Article published in Amauta with permission from TomDispatch

Source: TomDispatch

(Image: Jared Rodriguez / t r u t h o u t; Adapted: louisa_catlover, m1ndy9876)

by Jo Comerford
February 28, 2010

Send up a flare! The 2011 federal budget has sprung some leaks in the midst of a storm. Not sure there’s enough money for life rafts!  Forget women and children first!

Buffeted by economic hard times, the 2,585-page, $3.8 trillion document is already taking on water, though this won’t be obvious to you if you’re reading the mainstream media. Let’s start with the absolute basics: 59% of the budget’s spending is dedicated to mandatory programs like Medicaid, Medicare, Unemployment Insurance, Social Security, and now Pell Grants; 34% is to be spent on “discretionary programs,” including education, transportation, housing, and the military; 7% will be used to service the national debt. Read the full story

Article published in Amauta with permission from TomDispatch

Source: TomDispatch

by Frida Berrigan
February 16, 2010

On the relatively rare occasions when the media turns its attention to U.S. weapons sales abroad and shines its not-so-bright spotlight on the latest set of facts and figures, it invariably speaks of “the global arms trade.”

Let’s consider that label for a moment, word by word:

*It is global, since there are few places on the planet that lie beyond the reach of the weapons industry.

*Arms sounds so old-fashioned and anodyne when what we’re talking about is advanced technology designed to kill and maim.

*And trade suggests a give and take among many parties when, if we’re looking at the figures for that “trade” in a clear-eyed way, there is really just one seller and so many buyers. Read the full story

Article published in Amauta with permission from TomDispatch

Traducción en español abajo

Source: TomDispatch

(Photo Illustration: Lance Page / t r u t h o u t; Adapted From: soldiersmediacenter / flickr)

by Nick Turse
February 9, 2010

In the nineteenth century, it was a fort used by British forces.  In the twentieth century, Soviet troops moved into the crumbling facilities.  In December 2009, at this site in the Shinwar district of Afghanistan’s Nangarhar Province, U.S. troops joined members of the Afghan National Army in preparing the way for the next round of foreign occupation.  On its grounds, a new military base is expected to rise, one of hundreds of camps and outposts scattered across the country.

Nearly a decade after the Bush administration launched its invasion of Afghanistan, TomDispatch offers the first actual count of American, NATO, and other coalition bases there, as well as facilities used by the Afghan security forces.  Read the full story

Salon/iStockphoto

Source: Salon

by Glenn Greenwald
January 15, 2010

Cass Sunstein has long been one of Barack Obama’s closest confidants.  Often mentioned as a likely Obama nominee to the Supreme Court, Sunstein is currently Obama’s head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs where, among other things, he is responsible for “overseeing policies relating to privacy, information quality, and statistical programs.”  In 2008, while at Harvard Law School, Sunstein co-wrote a truly pernicious paper proposing that the U.S. Government employ teams of covert agents and pseudo-”independent” advocates to “cognitively infiltrate” online groups and websites — as well as other activist groups — which advocate views that Sunstein deems “false conspiracy theories” about the Government.  This would be designed to increase citizens’ faith in government officials and undermine the credibility of conspiracists.  The paper’s abstract can be read, and the full paper downloaded, here. Read the full story

Fuente: La Jornada

El presidente Barack Obama (extremo derecho) ayer en la Casa Blanca, luego de entregar el proyecto de presupuesto que envió al Congreso. Lo siguen, de izquierda a derecha, su principal asesor económico, Lawrence Summers; la consejera económica Christina Romer; el director de Presupuesto, Peter Orszag, y el secretario del Tesoro, Timothy Geithner (Foto AP)

La Defensa se enfoca en amenazas supranacionales, China, India y contrainsurgencia

Pide el jefe de la Casa Blanca más de 700 mil mdd

Cambio climático, nuevo factor militar

Seguirá la cooperación con México en materia de seguridad fronteriza, asegura el Pentágono

por David Brooks
2 de febrero, 2010

Para el gobierno de Barack Obama el mundo es cada vez más peligroso, y por lo tanto hoy presentó la solicitud de gasto militar anual más grande de la historia, de unos 708 mil millones de dólares para 2011, a la vez que el Departamento de Defensa emitió su revisión cuatrianual, cuyo enfoque es sobre nuevas amenazas supranacionales, China e India como superpotencias emergentes y la lucha contra el terrorismo y la contrainsurgencia como misiones militares centrales. En breve referencia a México y América Latina, el Pentágono sólo afirma que continuará la cooperación militar con presencia estadunidense limitada en el hemisferio. Read the full story

