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Is Elena Kagan gay?

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This is what happens sometimes when you play God:

“Birds dropped from the air. The sky rained mud. And, as men from the rig struggled to save themselves from the aftermath of (the) explosion . . . the Gulf of Mexico itself caught on fire.”

The Washington Post, covering a federal inquiry into the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, summarized the scene, described by witnesses on a nearby supply ship, as “almost Biblical” — which is sort of a comic-book expression these days, but conjures up a moment of superstitious awe that, God knows, seems appropriate. This is love of nature stood on its head: nature as (wow!) spectacle. What a symbol for the profound alienation of our times.

Obama scraps Iraq withdrawal

So, we elected a president who promised a withdrawal from Iraq that he, or the generals who tell him what to do, is now further delaying. And, of course, the timetable he's now delaying was already a far cry from what he had promised as a candidate.

What are we to think? That may be sad news, but what could we have done differently? Surely it would have been worse to elect a president who did not promise to withdraw, right?

But there's a broader framework for this withdrawal or lack thereof, namely the SOFA (Status of Forces Agreement), the unconstitutional treaty that Bush and Maliki drew up without consulting the U.S. Senate. I was reminded of this on Tuesday when Obama and Karzai talked about a forthcoming document from the two of them and repeatedly expressed their eternal devotion to a long occupation.

Yemen’s sorrowful options: ‘revolt, migrate or die’

When the Soviets concluded their pull out from Afghanistan in February 1989, the United States government abruptly lost interest in the country. A devastated economic infrastructure, entrenched poverty, deep-rooted factionalism and lack of international aid caused the country to descend into complete chaos. Internal violence also worsened, but it was no longer an American concern. All that mattered was that the Cold War rival had been defeated. Mission accomplished.

Afghanistan remains the starkest illustration of how poor countries are used, then betrayed when their usefulness runs out. But Afghanistan is not an exception; US relations with many other countries, including Pakistan, Somalia and the Palestinian Authority remain hostage to this very model.

The invention of the Jewish people

Historians living within their own nations develop within the mythology peculiar to their nation, in which "various spheres of memory coalesced into an imagined universe representing the past." The historian is a combination of his own personal experiences and the larger societal "instilled memories." Recognizing that, Shlomo Sand very capably steps away from the created mythology of Israel, of the national myth of the wandering people for two thousand years before finding home again, in a land that belonged only to that people even though others had lived there during the same two thousand years. The Invention of the Jewish People is his groundbreaking historical study of the nature of the Jewish "nation" and its created mythologies.

As we die for BP, our military rots in the wrong Gulf

As you read this, the life of our bodies, nation and planet is being blown out a corporate hole in the Gulf of Mexico and into a Dead Zone of no return.

The apocalyptic gusher of oily poison pouring into the waters that give us life can only be viewed---FELT---by each and every one of us as an on-going death by a thousand cuts with no end in sight.

Yet our government---allegedly the embodiment of our collective will to survive---has done NOTHING of significance to fight this mass murder.

As it did while New Orleans drowned downstream from a willfully neglected levee system, our most potentially effective counter-force dithers on the other side of the world, in the wrong Gulf.

We squander our treasure on the largest conglomeration of people and weapons the world has ever seen. It's bloated with hardware designed specifically to destroy and kill. Hundreds of thousands of Americans sit on our dime in more than a hundred countries, rotting in the outposts of a bygone empire.

Why aren't they in the Gulf of Mexico, fighting for our truest "national security"?

Afghan escalation funding: More war, fewer jobs, poor excuses

Isn’t it time to call what Congress will soon vote on by its right name: war escalation funding?
Early in 2009, President Barack Obama escalated the war in Afghanistan with 21,000 "combat" troops, 13,000 "support" troops, and at least 5,000 mercenaries, without any serious debate in Congress or the corporate media. The President sent the first 17,000 troops prior to developing any plan for Afghanistan, leaving the impression that escalation was, somehow, an end in itself. Certainly it didn't accomplish anything else, a conclusion evident in downbeat reports on the Afghan war situation issued this month by both the Government Accountability Office and the Pentagon.

So it seemed like progress for our representative government when, last fall, the media began to engage in a debate over whether further escalation in Afghanistan made sense. Granted, this was largely a public debate between the commander-in-chief and his generals (who should probably have been punished with removal from office for insubordinate behavior), but members of Congress at least popped up in cameo roles.

"Seh Daeng" denies leading a death squad to protect the reds

BANGKOK, Thailand -- He boasts of killing 20 Thai communists and fondly recalls working with the CIA, but denies suspicions that he leads a death squad, involved in bombings and shootings to help the Red Shirts cripple Bangkok.

Major General Khattiya "Seh Daeng" Sawatdiphol is one of the biggest reasons the government and military are afraid to attack the Red Shirts' barricades and clear them from Bangkok's streets.

"Every morning at 4 a.m., I inspect all these barricades," Maj. Gen. Khattiya said in Thai during an interview next to barriers built with bamboo spikes, rubber tires, rags, flammable oil, concrete blocks and razor wire.

"Every day I go out and do a reconnaissance. I do a tactical show of force."

He is wanted for questioning about a mysterious alleged death squad known as "Ronin Warriors."

The government and military blame them for several recent killings resulting from dozens of unsolved M-79 grenade attacks on banks, electric pylons, army positions, an airport fuel depot, government offices, and an evening crowd of people on Silom Road near the Red Shirts' barricades.

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Kagan in context: Shafting progressive values

If President Obama has his way, Elena Kagan will replace John Paul Stevens -- and the Supreme Court will move rightward. The nomination is very disturbing, especially because it’s part of a pattern.

The White House is in the grip of conventional centrist wisdom. Grim results stretch from Afghanistan to the Gulf of Mexico to communities across the USA.

“It turns out, by the way, that oil rigs today generally don’t cause spills,” President Obama said in support of offshore oil drilling, less than three weeks before the April 20 blowout in the Gulf. “They are technologically very advanced.”

On numerous policy fronts, such conformity to a centrist baseline has smothered hopes for moving this country in a progressive direction. Now, the president has taken a step that jeopardizes civil liberties and other basic constitutional principles.

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