Five from truthout:

Thursday 2 June 2011

Bill Moyers Interviews Andrew Bacevich
Bill Moyers, The New Press: "Our finest warriors are often our most reluctant warmongers. They have seen firsthand the toll war exacts. They know better than anyone that force can be like a lobster trap that closes with each stage of descent, making escape impossible. So it was when the liberal consensus lured America into Vietnam during the '60s, and again after 9/11, when neoconservatives clamored for the invasion of Iraq.... One old warrior looked on sadly, his understanding of combat’s reality tempered by twenty-three years in uniform, including service in Vietnam.... Bacevich supported Barack Obama’s candidacy but believes that Obama’s commitment of more troops to Afghanistan was a deadly mistake."
"Bill Moyers Journal: The Conversation Continues" is the Truthout Progressive Pick of the Week.
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Zombie Politics: Dangerous Authoritarianism or Shrinking Democracy - Part II
Henry A. Giroux, Peter Lang Publishing Group: "While precise accounts of the meaning of authoritarianism, especially fascism, abound, I have no desire, given its shifting nature, to impose a rigid or universal definition. What is to be noted is that many scholars, such as Kevin Passmore and Robert O. Paxton, agree that authoritarianism is a mass movement that emerges out of a failed democracy, and its ideology is extremely anti-liberal, anti-democratic, and anti-socialistic. As a social order, it is generally characterized by a system of terror directed against perceived enemies of the state; a monopolistic control of the mass media; an expanding prison system; a state monopoly of weapons; political rule by privileged groups and classes; control of the economy by a limited number of people; unbridled corporatism; 'the appeal to emotion and myth rather than reason; the glorification of violence on behalf of a national cause; the mobilization and militarization of civil society; [and] an expansionist foreign policy intended to promote national greatness.'"
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Bill McKibben | Obama Strikes Out on Global Warming
Bill McKibben, TomDispatch: "In our globalized world, old-fashioned geography is not supposed to count for much: mountain ranges, deep-water ports, railroad grades - those seem so nineteenth century. The earth is flat, or so I remember somebody saying. But those nostalgic for an earlier day, take heart. The Obama administration is making its biggest decisions yet on our energy future and those decisions are intimately tied to this continent's geography. Remember those old maps from your high-school textbooks that showed each state and province's prime economic activities? A sheaf of wheat for farm country? A little steel mill for manufacturing? These days in North America what you want to look for are the pickaxes that mean mining, and the derricks that stand for oil."
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From Civil Disobedience to Civil Defiance
Ed Kinane, Truthout: "Thanks in large part to court and prison witness, one grassroots organization I've long worked with has grown by leaps and bounds. Determined to expose and close the Pentagon's School of the Americas (SOA) - aka the 'School of Assassins' - more than 200 SOA Watch activists over the years have willingly endured trial and incarceration. Inspired by them, each November, thousands from all over the country converge on Fort Benning, Georgia to protest the SOA there for fostering large-scale bloodshed and human rights abuse in Latin America. (In response to our persistent pressure, the SOA has undergone a PR makeover: it has changed its name to the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, WHINSEC.)"
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News in Brief: War on Drugs Has Failed, and More ...
The Global Commission on Drug Policy declared in a statement that global war on drugs has failed; a British mining company voluntarily suspended a hydraulic fracturing, aka "fracking," operation after scientists said the drilling operation might have triggered two earthquakes; Adrian Lamo, the ex-hacker who turned in alleged WikiLeaks leaker Bradley Manning, recently said that he does not regret snitching on Manning and aiding in the criminal prosecution of the former military intelligence officer; dozens of Yemeni protesters were killed in street battles with the country's security forces yesterday.
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