […]
→ read full articleAMERICA’S SECRET AFGHAN PRISONS
Anand Gopal – The Nation, February 15, 2010 edition,
2 Feb 2010
The research for this story was supported by the Fund for Investigative Journalism.One quiet, wintry night last year in the eastern Afghan town of Khost, a young government employee named Ismatullah simply vanished. He had last been seen in the town’s bazaar with a group of friends. Family members scoured Khost’s dusty streets for days. […]
→ read full articleHOWARD ZINN: THE HISTORIAN WHO MADE HISTORY
Dave Zirin – The Nation,
28 Jan 2010
Howard Zinn, my hero, teacher, and friend died of a heart attack on Wednesday at the age of 87. With his death, we lose a man who did nothing less than rewrite the narrative of the United States. We lose a historian who also made history. Anyone who believes that the United States is immune […]
→ read full articleIMF CLARIFIES TERMS OF HAITI’S LOAN
Richard Kim – The Nation,
26 Jan 2010
Last Friday I wrote about the IMF’s new $100 million loan to Haiti. I cited debt relief activists who told me that the new loan would be an extension of the IMF’s existing loan of $165 million. This information was confirmed by the IMF’s press release, which stated that "emergency financing would be provided as […]
→ read full articleOBAMA AT ONE: LITTLE SURPRISING IN ABSENCE OF PROGRESSIVE SOCIAL MOVEMENT
Howard Zinn, historian – The Nation,
22 Jan 2010
I think people are dazzled by Obama’s rhetoric, and that people ought to begin to understand that Obama is going to be a mediocre president–which means, in our time, a dangerous president–unless there is some national movement to push him in a better direction. I’ve been searching hard for a highlight. The only thing that […]
→ read full articleCOPENHAGEN: SEATTLE GROWS UP
Naomi Klein – The Nation,
16 Nov 2009
The other day I received a pre-publication copy of The Battle of the Story of the Battle of Seattle, by David Solnit and Rebecca Solnit. It’s set to come out ten years after a historic coalition of activists shut down the World Trade Organization summit in Seattle, the spark that ignited a global anticorporate movement. […]
→ read full articleTHE KANYAKUMARI DECLARATION
The National Convention on “The Politics of Nuclear Energy and Resistance”,
8 Jun 2009
Statement of The National Convention on “The Politics of Nuclear Energy and Resistance,” June 4-6, 2009, Kanyakumari, Tamil Nadu, India We, the undersigned organizations, peoples’ movements and concerned citizens committed to building a world free from nuclear exploitation, nuclear business, nuclear power and nuclear weapons, do hereby declare the following: 1. In the context of […]
→ read full articleTHE FIERCE URGENCY OF DISARMAMENT
Katrina vanden Heuvel, Editor of The Nation,
13 May 2009
"After a long winter of discontent we have the audacity to hope for springtime…. But there are miles to go before we sleep." –Ambassador Jayantha Dhanapalawe, President of Pugwash For more than five years, the Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission (WMDC) and its Chairman, Dr. Hans Blix, have worked to generate proposals for reducing the […]
→ read full articleDEMOCRACY, ON MIC AND ON CAMERA
Cora Currier – The Nation,
24 Apr 2009
In the world of mainstream hip-hop in the United States, political engagement usually takes the form of celebrity endorsements or fundraising concerts for noncontroversial causes. The mélange of artists who performed at Barack Obama’s inauguration was more a sign of the new president’s hipness than one of real political engagement on the part of rappers. […]
→ read full articleWILL WAR CRIMES BE OUTED?
Jeremy Brecher & Brendan Smith - The Nation,
23 Dec 2008
As the officials of the Bush administration pack up in Washington and move into their posh suburban homes around the country, will they be able to rest easy, or will they be haunted by the fear that they will be held accountable for war crimes? There are many reasons to anticipate that the incoming Obama […]
→ read full articleZERO NUKES
Katrina vanden Heuvel – The Nation editor and publisher,
18 Dec 2008
An important and inspiring new group, Global Zero, launched in Paris this week with a goal of eliminating all nuclear weapons in 20 to 25 years. More than 100 prominent military, political, faith, and business leaders met in Paris and delegations then visited both Washington and Moscow to push Global Zero’s program. The group sees […]
→ read full articleGLOBAL TRENDS 2025
Chairman of the National Intelligence Council,
23 Nov 2008
"Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World" is the fourth unclassified report prepared by the National Intelligence Council (NIC) in recent years that takes a long-term view of the future. It offers a fresh look at how key global trends might develop over the next 15 years to influence world events. Our report is not meant […]
→ read full article