Mahler's Prodigal Son

Perhaps someone at the US Congress ought to have told its members that urging war on a member of the UN is a breach of the UN's Charter.    Mere trifle, as America is troubled by all sorts of economic strife, here we have a resolution resoundly passed by Congress in effect sanctioning war on Iran.    From Foreign Policy in Focus ..... "In another resolution apparently designed to prepare for war against Iran, the U.S. House of Representatives, in an overwhelmingly bipartisan 401–11 vote, has passed a resolution (HR 568) urging the president to oppose any policy toward Iran “that would rely on containment as an option in response to the Iranian nuclear threat.” With its earlier decision to pass a bill that effectively sought to ban any negotiations between the United States and Iran, a huge bipartisan majority of Congress has essentially told the president that nothing short of war or the threat of war is an acceptable policy. Indeed, the rush to pass ...

Obama has certainly squandered his own standing - remember the hopes, misplaced as they might have been? - pinned on the man when he ran for office and succeeded.    And his policies since assuming office have done little to gain support for America's policies.   So, how does the world view the man?   Pew Research Centre has surveyed the subject and reports: "Global approval of President Barack Obama’s policies has declined significantly since he first took office, while overall confidence in him and attitudes toward the U.S. have slipped modestly as a consequence. Europeans and Japanese remain largely confident in Obama, albeit somewhat less so than in 2009, while Muslim publics remain largely critical. A similar pattern characterizes overall ratings for the U.S. – in the EU and Japan, views are still positive, but the U.S. remains unpopular in nations such as Egypt, Jordan, Turkey and Pakistan. Meanwhile, support for Obama has waned significantly...

Colin Powell is seen by many as one of America's better and decent military men and politician.     It is misplaced, as a piece on Information Clearing House so clearly articulates in a piece " Colin Powell: Another War Criminal Cashes In ", in the light of yet another book by Powell just released.  "One could be forgiven for thinking there's anything honorable or honest about Colin Powell. For more than two decades now the Washington media has portrayed the former Secretary of State as something of a real life action hero, a reluctant warrior whose greatest fault – should they deign to mention any – was just being too darn loyal to a guy named George and his buddy Dick. What you might have missed is that Powell is a war criminal in his own right, one who in more than four decades of "public service" helped kill people from Vietnam to Panama to Iraq who never posed a threat to America. But don't just take some anti-war activists' word for i...

Much has already been written about the Koch brothers, über-wealthy Americans, who have "invested" heavily in seeking to defeat Obama at the upcoming presidential election and in causes which might fairly be described as being on the far-right. Having pots of money doesn't bring with it intelligence or nous.    The latest "caper" of the almost now infamous brothers, as reported on CommonDreams : "Friday is Global Wind Day . Kids are invited to celebrate by flying kites. And because the Koch Brothers' Americans for Prosperity know a deadly threat when they see one, they will be "going toe to toe with the environmental extremists to combat their radical agenda" with a counter-protest at New Jersey beaches against "their crazy offshore wind pipe dreams!"

It scarcely gains publicity but a tragic fall-out from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars is the high-level of suicides in the military - an astounding average of one a day at the moment.   In fact, suicides in the US exceed the number of murders across the country. "It’s been said before, but it’s worth saying again.  The best reason we have for leaving Afghanistan is that the war can’t be won.  Indeed, this war (the longest in our history) is so clearly unwinnable, military strategists can’t even come up with a fantasy scenario for its resolution.  And when you can’t fake a happy ending—when you can’t even come up with a sugar-coated denouement—you know it’s time to piss on the campfire and call in the dogs. One obstacle to ending the war is that our congressional “doves” are indistinguishable from our congressional “hawks.”  In fact, we have no doves, only varying gradations of hawks.  Another obstacle is President Obama himself.  The case can be...

Israel knows no bounds in the way it acts.    In this instance Haaretz has uncovered that some 250,000 Palestinians have been stripped of their residency .    Utterly, utterly appalling and no doubt in blatant breach of international law. "Israel stripped more than 100,000 residents of Gaza and some 140,000 residents of the West Bank of their residency rights during the 27 years between its conquest of the territories in 1967 and the establishment of the Palestinian Authority in 1994. As a result, close to 250,000 Palestinians who left the territories were barred from ever returning. Given that Gaza's population has a natural growth rate of 3.3 percent a year, its population today would be more than 10 percent higher, had Israel not followed a policy of revoking residency rights from anyone who left the area for an extended period of time. The West Bank's population growth rate is 3 percent. Many of those prevented from returning were students or young ...

The recently announced winner of a photographic exhibition