• Words and War

    It takes at least tacit faith in massive violence to believe that after three decades of horrendous violence in Afghanistan, upping the violence there will improve the situation.

    Despite the pronouncements from high Washington places that the problems of Afghanistan can’t be solved by military means, 90 percent of the spending for Afghanistan in the Obama administration’s current supplemental bill is military…

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  • The March of Folly, Continued

    To understand what's up with President Obama as he escalates the war in Afghanistan, there may be no better place to look than a book published 25 years ago. "The March of Folly," by historian Barbara Tuchman, is a chilling assessment of how very smart people in power can do very stupid things — how a war effort, ordered from on high, goes from tic to repetition compulsion to obsession — and how we, with undue deference and lethal restraint, pay our respects to the dominant moral torpor to such an extent that mass slaughter becomes normalized in our names…

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  • A Progressive Challenge to Jane Harman

    There are many reasons progressives will mobilize behind the campaign of Marcy Winograd, who announced on Monday that she'll challenge incumbent Congresswoman Jane Harman in the 2010 Democratic primary.   

    Some will speak of Harman's pro-war record. Some will recall her support for warrantless wiretapping, followed by her irony-free indignation when it turned out that NSA snoops had taped her own phone conversations. Some will recount Harman's long public silence after being briefed on torture by the US government…

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  • We Need a Green New Deal

    In the Arctic, sea ice is melting. In the United States, houses are foreclosing.

    And in Washington, the Senate is becoming a real-life Bermuda Triangle for progressive agendas.

    Proposals for major limits on carbon emissions aren't getting far in the Senate, where the corporate war on the environment has an abundance of powerful allies…

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  • Obama: Beyond Savior or Trickster

    As President Obama enters his fourth month in office, two tendencies among progressive-minded Americans seem most hazardous to the political health of the country. The gist of one approach is that Obama can't do anything seriously wrong; the other is that he can't do anything seriously right.

    Among the tendencies, the first is more widespread and more dangerous. All kinds of atrocious policies — from Lyndon Johnson's war on Vietnam to Jimmy Carter's midterm swerve rightward to Bill Clinton's neoliberal measures such as NAFTA, "welfare reform" and Wall Street deregulation — were calamities facilitated by acquiescence or mild dissent from many left-leaning Democrats…

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  • Norman Solomon & Peter B. Collins on the Joan Kenley show

    "Our 24/7 media cycle is dominated by opinionated news pundits and an
    onslaught of celebrity or person-of-the-moment headlines. Do we create
    a false reality from false information? How do our reactions impact our
    lives – personally and collectively – from politics to war to the
    economy to our planet’s very survival?

    Not afraid to challenge media
    spin with their own brand of truth-telling, Peter and Norman share
    their wisdom
    on how to best navigate through all the noise."

  • Getting a Death Grip on Memory

    A headline in The New York Times announced a few days ago: "Brain Researchers Open Door to Editing Memory." This news ran above the fold on the front page.

    "Suppose scientists could erase certain memories by tinkering with a single substance in the brain," the article began…

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  • Democrats and War Escalation

    Top Democrats and many prominent supporters – with vocal agreement, tactical quibbles or total silence – are assisting the escalation of the US war effort in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The predictable results will include much more killing and destruction. Back home, on the political front, the escalation will drive deep wedges into the Democratic Party…

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