The media has to stop this practice of labeling anything controversial said by a politicians (or the one-percenters) as a ‘flub’ or a ‘gaffe’. Those labels should be reserved for either honest mistakes or for statements that were intended but have fairly trivial consequences. For a politician, confusing the names of the leaders of foreign countries is a gaffe. It does not tell us much about what the person’s views on foreign policy are. But saying something that you believe does not become transformed into a gaffe simply because it gets you in hot water. [Read more…]

In one of his last posts for Salon before he moves to The Guardian today, Glenn Greenwald takes on with his trademark comprehensiveness the sham, self-serving ‘terrorism expert’ industry, something that Ken Silverstein has also written about for Harper’s. [Read more…]

While a lot of the media focus in the run-up to the elections has been on domestic US politics, we should not ignore the fact that the government of Israel has been dropping hints of imminent war with Iran. As Stephen Walt says, Israel has raised the stakes by saying that they not only will they not let Iran develop nuclear weapons or the capability of making them, they will not even tolerate the Iranians having the theoretical capacity of doing so at some unspecified time down the road, a much lower threshold. [Read more…]

Mitt Romney’s selection of Paul Ryan has generated much discussion of whether it will help energize the base of the Republican party and thus help them get more votes.

Cartoonist and essayist Ted Rall, no fan of Barack Obama, says that there is another aspect that is not being looked at as closely. [Read more…]

In an extraordinary raising of the stakes, the British government actually threatened to forcibly enter the Ecuadoran embassy and take Julian Assange by force. The embassy has reacted with outrage. I expect to see other South American nations enter the fray soon to try and defuse the situation. [Read more…]

It appears that Ecuador has granted political asylum to Julian Assange. The British government will likely try and keep him holed up in the embassy and prevent him from going to the airport and leaving the country. [Read more…]