My significant other is a teacher and is not involved in policy work. As a concerned citizen, she bought a Save Darfur t-shirt and wears it occasionally. One night last month, she wore her shirt out to a gathering of my friends, most of whom work in political and environmental nonprofits and businesses.
If one wants to make the comparison even more striking, current spending on all “international programs” – that is, all U.S. non-military engagement with the world, accounts for 1.2% of the federal budget. That includes humanitarian relief, diplomacy, international organization funding, poverty and disease programs, U.N. peacekeeping, and a number of other critical international initiatives….
John Bolton has another zinger oped today in the Financial Times offering withering criticism of Tony Blair and the British government for actions in the recent soldier detention case that Bolton argues only embolden Iran’s hard-liners. Ambassador Bolton is brimming lately with hard criticism of the Brits, the Europeans, and even the American government.
This is just a personal note that one of the people who helped launch me professionally passed away in late March, and his obituary appeared recently in the Los Angeles Times. G.
To a certain degree, the realities in Iran today were shaped by America’s misguided, interventionist regime change success there in helping to overthrow Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh in 1953 and installing Shah Reza Pahlavi.
Today, the United States is the greatest contributor of carbon to the atmosphere. China is neck and neck with America. The U.S.
My significant other is brilliant, and so is Air America superstar political commentator Sam Seder‘s. His is Nicole Cattell, an important documentary filmmaker whose REVOLUC!ON airs this next Tuesday night at 10 pm EST on New York’s Thirteen-WNET.
I have come by a letter from former Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR) General Jim Jones and frustrated conceptualizer of the military’s “shock and awe” strategy Harlan Ullman to the editor of the Washington Post that has not yet been published — but which probably will be in several days.
(Former State Department Chief of Staff Lawrence Wilkerson and Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE)) Former State Department Chief of Staff and 16-year personal assistant to General and Secretary of State Colin Powell, Lawrence Wilkerson, and I will be reflecting on our recent trip to Havana.
David Ignatius has made one of the only constructive suggestions I have seen regarding iran’s seizure of 15 British sailors — the establishment of a naval hotline modeled on the US-Soviet sea conflict resolution framework. We used to spend a lot of money and effort trying to minimize miscommunication, accidents, escalation in great power conflicts….
