Tom Hayden's Blog, page 37

Judy Gross Sues U.S. Over ‘Illegal’ Role in Cuba

In litigation likely to shed embarrassing light on US covert operations in Cuba, the wife of imprisoned former AID contractor Alan Gross is suing the Obama administration and the Maryland-based subcontractor, Development Alternatives Inc (DAI), which sent him on five illegal missions. 

Kansas: Storm Against the Future

WICHITA – The clinic where Dr. George Tiller performed abortions until being shot and killed during worship at his church on May 31, 2009, will be open for services in two or three months. In the opinion of several people I interviewed last week, the clinic “probably will be bombed again.”

Obama Reviewing Afghanistan Options

Military commanders are pushing President Obama to keep a maximum number of American troops through the coming Afghanistan “fighting season,” maximizing their combat role before the December 2014 date for ending offensive operations.

The Long War Reaches Mali

Despite withdrawals of our combat troops, the US has ensnared itself in a self-perpetuating Long War now spreading to Mali. North Africa currently is the “central focus” in the War on Terror, according to Bloomberg. (July 31) Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) is “strengthening its hold in Northern Mali,” and from there increasing its recruiting in sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and Europe, and is perhaps the best armed and financed Qaeda “franchise” in the world, according to Gen. Carter Ham.

Pfc. Bradley Manning in His Own Words

Back in May 2010, Adrian Lamo, a Bay Area informant for military intelligence and hacker by trade, somehow gained the confidence of 22-year-old Pfc. Bradley Manning, then a computer analyst in eastern Baghdad. Their lengthy correspondence have the feel, on the one hand, of an interrogation of an innocent young man and, on the other, provide an insight into what may have compelled Bradley Manning to share with the world the secrets he was learning from US military files. The excerpts below are from web chat transcripts beginning May 21, 2010.

Hillary Clinton in 2016

The choice between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in 2008 was difficult for many Democrats. Clinton in 2016 should not be. What is at stake is another chance to make history by electing a woman president, to assure an independent judiciary, to advance the interests of working people and maintain a continuity of citizen access to government against the waning, raging Right. At this point, Clinton alone can mobilize a movement base and raise the hundreds of millions necessary to secure a high-turnout victory for a coalition seeded with thousands of progressives.

Westside Voters Reject Betsy Butler

Mayor Richard Bloom of Santa Monica was declared the winner in the 50th Assembly District this week by 1,300 votes after a several-week count of late and absentee ballots. The loser was Democrat Betsy Butler, a Sacramento liberal lobbyist supported almost entirely by Speaker John Perez and Capitol interest groups who poured nearly $2.5 million into her campaign.

Pena Nieto Sworn In, New Leftist Party Emerges

The era of Felipe Calderon has officially come to a close in Mexico, leaving in its wake 60,000 dead from the Drug War and increases in unemployment and poverty (two realities no doubt helping fuel the conflict itself). After an uneventful week during which Calderon closed his tenure by calling for Mexico to change its name from “The United States Of Mexico” to just “Mexico,” a secretive late night ceremony at Los Pinos saw the presidential sash handed to Enrique Peña Nieto, the winner of the July elections, whose victory signals the return to power of the PRI party. But as Peña Nieto ascends, so do new social movements, student organizations and political parties driven by grassroots activism.

Yes, The Sun Does Set on the British Empire

Protestants rioted in Belfast on December 2, injuring people, and damaging cars and property, as the Union Jack came down after a century of dominating the capital skyline. The City Council's nationalist majority voted 29-21 to remove the flag, long a symbol of Loyalist sectarianism.

Republicans on the Political Cliff

President Obama and the Democrats have the political advantage as the crisis of the fiscal cliff approaches. It is the Republicans who are edging towards a political cliff if they appear to be impossibly recalcitrant in the public mind. Obama does not have a voter mandate to drive the government over the cliff, as some like Paul Krugman and Robert Borosage suggest (they say it will not be so bad, just deepen a slight recession). But the president can achieve certain key goals.