Source: GRITtv Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu discussing their countries’ foreign relations resembles two lovers discussing their future together. Though they have squabbled in the past over trivial things (things like settlement expansion that most other countries deem flagrant violations of international law), their July 6th meeting at the White House showed that [...]

You have only to look around in Kabul and elsewhere, as I did this month, to see that the more American military there is, the more insurgents there are; the more insurgent attacks, the more private security contractors; the more barriers and razor wire, the more restrictions on freedom of movement in the capital for Afghans and internationals alike; and the more security, the higher the danger pay for members of the international community who choose to stay and spend their time complaining about the way security prevents them from doing their useful work. And so it goes round and round, this ill-oiled war machine, generating ever more incentives for almost everyone involved -- except ordinary Afghans, of course -- to keep on keeping on. It goes round and round, this inexorable machine, this elaborate construction of corporate capitalism at war, generating immense sums of money for relatively small numbers of people.

If Obama's Afghan decision was a cave-in to the brass and a potential generals' revolt, the president also added that kicker of a deadline to the mix, not only placating his political base and minimizing Democratic unhappiness in Congress, but creating a trap of sorts for Petraeus and McChrystal. The message was clear enough: deliver the goods, and fast, or we're heading out, whether the job is finished or not. Afghanistan is the place where theories of warfare go to die, and if the COIN theory isn't dead yet, it's utterly failed so far to prove itself. The vaunted February offensive into the dusty hamlet of Marja in Helmand province has unraveled. The offensive into Kandahar, the birthplace of the Taliban and a seething tangle of tribal and religious factions, once touted as the potential turning point of the entire war, has been postponed indefinitely. After nine years, the Pentagon has little to show for its efforts, except ever-rising casualties and money spent. Perhaps Obama is still counting on U.S. soldiers to reverse the Taliban's momentum and win the war, even though administration officials have repeatedly rejected the notion that Afghanistan can be won militarily. David Petraeus or no, the reality is that the war will end with a political settlement involving President Karzai's government, various Afghan warlords and power brokers, the remnants of the old Northern Alliance, the Taliban, and the Taliban's sponsors in Pakistan.

Ese ataque, agrega, “podría ser interpretado por Teherán como una declaración de guerra total”, pero como las tentativas de diálogo ensayadas por Obama fracasaron es urgente e imprescindible adoptar drásticas medidas si Estados Unidos no quiere perder su predominio en Medio Oriente a manos de Irán. Por sus grandes reservas petrolíferas -sólo superadas por Arabia Saudita y Canadá, y muy superiores a las de Irak, Kuwait y los Emiratos- Irán excita el ansia de rapiña del imperialismo norteamericano, que con el 3 por ciento de la población mundial consume el 25 por ciento de la producción mundial de petróleo. Además, no hay que olvidar que la guerra es el principal negocio del complejo militar-industrial, de modo que para sostener sus ganancias hay que utilizar y destruir aviones, cohetes, helicópteros, etcétera. Así, la diabólica pareja formada por la “guerra preventiva” y la “guerra infinita” continúa inalterable su curso, ahora bajo la presidencia de un Premio Nóbel de la Paz cuyo servilismo ante tan oscuros intereses unido a su falta de coraje para honrar ese premio coloca a la humanidad al borde de un abismo.

Source: GRITtv Latin America has seen rapid changes over recent years, most significantly with the rise of left-leaning leaders who are willing to fight massive corporations and even stand up to the massive presence of the US in their countries.  Director Oliver Stone decided to go to Venezuela to meet Chavez for himself, but when he [...]

l presidente de Estados Unidos, Barack Obama, negó que la destitución de Stanley McChrystal como jefe de las fuerzas en Afganistán implicara diferencias sobre la estrategia militar. Pero puso de manifiesto la búsqueda de una salida a una crisis política cada vez más profunda. El motivo más ostensible de la destitución, este miércoles, fueron las indiscretas declaraciones formuladas por McChrystal a la revista estadounidense Rolling Stone, donde criticó al gobierno de Obama y a sus asesores. Pero el hecho de reemplazarlo por el general David Petraeus, actual jefe del Comando Central de Estados Unidos, fue claramente el resultado del descontento de la Casa Blanca con cómo McChrystal manejó la guerra en Afganistán.

If Katrina pulled back the curtain on the reality of racism in America, the BP disaster pulls back the curtain on something far more hidden: how little control even the most ingenious among us have over the awesome, intricately interconnected natural forces with which we so casually meddle. BP cannot plug the hole in the Earth that it made. Obama cannot order fish species to survive, or brown pelicans not to go extinct (no matter whose ass he kicks). No amount of money – not BP's recently pledged $20bn (£13.5bn), not $100bn – can replace a culture that has lost its roots. And while our politicians and corporate leaders have yet to come to terms with these humbling truths, the people whose air, water and livelihoods have been contaminated are losing their illusions fast.

Even as the tar balls hit Gulf beaches, their tax dollars are subsidizing BP and so far, President Obama has not shown the slightest indication that he plans to stop their flow into BP coffers, despite the recent call of Public Citizen, a watchdog group, to end the nation's business dealings with company. In fact, the Department of Defense, which has a longstanding, multi-billion dollar business relationship with BP, tells TomDispatch that it has no plans to sever current business ties or curtail future contracts with the oil giant.

El Informe Final del Grupo de Trabajo para el Estudio de Guantánamo no es un desastre total pero sus equivocadas interpretaciones y omisiones son profundamente inquietantes e indican que sigue siendo considerablemente difícil cerrar Guantánamo, mucho más de lo que debería haber sido. Esto representa una muy triste noticia para los que allí continúan, se les considere o no importantes, que siguen aún esperando, después de casi ocho años y medio, que se les aplique por fin algo parecido a la justicia.

Quite the opposite, successive American administrations would blindly head down the very path that had led the Soviets to ruin. They would serially agree that, in a world without significant enemies, the key to U.S. global power still was the care and feeding of the American military and the military-industrial complex that went with it. As the years passed, that military would be sent ever more regularly into the far reaches of the planet to fight frontier wars, establish military bases, and finally impose a global Pax Americana on the planet. This urge, delusional in retrospect, seemed to reach its ultimate expression in the second Bush administration, whose infamous "unilateralism" rested on a belief that no country or even bloc of countries should ever again be allowed to come close to matching U.S. military power.