May 2006

by Dave Lindorff

What do you call a nation that provides medical aid to desperately poor people in Mexico, heating assistance to low-income families in the U.S., crucial project financing to some of the poorest countries in Africa, and aid to impoverished Caribbean island nations?

If you're the New York Times, you call it "provocative," and you call the leader of that country "the next Fidel Castro."

June 2005

by Dave Lindorff

The cat's finally out of the bag.

Having failed to attract much interest in his plan for privatizing Social Security and killing it off more or less directly, President Bush, in a rare, but typically scripted press conference at the White House last week, declared his intention to convert the 70-year-old retirement security program into a welfare program, pure and simple.

Bush's latest scheme would see retirement checks slashed for those earning as little as $36,000 a year (by 13 percent according to one estimate).

February 2005

by Dave Lindorff

The outrage and dismay over devastation and human suffering seem to have much more to do with how such horrors were caused than the actual horrors themselves, it would seem.

At least, it seems that way when it comes to our outgoing Secretary of State Colin Powell, whose sense of horror seems to be remarkably selective.