Articles by Matthew Rothschild

Source: The Progressive

Our war president promised more war. While he trumpeted his big Afghanistan speech as the first step in ending that war, Barack Obama essentially told the American people that tens of thousands of our soldiers would still be fighting there for at least three more years.

A year from now, Obama said all the additional “surge” troops will be back home. But the U.S. will still have close to 70,000 troops in Afghanistan, twice the number that were there when Obama took office. read more

Source: The Progressive

I don’t like using the word rape as a metaphor, but the charge against the head of the International Monetary Fund is almost a perfect metaphor for the IMF’s role in the world.

IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn is accused of attempted rape against an African maid in a luxury hotel in New York City.

And while the truth of this allegation remains for the legal system to sort out, screwing helpless people over in the Third World (and Eastern Europe: see Naomi Klein’s “The Shock Doctrine”) is what the IMF is all about. read more

Source: The Progressive

Fifteen thousand Wisconsin workers and their supporters rallied at the state capitol in Madison on Tuesday to protest the governor’s vicious and unprecedented assault on union rights.

Newly elected Republican Governor Scott Walker, emboldened by a new Republican state senate and a new Republican state assembly, wasted no time in putting forward a bill to make it illegal for public sector workers to bargain on anything other than wages.

Signs of “Hosni Walker” and “Kill the Bill” dotted the crowd. read more

Source: The Progressive

George W. Bush better stay at home.

The confessed waterboarder is a marked man. If he travels abroad, other countries can—and should—nab him and try him for the crime of torture.

In his memoir and in last week’s NBC interview, Bush acknowledged ordering waterboarding.

He says the lawyers told him it wasn’t torture. But he got bad legal advice.

Attorney General Eric Holder has recognized waterboarding as torture. So has the State Department, as the great civil liberties Bill Quigley points out at the Center for Constitutional Rights. read more

Source: The Progressive

That’s right. A book by the leading leftwing intellectual in America is verboten in the prison library there.

Though the library has 16,000 books, according to the Miami Herald, and though some of them deal with politics and current events, a book of Chomsky’s essays post 9/11 was expressly denied to a Guantánamo prisoner.

All of those essays were op-eds that Chomsky had originally written for the New York Times syndicate.

A spokesperson for the prison said “force protection reasons” precluded him from discussing the matter, but he confirmed that not a single copy of any Chomsky book was in the library. read more

Source: The Progressive

It’s Labor Day and the American worker doesn’t have a lot to celebrate.

Unemployment stands at 9.7 percent-that’s 15 million people out of work, officially, and millions more unofficially.

“Nearly one in six workers are now unemployed or underemployed,” notes the Economic Policy Institute.

Many of those who are lucky enough to still have work have seen their hours and benefits cut back, or have been forced to take unpaid furloughs. Twenty percent of companies have suspended their contributions to 401(k) plans or other pensions. read more