The alliance between Israel and the United States has culminated after 50 years in direct U.S. military involvement in the Middle East. This involvement, which is not furthering American interests, is unleashing a geopolitical nightmare.

American soldiers and Marines are dying in droves in a useless war. The impotence of the United States in the face of Israeli pressure is complete. The White House and the Congress have become, for perhaps the first time, a direct extension of Israeli interests.

There is no longer any debate within the United States. This is evidenced by the obsequious nods to Israel by all the current presidential candidates with the exception of Dennis Kucinich. The political cost for those who challenge Israel is too high.

This means there will be no peaceful resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. It means the incidents of Islamic resistance against the U.S. and Israel will grow.   more »

Bush is allowing Cheney's former chief of staff, who was found guilty of lying to federal investigators in the CIA leak case, to go unpunished.

The fine will be no problem for Libby. His neoconservative friends and admirers will kick in to cover that tab. (Perhaps even Cheney will send a check.)

Libby had become a symbol of the Bush White House's problem with the truth.

After all, his lies had been designed to block FBI agents and federal prosecutors from learning the full truth of a White House effort to discredit a critic who had accused the Bush administration of twisting the prewar intelligence.   more »

Too many Americans harbor the illusion that we live in a democracy simply because we have the right to vote. But let us be clear about something: voting matters only where real choices are allowed.

The system is purposely designed to require enormous expense from its participants.

According to the very mainstream USA Today, the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics predicts that $2.6 billion was spent on Congressional races last year alone, which thus precludes any third party candidate, as well as ordinary people, from all but token participation.

It requires big money to win political office and big money comes from the deep pockets of corporate America.   more »

Last Thursday, the senate killed immigration reform and the supreme court all but buried its landmark Brown versus Board of Education decision of 1954, which ordered the desegregation of American schools.

The two decisions underscore what has become increasingly evident in recent years: the right is winning its long-standing battle against the inclusion of racial minorities in mainstream American society.

The conservative movement in the US evolved from a visceral hostility toward both communism and the civil rights movement, in roughly equal parts.

Today's most admired icons of the right - including Ronald Reagan, Barry Goldwater and William F Buckley - all strongly opposed the dismantling of Jim Crow in the South and laws intended to stop pervasive racial discrimination while guaranteeing voting rights to blacks.   more »

I'm 100 times more scared of the corporate controlled media and the police state of Britain than any two-bit "terrorist" with a can of petrol and a bag of nails.

They'll be locking up "Asian looking men" for fun providing even more cause than the million+ Iraqis we've helped murder since 2003. Great!

The point is that the government could have chosen any number of responses to these clumsy attacks - the government choose the most overblown.

The one most calculated to terrify people, the one most inclined to magnify the threat, the one most likely to inflame the situation.

And the one which exaggerated the threat the most.   more »