Many of us have argued that people Like George W. Bush and Tony Blair should be tried for war crimes. There was even a British TV film called The Trial of Tony Blair that had this as the plot. I saw that film and it was good but it was clearly fantasy. Since war crimes prosecutions are only for those whom the US government views as undesirable, it was unthinkable that this would ever occur. [Read more…]
The Mitt Romney campaign must surely be concerned about the lack of support for it in the black community, with some surveys putting it at an astounding zero percent. In response, they have set up a Black Leadership Council, no doubt to bring more African-Americans into the fold. [Read more…]
Glenn Greenwald reports on what happened to a CNN investigative report that it had commissioned on the Arab spring in Bahrain in 2011. On arrival there, the CNN news team was shocked at the harsh treatment being meted out to everyone including them and they turned in a story that was highly critical of the Bahraini government. [Read more…]
I used to think that John McCain’s election campaign was incompetent but Mitt Romney’s is surely giving him a run for his money. McCain always faced an uphill battle in 2008 with the albatross of the George W. Bush presidency hanging around his neck but his unforced errors, especially the disastrous selection of Sarah Palin, did not help him. By comparison, Romney should have had it easy. The economy is sputtering, unemployment is high, people are feeling uneasy and fearful about their future, and he could have run as the agent of change. And yet he still has not managed to take the lead in the polls. [Read more…]
Given the silly hoo-ha about the Democratic party platform dropping references to god and re-instating them at the last minute, I was amused to read this news story about former British prime minister Tony Blair. [Read more…]
The Democratic convention ran into some problems yesterday when the Republicans noticed that the party platform did not mention their support for Jerusalem as the capital of Israel nor did it mention ‘god-given’ when describing people’s potential, both of which were changes from the 2008 platform. [Read more…]
The internet started buzzing yesterday with the news that someone had broken into the Franklin, Tennessee office of the accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers and obtained copies of Mitt Romney’s past tax returns for an unspecified number of years. They claim to have made digital copies of them and mailed flash drives containing encrypted versions to various organizations, saying that if they do not receive $1 million by September 28, they will release the public key that will enable people to unencrypt the files and read the documents. [Read more…]
Ron Paul has been a thorn in the side of the Republican party for some time. His criticisms of the Republican war, budgets, civil liberties violations, and his other libertarian stands, and his call for a return to the gold standard all deviate from party orthodoxy. But it is inescapable that he has a devoted and passionate cadre of supporters, especially among the young, a demographic that the Republicans sorely need. [Read more…]
Iran has not been in the news for some time, which is a good thing. Reports are coming out of Israel that suggest that the impetus for a military strike against that country is waning.
One reason given for this lessening of war rhetoric is that Israeli prime minister Netanyahu has overplayed his hand in trying to pressure Barack Obama to attack Iran by exploiting the election season, and since the re-election of Obama seems increasingly likely, now seeks to try and mend those fences by toning down the war rhetoric. [Read more…]
As I have said repeatedly, I don’t watch highly scripted events like party political conventions. But I do follow media reports on them. Political conventions are not aimed at informing the voters directly, they are aimed at influencing the media narrative in the days to come. [Read more…]