The Nation Jul-07-14-14

Snowden’s “Why I Did It” When I saw the front page of the May 26 issue, I was glad I’m letting my subscription expire, as it saves me the trouble of asking for a refund [Edward Snowden, “Why I Did It”]. To glorify the traitor Snowden should be beneath your magazine. Snowden is also a coward. Daniel Ellsberg, who released the Pentagon Papers, had the courage of his convictions and stayed in the country to face the music. Verlon Grafton Morristown, N.J. * * * Snowden’s statements at the National Press Club in Washington underscore his earlier claims that NSA surveillance is relatively useless as a tool for counterterrorism. Rather, mass interception is being applied to conduct economic espionage and diplomatic manipulation—and (most important) impose social control. Snowden implies that…

The stunning military advance into cities in northern and central Iraq by an Al Qaeda offshoot, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria—backed by some of Iraq’s Sunni tribal paramilitary forces and a militia tied to remnants of the deposed Baath party—compounds Iraq’s long-running tragedy. For
thirty-four years—through the Iran-Iraq War (1980–88), the Gulf War (1990–91), the brutal US-led sanctions against Iraq (1990–2003) and the devastation that followed the US invasion in 2003—Iraq’s people have suffered unspeakably. Now the ISIS-led offensive is adding to that suffering. In seizing Falluja, Mosul and a string of other cities, ISIS has left devastation and mass executions in its wake, and it is aggressively provoking a revival of the Sunni-versus-Shiite civil war that left thousands dead between 2005 and 2008. 
 But American military involvement…

Winona LaDuke, a member of the Anishinaabe nation from the White Earth Reservation in Minnesota, is renowned for her activism on behalf of women, indigenous people and the environment. The two-time Green Party vice presidential candidate and co-founder of Honor the Earth is now on the front lines of the climate fight. We spoke in North Dakota in May.—Laura Flanders
 Laura Flanders: This April, you joined a group of ranchers, farmers and tribal members from along the route of the Keystone XL pipeline who set up a “Reject and Protect” encampment near the White House. Why?
 Winona LaDuke: I live at the headwaters of the Mississippi and Red rivers, and I kept hearing about these pipelines. I don’t oppose pipelines—I like infrastructure—but I heard that the Keystone XL pipeline was…

The simplest path to a career in the punditocracy is via the trick of pretend contrarianism. I say “pretend” because it’s really a political game of mirrors. The idea is to appear contrarian while simultaneously embracing an established media narrative. The crucial line to walk is allowing oneself to go beyond available evidence while at the same time confirming the unspoken prejudice of media and political insiders. When it comes to economic issues, this is rarely a challenge, as few journalists got beyond Econ 101 in college. Most simply repeat our conservative conventional wisdom, which demonizes progressive tax rates, government services and, most of all, unions.
 Nicole Gelinas, a fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute, may be a cautionary tale in this category. She recently rocketed from near-total obscurity to…

A letter to the White House on June 12, signed by 216 worker leaders, informed President Obama that his recently ordered pay boost for low-wage federal contract workers—to $10.10 an hour—isn’t good enough. 
 The letter calls $10.10 poverty wages and urges the administration to require that federal contractors engage in collective bargaining with their workers in return for a commitment not to strike.
 The contract workers’ dissatisfaction with the wage hike comes as various cities enact higher increases. Many in Seattle are cele-
brating the recent increase to $15, the highest minimum wage in the nation. And calls for other municipalities to do the same have been gaining ground.
 —Carla Murphy Colorlines.com…

“[W]e are nothing but camping boy [scouts],” Bowe Bergdahl wrote the year before he wandered away from a remote US Army post in eastern Afghanistan and was captured by the Taliban. “Hiding from children behind our heavy armored trucks and our c-wire and sand bagged operating post, we tell our selves that we are not cowards.”
 “Coward” is precisely the accusation that right-wing pundits have been leveling at Bergdahl since the news broke that the Obama administration had freed five Guantánamo Bay prisoners in exchange for his release. Having criticized Obama for not doing enough to bring Bergdahl home, the right immediately launched a slimy campaign to prove that Bergdahl wasn’t worth the swap, that he was the wrong kind of soldier—a deserter.
 The media are now scrutinizing Bergdahl’s “mental…