Rahul Mahajan comments on the rumors swirling about cyberspace about Iraqi boys being raped under the auspices of the American military in Abu Ghraib. Rahul is a penetrating foreign policy writer, and he gets his information from Seymour Hersch, one of America’s most distinguished journalists. Incredibly I’ve gotten to meet both men!
I’ve blogged about Mahajan before, and I’ve looked over his website several times and his latest blog attempt. What’s striking is that he has adopted free/fair trading as an issue in addition to the usual anti-imperialism. That I think is one overlooked possibility for the Democratic Party: getting the U.S. to abide by free trade rules. The sad fact is that the US is every bit as protectionist on some industries as we allege others to be (and bilateral agreements allow us to exact terms favorable to special interests).
Interestingly, when you examine campaign rhetoric, you see that both parties are essentially espousing protectionist policies (or appearing to espouse these policies). Both rail against the importation of jobs to Asia. And yet both Kerry and Bush support NAFTA and ostensibly the WTO (although Edwards advocates more attention to side agreements, which seems a good idea). Yet if you look at campaign speeches, you would swear that both parties are ready to close off their borders.
Eric Alterman reports on anti-Soros conspiracy theories. BTW, Alterman’s book What Liberal Media is an amazing read, but to be quite honest, I can’t stand his Altercations weblog . The layout on the msnbc page looks awful, it’s not particularly well organized, and viewer comments are mixed together with Alterman’s own commentary.
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