Mahler's Prodigal Son

Jeremy Scahill is The Nation magazine's national security correspondent. He has over the years garnered a formidable first-class reputation for his writing. He today testified before the House Judiciary Committee on the US's shadow wars in Pakistan, Yemen, and elsewhere. The Nation has his evidence in full, here , but one extract: "As the war rages on in Afghanistan and--despite spin to the contrary--in Iraq as well, US Special Operations Forces and the Central Intelligence Agency are engaged in parallel, covert, shadow wars that are waged in near total darkness and largely away from effective or meaningful Congressional oversight or journalistic scrutiny. The actions and consequences of these wars is seldom discussed in public or investigated by the Congress. The current US strategy can be summed up as follows: We are trying to kill our way to peace. And the killing fields are growing in number. Among the sober question that must be addressed by the Congress: What im...

We have entered a new era of warfare a la in cyberspace. Visa, Mastercard and PayPal stopped payments going through to WikiLeaks. Retaliation seemed the operative word for some. So "attacked" at least, for certain,Mastercard's web site. That raises the question of who actually owns the internet. Have PayPal and the others infringed First Amendment rights of free speech in the USA? Those issues were the subject of an interview on ABC Australia's PM radio program - with Tim Wu, who has written a book called The Master Switch which argues that information technologies always start out free but have mostly been taken over in time by big monopolies. Read, or listen to the interview here . The New York Times also considers the issue in " Hackers Give Web Companies a Test of Free Speech ": "Some internet experts say the situation highlights the complexities of free speech issues on the Internet, as grassroots Web companies evolve and take centr...

Credited to Jeff Stahler, The Columbus Dispatch, Ohio

Since it is accepted that the current Middle East peace talks - were they ever, anyway? - are dead and buried, the question has to be, now what? Back to the drawing-board? Stephen Walt, professor of international relations at Harvard, writing his latest blog on FP , ponders where to now . "This situation isn't good for anyone -- not the United States, not Israel, and not the Palestinians. It is increasingly likely that a genuine two-state solution isn't going to be reached, and as I've noted before, the United States will be in a very awkward position once mainstream writers and politicians begin to recognize that fact. Once it becomes clear that "two states for two people" just ain't gonna happen, the United States will have to choose between backing a one-state, binational democracy, embracing ethnic cleansing, or supporting permanent apartheid. Those are the only alternatives to a two-state solution, and no future president will relish having to...

In light of the Wikileaked documents in the last days, be it coincidental or not, a Transparency International's study to mark International Anti-Corruption Day highlights that corruption is thriving worldwide . "One person in four worldwide has paid a bribe during the past year, according to a study released on Thursday to mark International Anti-Corruption Day. The study, by the Berlin-based non-governmental agency Transparency International, focuses on small-scale bribery and was put together from polls conducted among more than 91,000 people in 86 countries and territories. In the past 12 months, one in four paid a bribe to one of nine institutions, such as health, education or tax authorities, according to the 2010 Global Corruption Barometer. But it was the police who proved most corrupt, according to the study which reported that 29 per cent of those having dealings with police said they had paid a bribe. Worldwide, sub-Saharan Africa was the region reporting the great...

If proof was needed why the public needs to know what the politicians are doing - absent at least reasonable open and honest government - the need for whistle-blowers and leaks a la the WikiLeaked documents is made clear from this piece on Mother Jones : "Between 2006 and 2009, news room budgets were cut by $1.6 billion. Meanwhile, on the government side, between 1996 and 2009, the number of documents and other communications containing information labeled secret has risen 1,000 percent. We are at the mercy of PR, an industry that in the space of a decade has more than doubled."

Liu Xiaobo, a poet and literary critic, is the recipient of the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize. China has forbidden the jailed winner to travel to the award ceremony, which will be held in Oslo this Friday. The New York Times under the headline " Words a Cell Can’t Hold " has published a poem written by the prize-winner. It was translated by Jeffrey Yang from the Chinese. "from “Experiencing Death” I had imagined being there beneath sunlight with the procession of martyrs using just the one thin bone to uphold a true conviction And yet, the heavenly void will not plate the sacrificed in gold A pack of wolves well-fed full of corpses celebrate in the warm noon air aflood with joy Faraway place I’ve exiled my life to this place without sun to flee the era of Christ’s birth I cannot face the blinding vision on the cross From a wisp of smoke to a little heap of ash I’ve drained the drink of the martyrs, sense spring’s about to break into the brocade-brilliance of myriad flowers D...