by Patrick Smith Foreign Policy in Focus (February 21 2014) Every time we overhear US diplomats talking when we are not supposed to, the conduct of American foreign policy sounds less imaginative, more reckless, and astonishing in its fidelity to eras many of us thought would never come again. Who would have thought Obama's conduct … Continue reading Nuland: The Message Beneath the Vulgarity →

by Ron Paul http://ronpaulinstitute.org (February 23 2014) Last week Ukraine saw its worst violence since the break-up of the Soviet Union over twenty years ago. Protesters occupying the main square in the capitol city, Kiev, clashed with police leaving many protesters and police dead and many more wounded. It is an ongoing tragedy and it … Continue reading Leave Ukraine Alone! →

... Bank of Japan "opens spigot" to the rich by John Watanabe World Socialist Web Site, wsws.org (February 26 2014) The Japanese economy slowed markedly in the final quarter of 2013, pointing to an unraveling of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's much-vaunted "Abenomics". Statistics released last week revealed that GDP grew by only 0.3 percent (1.2 … Continue reading As growth slows … →

Mobility, Anonymity, Freedom by Dmitry Orlov Club Orlov (February 18 2014) The recent advances in networked mobile computing has made it rather unnecessary for a large class of people - ones who use computers for work - to maintain a fixed abode: it is now possible to do all the same things, via the Internet, … Continue reading The Good Life →

... Used by Obama's Top Trade Official Fact-checking Michael Froman by Ben Beachy Public Citizen Eyes on Trade (February 20 2014) US Trade Representative Michael Froman tried in a speech yesterday to defend the Obama administration's beleaguered trade policy agenda: the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and Trans-Atlantic Free Trade Agreement (TAFTA) pacts and an unpopular … Continue reading The Top Ten Myths … →

The Architects of Free Trade Really Did Want a World Government of Corporations by Matt Stoller http://mattstoller.tumblr.com (February 20 2014) It's amazing what you find in the Congressional Record. For example, you find American political officials (liberal ones, actually) engaged in an actual campaign to get rid of countries with their pesky parochial interests, and … Continue reading Nafta Origins, Part Two →

by Jeff Madrick The Anti-Economist Harper's Magazine (October 2013) This spring, Newark mayor Cory Booker, then considering a run for US Senate, came to my office along with members of his staff to discuss national economic issues. We spent a couple of hours batting around such familiar topics as deficit spending, public investment, and Wall … Continue reading Problem Number One →

by James Howard Kunstler Clusterfuck Nation - Blog (February 24 2014) A glance through the annals of history tells us that the Golden Age of Ukraine occurred just as western Europe was emerging from its long, dark, post-Roman coma around the tenth and eleventh centuries, AD. After that, it was a kind of polo field … Continue reading Savagery for All →

by Dmitry Orlov Club Orlov (February 22 2014) [Update: I am pushing this live a few days early, because the Ukrainian situation is evolving so rapidly. One political corpse (Yanukovych) is out; apparently he has fled to Russia. Another political corpse (Tymoshenko) has been hastily rehabilitated and is ready to be put on the ballot … Continue reading Shock over Ukraine →

Part Two: The Totalitarian Center by John Michael Greer The Archdruid Report (February 19 2013) Druid perspectives on nature, culture, and the future of industrial society As the first part of this series pointed out last week, there’s an odd mismatch between the modern use of “fascism” as an all-purpose political snarl word, on the … Continue reading Fascism and the Future →