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HOW MITT ROMNEY DODGED THE DRAFT — H. Bruce Franklin remembers Romney from his Stanford days and lays out exactly how he and his father ensured he would evade service in the war which, at Stanford, he was demonstrating for. Andrew Cockburn gives CounterPunchers a compelling investigation of the rise of automated warfare and of the Drones, their vast costs and constant failures. Wei Zhang assesses the social and health costs of China’s incredible GDP growth.
Archives by Tag 'oil'
Conflict and intrigue over valuable energy supplies have been features of the international landscape for a long time. Major wars over oil have been fought every decade or so since World War I, and smaller engagements have erupted every few years; a flare-up or two in 2...
South Sudan’s leaders have stolen at least $10 billion in oil revenues shared with them by Sudan in the past 7 years. With somewhere between $12 to $17 billion turned over to South Sudan, Africa’s newest “government”, during this time frame some say estimates ...
Once again Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir waved his walking stick in the air. Once again he spoke of splendid victories over his enemies as thousands of jubilant supporters danced and cheered. But this time around the stakes are too high.
An all out war against...
August 2011’s 350.org/BillMcKibben-lead ...
On April 20, 2010, a reckless attitude towards the safety of the Gulf Coast by BP, as well as ...
The BP disaster taught us many things: Giant corporations cannot be trusted to behave responsibly, and have the ability to inflict massive damage on people and the environment. We need strong regulatory controls to curb corporate wrongdoing. We need tough penalties to pun...
Vancouver Island.
I was demonstrating along the Bella Bella airport road with my family when Canada’s “National Energy Board Joint Revue Panel” entourage arrived in the Heiltsuk First Nation’s village yesterday. Bella Bella is sit...
Is it possible to cope with the immense dangers posed by the rapid consumption of the world’s resources? In ...
Each time there is a short-term shortage of oil or the price begins to rise, there is talk of running out of affordable oil, an idea captured by the concept of Peak Oil. Peak Oil is the theoretical point when the maximum rate of oil production is reached and after that ti...
After rejecting the controversial Keystone XL pipeline proposal in January, President Barack Obama yesterday announced his plan to fast- track the construction of the pipeline’s southern end at a speech in Cushing, Oklahoma.
As Native American activists...
After the end of World War II, a group of nations in the north Atlantic established NATO to impede Russian influence over the reconstruction of Europe. The result was that it facilitated the United States’ influence: according to a 2009 article by Georgetown professor D...
In March this year Frank S. Jannuzi was named Washington DC office head at Amnesty International USA (AIUSA). Frank, a former staffer with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is Hitachi International Affairs Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).
The...
The Justice Department should not settle the Gulf oil spill criminal cases with deferred prosecution agreements.
That’s the take of David Uhlmann.
Uhlmann is the former chief of the Department’s Environmental Crimes Section.
And he’s currently a...
Oil prices are now higher than they have ever been — except for a few frenzied moments before the global economic meltdown of 2008. Many immediate factors are contributing to this surge, including Iran’s threats to ...
Gasoline and heating oil prices are ratcheting up. In California, some motorists are paying over $5 per gallon. President Obama declared that “there is no quick fix” for this problem. Meanwhile, the hapless but howling Republicans are blaming him for the fuel ...
Environmentalists seem to realize that they have some stake in a fight such as the Ecuador-Chevron lawsuit. In that case, which Chevron has recently ...
It’s hard to miss the higher cost of gas every time we fill up our cars these days, but the News Media doesn’t do a very good job of explaining why. There isn’t any mystery, though, if you read the financial press and oil industry sources: We’re paying extra for...
In 2007, Tullow Oil and partner Kosmos Energy discovered substantial petroleum reserves in the Ju...
There are so many areas of conventional democratic governance being challenged or eliminated by the Stephen Harper wrecking crew it is hard to keep up. Those searching for a line in the sand that even this government won’t cross still haven’t found it. So far, it seem...
We can phase out the three poisons – nuclear, coal and oil – in twenty-five years.
And replace them with solar, wind and energy efficiency.
...
For years, it has been believed that Guatemala led the Hemisphere in mass slaughter in the modern era, with 200,000 victims in the 1980’s – about 94% of them at the hands of the U.S.-backed state and its death squad allies. Very sadly, it appears that Colombia h...
During my time in Iran from 1977 to 1978 there were between forty and fifty thousand Americans, many of them working in the military-industrial complex. The Shah of Iran with the approval of the U.S. government had signed a contract with a U.S. manufacturer of helicopters...
Washington, DC
President Barack Obama has finally begun in recent months to signal to Israel that the United States would not get involved in a war started by Binyamin Netanyahu without US approval. If it is pursued firmly and consistently through 2012, t...
Ever since December 27th, war clouds have been gathering over the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow body of water connecting the Persian Gulf with the Indian Ocean and the seas beyond. On that day, Iranian Vice President Mohammad Reza Rahimi warned that Tehran would block th...
Where will you be and what will you be doing when the first giant oil tanker (there will be two plying the waters every three days), carrying over 200,000 gallons of tar sands goop diluted with solvent, spills its load into the waters of northern B.C?
We often reme...