Article published in Amauta with permission from the author

Also read below: New Defense Strategy Envisions Multiple Conflicts

(Image: Lance Page / t r u t h o u t; Adapted: The U.S. Army, Thomas Hawk, lepiaf.geo)

by Norman Solomon

This isn’t “defense.”

The new budget from the White House will push U.S. military spending well above $2 billion a day.

Foreclosing the future of our country should not be confused with defending it.

“Unless miraculous growth, or miraculous political compromises, creates some unforeseen change over the next decade, there is virtually no room for new domestic initiatives for Mr. Obama or his successors,” the New York Times reports this morning (February 2).

It isn’t defense to preclude new domestic initiatives for a country that desperately needs them: for healthcare, jobs, green technologies, carbon reduction, housing, education, nutrition, mass transit . . . Read the full story

Artículo publicado en Amauta con permiso especial del autor

(Imagen: t r u t h o u t)

por Atilio Boron

A la memoria de Howard Zinn,
maestro, camarada y amigo

Al cumplir un año la Administración Obama presenta inequívocos signos de deterioro. Según el Rasmussen Report, dedicado a producir un seguimiento día a día de la popularidad de los presidentes de Estados Unidos, en apenas un año la aprobación popular de la gestión de Obama descendió desde un 65 % el día de su inauguración al 47 registrado el 27 de enero del 2010.[1] En esa misma fecha la encuestadora Gallup le asignaba un porcentaje levemente superior de aprobación popular: 48 %, desde un 69 % inicial.[2] Read the full story

Article published with special permission from TomDispatch

(Image: Lance Page / t r u t h o u t; Adapted: zoutedrop, mindfrieze, peshovski)

Source: TomDispatch

Pentagon Time: Tick…Tick…Tick…

by Tom Engelhardt
January 26, 2010

Back in 2007, when General David Petraeus was the surge commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, he had a penchant for clock imagery.  In an interview in April of that year, he typically said:  “I’m conscious of a couple of things. One is that the Washington clock is moving more rapidly than the Baghdad clock, so we’re obviously trying to speed up the Baghdad clock a bit and to produce some progress on the ground that can perhaps give hope to those in the coalition countries, in Washington, and perhaps put a little more time on the Washington clock.”  And he wasn’t alone.  Military spokespeople and others in the Bush administration right up to the president regularly seemed to hear one, two, or sometimes as many as three clocks ticking away ominously and out of sync. Read the full story

Source: Harper’s Magazine

(Image: t r u t h o u t)

by Scott Horton
January 18, 2010

1. “Asymmetrical Warfare”

When President Barack Obama took office last year, he promised to “restore the standards of due process and the core constitutional values that have made this country great.” Toward that end, the president issued an executive order declaring that the extra-constitutional prison camp at Guantánamo Naval Base “shall be closed as soon as practicable, and no later than one year from the date of this order.” Obama has failed to fulfill his promise. Some prisoners there are being charged with crimes, others released, but the date for closing the camp seems to recede steadily into the future. Furthermore, new evidence now emerging may entangle Obama’s young administration with crimes that occurred during the George W. Bush presidency, evidence that suggests the current administration failed to investigate seriously—and may even have continued—a cover-up of the possible homicides of three prisoners at Guantánamo in 2006. Read the full story

Source: The Nation

by Jeremy Scahill
January 22, 2010

On Thursday, Defense Secretary Robert Gates confirmed that Blackwater is operating in Pakistan. In an interview on Express TV, Gates, who was visiting Islamabad, said, “They [Blackwater and another private security firm, DynCorp] are operating as individual companies here in Pakistan,” according to a DoD transcript of the interview. “There are rules concerning the contracting companies. If they’re contracting with us or with the State Department here in Pakistan, then there are very clear rules set forth by the State Department and by ourselves.” Read the full story