The Best Argument for the Afghan War — and What’s Wrong with It:
For those of us on the left, the best argument in favor of the Afghan war is not Obama’s claim that we need to stop Al Qaeda from returning to its bases in Afghanistan. . . . The best argument is that we have an obligation to the Afghan people – especially to the feminists, secular teachers, labor organizers, health workers, democrats, all those working to build a secular, civil society. We encouraged them to help create a real alternative to religious fundamentalism. It would be wrong now to abandon them to the Taliban.
. . . continued at TheNation.com
Fans have been puzzled and troubled by Bob Dylan’s new Christmas album. To help figure out what Dylan is doing, we turned to Sean Wilentz — he’s the official historian at the official website 
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When Barack Obama gave his victory speech on election night last November, he picked Chicago’s Grant Park – the legendary site of the battle between anti-war demonstrators and Chicago cops during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in 1968. According to campaign manager David Axelrod, Obama chose Grant Park to “symbolically overcome the damage done to American idealism forty years before.”
“Water found on the moon,” the headlines said – water that “could be used for drinking,” the LA Times reported, possibly enough for “future astronauts to live off the land.” . . .
It’s being called “the most ambitious commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall outside of Germany”: “The Wall Project” in Los Angeles — and its political message will surprise many. Artists commissioned by the organizers have promised works that draw analogies between the Berlin Wall and the wall the Israelis have erected along the border with the West Bank, and the wall the US has erected along the Mexican border.
Thursday’s “Day of Action” against draconian budget cuts at the University of California campuses brought thousands of people to rallies at all ten campuses. At UC Berkeley, 5,000 students and workers, along with many faculty members, rallied at noon. At the same hour at UCLA, 700 students and workers and a few faculty members gathered at Bruin Plaza. And 500 rallied at UC Irvine, which Time magazine described as “normally placid.”
dministration has asked Congress to establish a new “intelligence officer training program” at colleges and universities. The proposal, buried in the 2010 intelligence authorization bill, would invite schools to apply for grants for courses that would “meet the needs of the intelligence community.” Students taking the courses would have to receive security clearances. . . .
Bentonville, Ark., may be unknown to most Americans, but it is the center of the world for some 750 corporations that manufacture consumer goods — because Bentonville is the legendary home office of Wal-Mart, and those corporations want to sell their products to the world’s largest retailer. It’s also the largest private employer in the nation, operator of 4,200 stores. Bentonville is a key to understanding the success of Wal-Mart, historian Nelson Lichtenstein argues in his terrific book, The Retail Revolution: How Wal-Mart Created a Brave New World of Business. . . .MORE in the LA Times Sunday Book Review 
Vacationing on Kauai, the westernmost of the Hawaiian islands, the only question most tourists ask is which beach to go to today – but visitors and locals alike were startled by Thursday’s news from Washington: a North Korean missile is now aimed at Hawaii, and Hawaii’s missile defenses are being fortified.