World-News

Tom Engelhardt, TomDispatch.com: "Iraq remains a mess from which the US military seems increasingly uninterested in withdrawing fully and Afghanistan a disaster area, but it's never too soon to think about the next war. The subject is already on the minds of Pentagon planners. The question is: Are they focusing on how to manage future wars so that they won't last longer than the American Revolution, the Civil War, and World War II combined?"

http://www.truthout.org/how-fight-a-better-war-next-time-three-fixes-american-way-war57333



Entering the Scary "Lacuna" of American Politics

Bernard Weiner, The Crisis Papers: "I finally finished reading Barbara Kingsolver's latest brilliant novel, 'The Lacuna,' and it's the kind of book that engenders discussion on a wide variety of important topics. For those who haven't read it yet, the sweep of the book - which clearly was composed during the Cheney/Bush years, for good reason - is epic in scale. Dealing with several decades of Mexican and American history, from 1929 to the early 1950's, it touches on the end of empires, the pandering mass-media, the use of fear by demagogues to herd the sheeple..., and much more. (The title refers to the hidden entryways that can lead one to different levels of understanding.)"

http://www.truthout.org/entering-scary-lacuna-american-politics57342



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