Catastrophe: n.

1. A great, often sudden calamity.
2. A complete failure; a fiasco: The food was cold, the guests quarreled--the whole dinner was a catastrophe.
3. The concluding action of a drama, especially a classical tragedy, following the climax and containing a resolution of the plot.

When I joined the army and when I reenlisted five times, I did something that every member of Congress does. I took an oath to defend the Constitution as the core commitment of my service. Then the army sent me to eight different conflict areas to attack, or assist others...

I will venture a guess that, contrary to what many believe, Hillary Clinton's biological status as a woman was as much an asset as a liability in the Democratic primaries. One can only speculate, but there was an understandable and fervent belief on the part of many highly mobilized (white)...

My friend and co-conspirator, DeAnander, just put together a very informative and important article. For environmental dilettantes, throwing your disposable water bottle into a recycling can is how to escape the consequences of runaway ecocide. DeAnander and I have been looking at a lot of empirical evidence that says our...

Well, when the NAACP decides, rightly, to give Wright a pulpit to defend the prophetic tradition of many African American churches, we can now see what happens. MSNBC has launched what can only be called a hate-fest against Wright, with other media eagerly piling on; and Obama is under pressure...

By DE CLARKE and STAN GOFF

In recent days, we have seen the rising price of oil and the devaluation of the dollar create two quantum shifts in the economy: the beginning of the collapse of the air travel industry and a global crisis of food-price inflation. These are related...

...and members of Congress can again be expected to grovel shamelessly before this military apparatchik. Consequently, Petraeus will succeed in his principle mission: to support the next phase of Bush administration lies about what is going on in Iraq.

First of all, since there is no game official to declare...

Nouri al Maliki, at the behest of his American masters, has thrown the new Army of the Republic of Vietnam against the militias of the most powerful and cohesive popular movement in Iraq, that of Muqtada al Sadr. By all accounts, even with their American advisers, tactical air and intelligence...

...is an obscenity. Five years now, and countless lives immiserated, maimed, extinguished. George W. Bush today puffed up his chest and declared that the incalculable horror, the sustained anguish, the terrible sin that is the war he started in Iraq, "will be discussed by military historians for many years." He's...

... might be a sign of progress or bloody reaction. It's a nodal point, where history's pivot presents a very real bifircation.

Mark Jones eight years ago described the post-Cold War booms as the capitalist metropoles digesting the fallen Eastern Bloc, somewhat slowly, "like a snake who's swallowed a goat."...

"I hate it when that happens."

-John McCain, -Hillary Clinton, -Barack Obama

These securities firms are among the largest contributors to them all. Now, as the feces hits the proverbial fan, let's watch them tie themselves in knots telling us all how this happened... and how they will look out...

Barack Obama is a member of the United Church of Christ... here in Raleigh that congregation has been on the front lines for as long as I've lived here to oppose war, oppose the exploitation and demonization of the poor, fight racism, xenophobia, sexism, ands homophobia, and provide the core...

From Alternet:

We don't know who will carry the Democrats' banner onto the political battlefield this fall. But we do know the kind of attack the Dems will face. The McCain campaign has little in its arsenal beyond two words: "No Surrender" -- no surrender anywhere, but especially in Iraq....

In March 2003, a group of veterans (from WWII through Iraq) joined with military families and hurricane survivors to march and convoy from Mobile, Alabama to New Orleans, Louisiana. It took six days; and the point was to take Dr. King's remark about "Every bomb dropped in Vietnam explodes over...

...to attend the Winter Soldier Hearing.

From March 13-16, in Silver Springs, MD, representatives of a veterans' organization will be offering testimony about their participation in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This organization has more than 800 members, organized into 48 chapters in 41 states. They would like for...

The last time I went public and traveled against the war -- in some mass action -- was during the third anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq, when we marched and caravaned from Mobile, Alabama to New Orleans on the Veterans and Survivors March for Peace and Justice.

With the dust-up between the Barack and Hillary camps over Clinton's intensely stupid gaffe comparing war-monger Lyndon Baines Johnson with peacemaker Dr. Martin Luther King, it seems a good time to bring up several embarrassing facts about MLK, his life, and his actual legacy.

I'll start by pointing out what...

"We terminated the most precious American asset which vowed to defeat mujahideen." These were the words of al-Qaeda's top commander for Afghanistan operations and spokesperson Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, immediately after the attack that claimed the life of Pakistani politician Benazir Bhutto on Thursday (December 27).

FULL

No matter...

No: 4.522.332, 51,05 %
Yes: 4.335.136, 48.94 %

With the vast majority of the media owned and operated by Venezuela's racist comprador bourgeoisie, a media that has never suffered a day of government control even approaching what is exercised against media in the United States, the Constitutional...

Wrote this a good while back, but since the US and the US corporate media are dead set on another coup attempt in Venezuela... soon, I figured people might want to know the history. Though both parts start in Haiti, where a successful coup was carried out against the democratically...