The Nation
Jeremy Scahill: America's Secret Wars Around the World
The Obama administration’s foreign bill of goods is a massive covert op that goes far beyond drone strikes. “We know everything about the bin Laden raid. We even know that there was a dog named Cairo and that he was a Belgian Malinois,” says Nation correspondent Jeremy Scahill. And yet “there were 20,000 raids like that that year in Afghanistan and other countries that we know almost nothing about.” Scahill joins Morning Joe to discuss the administration’s secret crusade and his new book, Dirty Wars.
—James Cersonsky
The 'Thinspiration' Behind an Impossible Ideal of Beauty
Anorexia is the deadliest of mental illnesses. (Courtesy of Flickr, CC 2.0.)
Ever heard of thinspiration? Google it—actually, on second thought, don't, unless you want to fall down a rabbit hole into the deeply disturbing world of explicitly pro-anorexia, pro-bulimia blogs and websites.
Pennsylvania Think Tank Plans to 'Slay' Unions, Like in Wisconsin
Senator Pat Toomey. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke.)
The Commonwealth Foundation, a right-wing think tank in Harrisburg, is plotting to go after public sector employee unions. In a letter from Senator Pat Toomey (R-PA) on behalf of the Foundation, the think tank announced “Project Goliath,” a new effort to make Pennsylvania the next Wisconsin or Michigan. The Commonwealth Foundation is one of a fifty-nine-state network of similar think tanks that have vastly expanded since 2009. The letter makes clear that conservatives believe that right-wing political infrastructure—the organizing institutes, the partisan media outlets, the rapid response efforts—has helped turn the tide against labor unions. Toomey writes (emphasis added):
Exit of Wall Street–Friendly Max Baucus is No Loss for Democrats
Max Baucus talks with reporters on Capitol Hill. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
Montana Senator Max Baucus, a Democrat who frequently clashed with his party’s economic populists as the Wall Street–friendly chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, will step down at the end of his current term.
Jeremy Scahill: The Secret Story Behind Obama's Assassination of Two Americans in Yemen
Anwar al-Awlaki's Denver-born son Abdulrahman was, like his father, killed by American forces. The lesson from Abdulrahman's story, says Nation correspondent Jeremy Scahill, is that the US can aim "targeted strikes" at anyone—with impunity. "It’s the most horrific form of pre-crime," Scahill says. "They don’t know the identities of the people that they’ve been killing, they don’t know whether they’ve been involved in any activity, they are killed for who they might be or who they might one day become." Scahill joins Democracy Now! for a special hour-long segment on his new book, Dirty Wars.
—James Cersonsky
Jeremy Scahill: Telling the Story of America's Dirty Wars
The US’s extrajudicial killings roll on in secrecy and scandal. “Obama said that he ended these things, and yet he’s continuing them, but by proxy,” Nation correspondent Jeremy Scahill says. “There’s been tweaks to the machine, but in general many of the policies that liberals were outraged about under Bush have continued under Obama, just with a kind of rebranding.” Scahill appears on All In with Chris Hayes to discuss the story of Anwar al-Awlaki, the US’s global battlefield and his new book, Dirty Wars.
—James Cersonsky
The Austerity Doctrine Exposed
House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan Ryan has cited austerity research that was fundamentally flawed. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin.)
Editor’s Note: Each week we cross-post an excerpt from Katrina vanden Heuvel’s column at the WashingtonPost.com. Read the full text of Katrina’s column here.
The Chechen-Dagestan Connection to Boston
Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev. (Courtesy of FBI.)
Lots and lots of questions remain to be answered about whether or not the Tsarnaev brothers acted alone, were part of some international conspiracy involving Al Qaeda and its allies, or were simply inspired or radicalized by some errant imam. So far, it appears that they acted “alone.” But the question of the “Chechen connection”—or, the “Dagestan connection”—lingers.
Famed EPA Whistleblower Hits Media Coverage of 'Criminal' Texas Plant Explosion
In the past five days, millions of words have been written and spoken relating to media mistakes and failures in the aftermath of the Boston marathon bombings. So far relatively little has emerged concerning the even more deadly explosion in West, Texas, last Wednesday. But now, in an interview this week, one of the leading government “whistleblowers” of the past four decades, who still (somehow) holds his job, has sharply criticized the lack of deep media probing of the Texas disaster—and the alleged “lies” in key Reuters and New York Times articles.
Managers of the West Fertilizer plant that ignited, killing at least fourteen (with others still missing), mainly first responders, should face a federal grand jury “but you can’t get to that if the media won’t even give people the facts—and in the case of the Times and Reuters, have given people false facts,” says Hugh B. Kaufman, a senior analyst at the Environmental Protection Agency since the 1970s. He also criticizes a new Huffington Post report but does praise some other reporting.
“Don’t forget, unlike Hurricane Sandy, this is a man-made disaster,” Kaufman declares. “The bottom line is: It’s a law enforcement, criminal violations issue, that resulted in needless loss of life. These guys in Texas broke the criminal statutes of the United States, but the media and Texas politicians are pretending it’s a regulatory policy issue. It’s like Alice in Wonderland—or maybe Dallas in Wonderland.”
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