FM newswire for April 6, interesting articles about geopolitics

Today’s links to interesting news and analysis, collected from around the Internet. If you find this useful, pass it to a friend or colleague.

“The ACORN Conspiracy, Continued“, Peter Dreier, American Prospect, 23 March 2010 — “Right-wingers remain convinced that ACORN is part of a nefarious plot to destroy America, and they’ll use any means they can to prove it.” More about the Cloward-Piven conspiracy.
“Balochistan: Pakistan’s broken mirror“, The National (Abu Dhabi Media Co), 25 March 2010 — “Islamabad’s brutal attempts to crush ethnic Baloch nationalism have met with fierce, escalating resistance – and have laid bare the strains that threaten the founding idea of Pakistan.”
“America’s biofuel muddle, coming up empty“, The Economist, 25 March 2010 — “America will have trouble meeting its ambitious goals for biofuels.”
Rebels fighting government efforts to control the news: “The war on WikiLeaks and why it matters“, Glenn Greenwald, Salon, 27 March 2010
Conservatives denounce efforts to save public money: “Student Loan Reform And Intellectual Corruption“, Jonathan Chait, The New Republic, 31 March 2010 — “Jacob Levy marvels at the way conservatives have portrayed President Obama’s student loan reform as a “Soviet-style takeover”.
We can do better, if only we’d try: “The Outpatient Prison“, Mark A.R. Kleiman, The American Interest, March-April 2010 — About our amazingly ineffective yet expensive prison system, far worse than that of our peers.
Fun but painfully accurate analysis about the dysfuctional Senate: “House of Pain“, Matthew Yglesias, American Prospect, 1 April 2010
Iran begins to profit from its US-paid for victory in Iraq: “Iran Plays Host to Delegations After Iraq Elections“, New York Times, 1 April 2010
“Tea Partiers Are Fairly Mainstream in Their Demographics“, Gallup, 5 April 2010 — Sad but true. They want lots of government action to benefit them, but don’t want to pay for it.
Greece to Default ‘At Some Point,’ UBS’s Donovan Says“, Bloomberg, 24 March 2010
“Greece will default, but not this year“, Wolfgang Münchau, Financial Times, 4 April 2010

Sad news from Afghanistan

A powerful story of how our news is manufactured, Jerome Starkey’s attempt to uncover the truth about the deaths of three Afghan women in a raid on 12 February. Per Scott Horton: “NATO public affairs officers described them as the victims of attacks by “militants.” Starkey insisted that they had been killed by allied forces. Now the U.S. military is admitting that its claims were untrue.”