It’s a new week, so a new page up at Wanderlost. Ongoing back and computer problems pretty much keep posts to this blog limited to a weekly basis. So let me take this opportunity to unload random shit that’s been bugging me. Isn’t that what blogs are for? The NY Times recently reported what any [...]

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Iran is a threat because Washington says so. Certainly, WaPo accepts the charge at face value: Iran’s ambitions, which have cast a long shadow over the greater Middle East, may serve as a common bond keeping a frail peace process intact despite threats that have arisen even before the negotiations open Thursday at the State [...]

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Yup. Yet this is hypocrisy to which we’ve grown so accustomed that nobody seems to notice it any more. The nuclear club is meant to be exclusive. The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty recognises the five permanent members of the UN security council as “nuclear weapons states”, committing them to act as bouncers at the club door. [...]

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The story of U.S. counterinsurgency “success” and military withdrawal is a bed-time tale told to put the American public to sleep. So argues Hannah Gurman in a Salon piece that punctures several propaganda balloons floated by the ObamAdmin, GOP and Dem hawks, and the usual right-thinkers among the commentariat. Here is one to keep in [...]

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So the ObamAdmin’s response to the WikiLeaks papers: “We are in this region of the world because of what happened on 9/11,” Mr. Gibbs said. “Ensuring that there is not a safe haven in Afghanistan by which attacks against this country and countries around the world can be planned. That’s why we’re there, and that’s [...]

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The Taliban claims to have captured two U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan, while U.S. missiles kill 16 “militants” in Northwest Pakistan. Meanwhile my kids’ school district is cutting over a hundred jobs and consolidating schools. Unemployment remains at about 10 percent (which translate up to 16 percent, at least) when it took Congress 7 weeks to [...]

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Oh, Daily Beast, you are a wonder. When I tire of the right wing war blather, there you are, serving up the liberal equivalent. But first, I agree with Atrios — Peter Beinart has a point: Last summer, he tried to split the difference—surging in Afghanistan while simultaneously pledging to retreat on the theory that [...]

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ONOZ. Foreign Affairs editor James Hoge on why [McChrystal] must be fired—and how Obama is in danger of becoming a wuss. Not a wuss! At first I thought this choice of words came from the Daily Beast editors, no strangers to crass and reductionist language. For most of the column, Hoge himself takes the long [...]

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Click to read the whole thing. Glad to update Wanderlost on time for once. I disrupt Sheldon’s escapism with some hard truths coming from home. I hope it isn’t too maudlin. Thank goodness for Tuvia to provide a punchline of sorts. Speaking of neurotic comics, CNN has a profile of Jules Feiffer to publicize his [...]

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I hate opinion pieces like these. Peter Beinart advances the useless notion that President Obama’s address to the West Point Academy wasn’t stirring enough: Obama is clearly trying to ensure that the Afghan war no longer be run on a blank check. That’s why he famously brought OMB Director Peter Orszag to be photographed at [...]

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