Toluu

Antiwar.com Blog

Antiwar Radio: Katrina vanden HeuvelToday

Katrina vanden Heuvel will be the featured guest on Antiwar Radio on Monday, December 1st.

Heuvel will discuss her latest article on TheNation.com, “Smart Defense” at 12:15PM Eastern.

Katrina vanden Heuvel, a graduate of Princeton University, is the editor and publisher of The Nation magazine and co-editor of Taking Back America: And Taking Down the American Right. She can be found frequently commentating on politics on MSNBC, CNN and PBS and writing the blog “Editor’s Cut” on TheNation.com.

The Scott Horton Show airs Monday through Friday from 12PM-2PM Eastern on KAOS 92.7FM. Additional feeds and archives available at Antiwar Radio.

Speaking of Battle DroidsYesterday

We’ve already mentioned Israel’s quest to build an army of vicious robotic animals destined to go all Matrix and put all of humanity into pods to fuel their cold, sterile robotic society. Turns out the United States is way ahead of them.

Its no secret that the United States has been spending hundreds of billions of dollars to create its own obedient army of killer robots. But perhaps interested in staving off the eventual robot rebellion (or maybe they just saw one of the Terminator movies), the Pentagon is also investing $4 billion in a research program to make sure this new army doesn’t do anything that might violate the Geneva Conventions. The military has high hopes that its next generation of autonomous killbots, designed without emotions, will be immune to the temptations to engage in revenge killings, and torture of enemy combatants.

Medvedev’s ‘Tough Guy Act’November 25

According to CBS, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev’s first six months in office have contradicted the “liberal” reputation he (apparently) had when he was first elected. Maybe it’s a shock to some that one can be “soft spoken” and never have been a KGB spook and yet still, as president, look out of the interests of one’s country. But the examples given for Medvedev’s alleged illiberalism don’t hold water.

Opposition to missile defense? Nearly everyone with a clue is opposed to the US basing a missile defense system, especially one that does not even work, in Poland and the Czech Republic. Being a liberal in either the contemporary American or the classical sense doesn’t preclude opposing US imperial ambitions, anyhow.

Criticizing the US financial system? Hasn’t everyone all the way up to our own president done so by now? Economists have been warning of a collapse for years and classical liberals have been warning about bubbles since before anyone alive on this planet was born. This is hardly a “continu[ation]” of “Cold War rhetoric” on Medvedev’s part.

Georgia. Please. I think any journalist who would like to remain credible at this point should just recognize that

An Avatar for PeaceNovember 24

Dear Friends of Antiwar.com:

A donor left this message in my Facebook Account,

Here’s an idea. We ask all our friends to switch their Facebook and Myspace profile images to the Anti-War.com logo on some upcoming anti-war day. Let’s say Thanksgiving day, so we can be thankful there aren’t even more wars.

At the same time, on the same day, we ask everyone to switch their profile status to just “Stop the wars.”

And, of course, if anyone asks, “which wars” the answer is “all of them.”

Instead of your head shot, please consider changing your avatar on Facebook, MySpace and Twitter on Thanksgiving Day to an Antiwar.com logo.

I know I’m thankful for all you champions of peace. Please email me at akeaton@antiwar.com for images and logos.

Peace,

Angela

Hat tip to Antiwar.com reader George Donnelly.

No Means NoNovember 23

A US patrol attempts to enter an Iraqi university campus, but is stopped at the gates by campus officials.

Six months ago if we saw this as a lead in to a story, there was a good bet the rest of it would involve the university president being marched out into the streets in chains and follow-up stories desperately trying to link him to some militant faction or another.

But with a little over a month left before the UN mandate expires, and the Status of Forces Agreement set to severely curtail the authority of US forces on Iraqi soil, things turned out a little different. After being told they could only enter unarmed, out of uniform and then only after they make a proper appointment, they turned around and left, no incident.

Asking permission is likely as novel a strategy for the military, used to getting its own way in Iraq on all things, as the notion of getting search warrants before entering peoples’ homes, but with the days of unchecked authority and arbitrary detentions seemingly over its something they’re going to have to get used to. So is hearing “no” when it asks for access.