The View from Abroad

The More Things Change, the More They Stay the Same ”I spent 33 years….being a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street, and the bankers.  I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912.  I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1916.  [...]

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The View from Abroad

The Gold Standard would Prevent Economic Bubbles By just about every measure the U.S. economy continues to be mired in a depression.  Unemployment remains high.  Housing prices are still falling. Retail sales are lackluster.  Since Barack Obama became president in 2009 the national debt has ballooned by about $4 trillion with very little to show [...]

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Producing Dead Bodies: A Remaining Realm of American Excellence

I took the subtitle of this post from Glenn Greenwald’s October 22 post at Salon.com. Greenwald is at his best here. Everyone in the country ought to read this article and reflect on it. On May 1, President Obama announced the end of Osama bin Laden’s life. That evening I talked with my son on [...]

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The View from Abroad

The Regime Should be Questioned More than Ever The drumbeats for war with Iran are pounding fast and furious in Washington.  The Obama Administration claims that it foiled a plot financed and directed by the Iranians to assassinate the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the U.S. on American soil.  According to Attorney General Eric Holder, the [...]

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Thirty Million Uninsured

How many times did we hear during the health care debate in 2009 that thirty million people in the United States don’t have health insurance? Every time I heard that statistic, I asked, So what? What is the breakdown? How many of that thirty million don’t want health insurance? How many of that thirty million [...]

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Otherwise Occupied

Here’s another analysis of Occupy demands from my perspective. Many libertarians and conservatives have been criticizing Occupy based on a list of proposed demands that has not been approved which is all about big government economic proposals only. This list is more official: A Message From Occupied Wall Street (Day Five) Published 2011-09-22 07:51:42 UTC [...]

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The View from Abroad

Why was al-Awlaki Denied His Constitutional Rights as an American Citizen On November 25, 2001, American citizen turned Taliban fighter John Walker Lindh was captured on the battlefield in Afghanistan by Afghan Northern alliance forces.  Eleven months later after confessing to fighting with the Taliban against the U.S. and its ally in Afghanistan he was [...]

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Corporate Power, Progressives, and Government Protection

Why does the left use corporate as a shibboleth without compare? Honestly, what qualities of corporations make progressives hate them so much? Let’s take a look at the nouns that writers on the left pair with corporate: corporate power, corporate greed, corporate corruption. Power by itself can’t be bad. We know progressives are happy when [...]

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