contributions

When Barack Obama became president, there were 32,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan. He escalated to over 100,000 troops, plus contractors. Now there are 47,000 troops these five years later. Measured in financial cost, or death and destruction, Afghanistan is more President Obama’s war than President Bush’s. Now the White House is trying to keep troops in Afghanistan until "2024 and beyond."
Afghan President Hamid Karzai is refusing to sign the deal. Here is his list of concerns. He’d (…)

By Nicola Nasser*
Indeed, US President Barak Obama has gone a long way to earn his Nobel Peace Prize, which was prospectively and in advance awarded in 2009 to the 44th president of the United States while less than eight months in office.
However, Obama’s “big prize” to make him “feel that I deserve” the Nobel Prize as he had said then will be waiting for him until he ends the ongoing Israeli war on the Palestinian people and occupation of their land, at least since 1967.
This Israeli (…)

The JFK case is not so different epistemologically from most business cases. Here is a passage from my book Business Voyages, a business bible for people who want to do the right thing for all people, embarking on page 98:
"A relevant question is what is business knowledge and how much of it can anyone gain, learn, acquire, develop, or discover? A more fundamental question is what is knowledge period? How do you know if you really know something? What are the differences between knowing, (…)

By Nicola Nasser*
The eruption of the Syrian conflict early in 2011 heralded the demise of Turkey’s officially pronounced strategy of “Zero Problems with Neighbors,” but more importantly, it revealed a “hidden agenda” in Turkish foreign policy under the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
What Sreeram Chaulia, the Dean of the Jindal School of International Affairs in India’s Sonipat, described as a “creeping hidden agenda” (http://rt.com on Sept. 15, 2013) is covered up (…)

One question that often arises in philosophical debates is, “Do the ends justify the means?” This question has become so popular that it often serves as a fulcrum for the plots of movies and television shows. Two such television shows were Leverage (2008-2012) and Damages (2007-2012).
Most of the main characters in Leverage were former criminals (grifters, computer hackers, and thieves) who used their skills to seek restitution for persons victimized by wealthy and corrupt individuals or (…)

Saturday 23 November 1pm, Downing Street
Drone attacks are causing mayhem and misery in an arc from Pakistan to Somalia and beyond. Pakistan government sources confirm the US has launched between three and four hundred strikes in Pakistan in the last ten years, killing hundreds, destabilising the country and creating deep of bitterness against the west.
Stop the War is supporting this demonstration against drone attacks on Pakistan called by the Pakistani PTI party. We are asking our (…)

I saw last night (November 16, 2013) Bob Schieffer of CBS News playing the role of senior uncle of US culture with tears in his eyes tell us how much it affected him to see John F. Kennedy’s little boy "in his little boy suit" salute his father at his funeral. The CBS program also featured cameo shots of the likes of Dan Rather and Jim Leherer of PBS making similar pronouncements.
As a narrator of the CBS program which included footage of the motorcade in Dallas and events leading up to (…)

November 17, 2013
TIME WOUNDS ALL HEELS: WHAT TORONTO’S ROB FORD FIASCO IS ABOUT AND WHAT WE CAN LEARN FROM IT
John Chuckman
For most of its history Toronto was a quiet and law-abiding place, up until a couple of decades ago bearing the nick-name, Toronto the Good, a name which actually had a double meaning, the second one being dull. And the city was rather dull, but it was also safe and decent, a place of quiet neighborhoods and corner green-grocers. In the 1960s, street cleaners (…)

After the Obama administration took over in February 2009 the US has acquired a new financial reform act that did very little to reform the money and banking system, which was generally satisfying to bankers and Republicans; little or no reform of indefinite detention and surveillance, which was generally satisfying to the military-industrial complex and Republicans; and a healthcare reform act, which is generally unsatisfying to insurance companies and Republicans.
The Patient Protection (…)

What Localities and States Can Do About Drones
Charlottesville, Va., passed a resolution that urged the state of Virginia to adopt a two-year moratorium on drones (which it did), urged both Virginia and the U.S. Congress to prohibit information obtained from the domestic use of drones from being introduced into court, and to preclude the domestic use of drones equipped with "anti-personnel devices, meaning any projectile, chemical, electrical, directed-energy (visible or invisible), or (…)