by Michael Boldin

When browsing the news this morning, I came across “the” big story of the day – Barack Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize. My first thought – is this some kind of joke?? Not until I found the announcement on the official Nobel website could I actually believe it.

It really doesn’t matter what your position is on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the regular bombing of Pakistan, and the talk of sanctions against Iran (I happen to be opposed to all of it) – to give a “peace” prize to someone overseeing multiple wars is more Orwellian than Orwell. Continue reading →

by Ron Paul

What if tomorrow morning you woke up to headlines that yet another Chinese drone bombing on US soil killed several dozen ranchers in a rural community while they were sleeping? That a drone aircraft had come across the Canadian border in the middle of the night and carried out the latest of many attacks?

What if it was claimed that many of the victims harbored anti-Chinese sentiments, but most of the dead were innocent women and children? And what if the Chinese administration, in an effort to improve its public image in the US, had approved an aid package to send funds to help with American roads and schools and promote Chinese values here? Continue reading →

by Byron York, Washington Examiner

Remember the controversy over the Pentagon policy of not allowing the press to take pictures of the flag-draped caskets of American war dead as they arrived in the United States? Critics accused President Bush of trying to hide the terrible human cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“These young men and women are heroes,” Vice President Biden said in 2004, when he was senator from Delaware. “The idea that they are essentially snuck back into the country under the cover of night so no one can see that their casket has arrived, I just think is wrong.” Continue reading →

Writes Lew Rockwell:

The heroic Glenn Greenwald smashes warmongers Arianna Huffington and Jonathan Capehart, and speaks a profound truth virtually never heard in the American media, that the US and Israel are threats to Iran, and not vice versa. (And good for host Dylan Ratigan for inviting Glenn.) Oh, and don’t miss Glenn’s commentary on his appearance.

by Lew Rockwell

In the private sector, there is always a test of success. The business must make a profit. It can sustain some losses but the clock is always running on those. At some point, after all cuts have been made and costs are trimmed to a minimum, the business has to close shop. The summer of losses must become the autumn of profits, or else it’s all over.

Not so in government. Failing projects can go on forever. There is no profit and loss test. There is no test at all, in fact. Agencies like the GAO can blast away at a particularly egregious case of government waste, but hardly anyone pays attention. Congress has no reason to scrap it. No one does. Taxpayers have no means to pull the plug, because the whole thing is run outside their purview. Continue reading →

American progressives don’t appear to grasp the implications behind the fact that only slightly over half of those who voted in the last presidential election (53%) did so for Barack Obama, presumably to bring change for Americans as individuals, and also as a nation.

And that the counter-reformists, who comprised a lion’s share of the remaining vote (47%) did so to maintain the status quo, one in which the elite among them holds 80 to 90 percent of the nation’s wealth, influence and power that run government, make most significant corporate/business decisions, and hold most key positions in the full spectrum of American institutions. Continue reading →

by Mutadhar al-Zaidi

In the name of God, the most gracious and most merciful.

Here I am, free. But my country is still a prisoner of war.

Firstly, I give my thanks and my regards to everyone who stood beside me, whether inside my country, in the Islamic world, in the free world. There has been a lot of talk about the action and about the person who took it, and about the hero and the heroic act, and the symbol and the symbolic act. Continue reading →

The same neo-conservatives who promoted the mistaken war in Iraq, are now urging President Barack Obama to greatly increase the number of American troops in Afghanistan and to stay there as long as it takes to conquer that country and defeat the native resistance.

Led by William Kristol, the same ideologues who insisted that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass distraction and was involved with Al Qaeda, both not true, have sent an open letter to the White House describing Afghanistan as a “war we cannot afford to lose.” Among the signers were a raft of prominent Republican politicians and military hawks as well as former Bush adviser Karl Rove and that “expert”, former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. Continue reading →

Scott Horton interviews Cindy Sheehan on Antiwar Radio.

Cindy Sheehan became a leader of the antiwar movement after her son, Casey, was killed in Iraq. Her efforts to get answers from President Bush, including a vigil in Crawford,Texas, have received national media attention. She has a website, is the author of Peace Mom: A Mother’s Journey through Heartache to Activism and wrote the introduction to 10 Excellent Reasons Not to Join the Military.

When conservative columnist George Will called the for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, the neoconservatives went on the attack. Now is the time for real conservatives to leave not only Afghanistan but the neocons behind.