Henry Giroux on State Terrorism and the Ideological Weapons of Neoliberalism — Leslie Thatcher Interview

Public intellectual Henry Giroux discusses his new book, America's Addiction to Terrorism, and the terror that "is now such a central part of the political nervous system in the United States that it's become the major organizing principle of society."

Truthout
Henry Giroux on State Terrorism and the Ideological Weapons of Neoliberalism
Leslie Thatcher, Truthout | Interview

Henry A. Giroux is the founder-animator of Truthout's Public Intellectual Project, a member of Truthout's board of directors and a frequent contributor - currently holds the McMaster University Chair for Scholarship in the Public Interest in the English and Cultural Studies Department and the Paulo Freire Chair in Critical Pedagogy at the McMaster Institute for Innovation and Excellence in Teaching and Learning. He is also a distinguished visiting professor at Ryerson University.

Cold War On — M K Bhadrakumar: Obama's Monica moment

The United States may have administered one of the biggest-ever snubs to the Kremlin in the post-Cold War era with the White House announcement on Thursday that it will provide military support to the Syrian rebels....

The US President Barack Obama is scheduled to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of the Group of Eight summit scheduled to begin in Northern Ireland this coming Monday. This was to have been the first meeting for the two presidents after their respective re-election to the high office.
As a token courtesy to Putin at a personal and public level, Obama should have deferred the announcement until after meeting Putin. Syria was expected to figure on top of their agenda and Obama and Putin have been closely in touch over Syria....

A senior state department official, Frank Rose, deputy assistant secretary in the Bureau of Arms Control, gave the bottom line on Wednesday that Obama has nothing to offer Putin on missile defense....

All in all, Obama's momentous decision on military intervention in Syria, which could well launch a new Cold War, is a desperate diversionary move when his administration is caught up deep in the cesspool over the Snowden controversy. 

The entire moral edifice on which Obama built up his presidency and the values he espoused at the core of his "audacity of hope" when he began his long march to the White House five years ago - transparency, accountability, legitimacy, multilateralism, consensus - lie exposed today as a pack of lies. 

Syria is now "officially" a proxy war, and the Cold War is back on. Three cheers for military Keynesianism. Now the ruling elite can breath easily again.

Asia Times Online
Obama's Monica moment
M K Bhadrakumar

If you are not paying attention to geopolitics and geo-strategy, you should be. It is taking some interesting turns of late that are portend potentially enormous social, political and economic consequences. The direction toward war is increasing as the global economic situation deteriorates and beggar-thy neighbor replaces international coordination.

Lack of accountability in the "war on terror"

The Ninth Circuit today reversed the district court’s ruling in Padilla v. Yoo, ordering that former “enemy combatant” Jose Padilla’s civil damages suit against John Yoo be dismissed on qualified immunity grounds. The dismissal represents the latest refusal of a federal court to provide a remedy for abuses committed during the war on terrorism.

Read it at Balkanization
The Ninth Circuit’s Dismissal in Padilla: The Accountability Gap Widens
by Jonathan Hafetz