“Our empire in general makes us less secure since it consumes moral and material resources better used for domestic reconstruction. . .”

Norman Birnbaum served as an adviser to the Kennedy Presidential Campaign, a consultant to the National Security Council, an adviser to the United Automobile Workers, the chair of the Policy Advisory Council of the New Democratic Coalition, and as a member of the editorial board of Partisan Review. His writings include The Crisis of Industrial Society, Toward A Critical Sociology,The Radical Renewal, The Politics of Ideas in Modern America, and After Progress: A Century of American Social Reform and European Socialism. He is a member of the editorial board of The Nation, founding editor of the New Left Review and publishes frequently in the American and European press. He has a distinguished academic career including as a Professor Emeritus of Georgetown University Law Center, and teaching at Amherst College, the London School of Economics, Oxford University, the University of Strasbourg among others. He is a founding committee member of the Campaign for America's Future and advisor to members of the Congress and Senate.

BANGKOK, Thailand -- Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra resigned on Wednesday (April 5), and appointed a loyal colleague, to end anti-Thaksin street protests before the June arrival of the world's kings, queens and other royalty to honor Thailand's revered monarch.

Thaksin named Justice Minister Chitchai Wannasathit, who is also a deputy prime minister and former police general, as this Southeast Asian nation's interim prime minister.

Chitchai, 59, received a Ph.D. in Justice Administration in 1976 from the University of Louisville, Kentucky, according to his official biography.

Chitchai, considered a close friend of Thaksin, has extensive police experience including previous posts as Immigration Commissioner, Secretary-General of the Narcotics Control Board, and Interior Minister.

"I have appointed Chitchai to do my work from now on. I need to rest," Thaksin told the nation on Wednesday (April 5).

"It's not that I'm not willing to fight, but when I fight, the nation loses," Thaksin said.

"I don't need to see bloodshed among Thais. Thai blood must not paint the land of Thailand."

What would happen if politically active progressive Americans suddenly stopped devoting their energies to drafting better sound bites, and instead directed all that time and passion into a serious and strategic campaign of civil disobedience?

I know, I know, we're constantly told that we're being out-framed and out-messaged.  Horse shit.  We're smarter than they are, wittier, pithier, more attuned to the perspectives of those we're speaking to.  But we don't own the networks and the newspapers.  They do.  Mammoth corporations with an agenda that usually lines up with that of right-wing gangsters control the microphones.  Stop the masochism!  Break a frame over your knee.  Spit out the sound bites.  Ask not how you can save a political party that doesn't want your help in a single sentence.  Ask what in your life you can sacrifice, what you can put at risk to force our government to do what we the people demand.

What a contrast between the French demonstrations and the vast and exciting marches here against proposed immigration laws, as against the limp turnouts against the U.S. war on Iraq!

Across a few explosive weeks the first two series of protests have surged up in numbers and political impact. In France earlier this week there were a million on the streets. Just in Los Angeles a couple of weeks ago, half a million. In Paris, Dominique de Villepin, the author of the hated law loosening curbs on employers' right to fire new hires, is fighting for his political life. In Congress, U.S. senators revised the language of their bill in step with the magnitude and passion of the rallies.

Meanwhile, though two out of three here in the United States disapprove of the war in Iraq, there's no energetic political leadership from above, no irresistible shove from below.

AUSTIN, Texas -- In general, I'm against kicking 'em when they're down ... unless really awful people are involved. I figured Tom DeLay is so awful, plenty of people would gang up on him and I could pass.

Imagine my surprise when the toughest question one famous TV tough guy could come up with was, "Do you think you invested too much in the Republican Party?" Another inquired whether DeLay could think of any mistakes he'd made. I waited with bated breath for the immortal, "I wish I could learn not to work so hard," but no, he couldn't think of a single one.

Newt Gingrich and Tom DeLay first came to power promising to restore democracy to the House of Representatives, supposedly suffering from then-Speaker Jim Wright's tyrannical regime. Even after the Rs drove Wright from office, however, bipartisanship was out of the question for DeLay. In the budget fight and government shutdown of 1995, for instance, DeLay rejected compromise and famously said, "It's time for all-out war."