Peter Van Buren Editor’s Note: TCP is especially proud to offer an original article by Peter Van Buren, author of We Meant Well, a compelling account of U.S.-led rebuilding efforts in post-invasion Iraq. Van Buren, who worked closely with American troops in Iraq, knows the bloody nature of war, which makes him doubly aware of…
Daniel N. White Introduction: America’s self-declared war on drugs is in its fifth decade with victory nowhere in sight. In fact, the war has created its own violent dynamic, its own complex of deeply conflicted interests. In the USA, that would include the DEA, Homeland Security, the FBI, and most other law enforcement agencies;…
Jacek Popiel A few weeks ago we examined the source of China’s “meteoric” rise to the rank of the second largest world economy and concluded that the “miracle” was essentially a one-off play based on offering the lowest cost for the production of goods for export. While successful, the policy destroyed both income and assets…
Jack Werner The former President of Guatemala, Otto Fernando Pérez Molina, has stepped down amidst corruption charges, being formally indicted on September 3 for his role in the scandal now known as “La Linea.” By far the best coverage of this case for non-Spanish speakers has come from Francisco Goldman in The New Yorker, who…
by Stuart Lyle I like the feeling of a book, as opposed to a gun, in my hand. I’ve been holding a lot of books recently, all while reading to my granddaughter. She has a voracious appetite for the printed word, and an impressive collection of books, both recent and hand-me-downs that I read to…
Daniel N. White Detroit, its economic and physical collapse and failure, has been a staple story of the press for better than three decades now. Everyone who ever lived there has their story about it, and me here in Austin, Texas, hell, I now have mine. Just got back from a funeral of an aunt…
W.J. Astore As David Vine reports for TomDispatch.com, the U.S. has roughly 800 military bases in foreign countries. Maintaining these bases costs upwards of $100 billion each year, more than the federal government spends on U.S. education. The sheer extent and cost of these bases got me to thinking. Each base is basically a “little…
Chris Hedges. Courtesy of Truthdig. Introduction: The rise of Jeremy Corbyn to lead Britain’s Labour Party is heartening. Here’s a man with a heartfelt contrary perspective. Sadly, he has no American equivalent among the major parties’ candidates. Bernie Sanders comes closest, but Sanders supports drone strikes and refuses to take a stand against Israeli aggression.…
b. traven The Independent of Britain has a headline in today’s paper that we just couldn’t pass up: “Saudi Arabia offers Germany 200 mosques – one for every 100 refugees who arrived last weekend.” Reading that headline and the accompanying story generated a large guffaw, what today’s generation terms a LOL moment. We look forward…
The Crash, Burn, Repeat of America’s Militarized Foreign Policy Tom Engelhardt (courtesy of TomDispatch.com) Let’s take a moment to consider failure and its options in Washington. The U.S. has been warring with the Islamic State (IS) for more than a year now. The centerpiece of that war has been an ongoing campaign of bombings and air…
The Contrary Perspective 