From UPI, March 16:

One of America's most respected elder national security statesmen called for a full pull-out from Iraq Thursday.

Delivering the keynote address at the Center for American Progress' "Iraq; Next Steps for U.S. Policy," Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former National Security advisor for President Jimmy Carter, said that "within a year we should be able to complete a course of disengagement" and withdraw from Iraq.

There's nothing new in this, except that it comes from scholars at Harvard, not cranks at Counterpunch. It's publication shows that the worm may be turning in the US against the supposedly privileged Jews. It greatly emphasizes "the Lobby" (guess which one) in the Iraq debacle, and poo-poos the notion of a war for oil. John Mearsheimer, University of Chicago professor and author of The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, and Stephen Walt, of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and author of Taming American Power: The Global Response to US Primacy, write for London Review of Books March 10:

Paula Palmer writes for Global Response Action Alerts:

In late January at the World Social Forum in Caracas, Venezuelan indigenous leaders asked Global Response to support them in their struggle to stop construction of open-pit coal mines in their territories. I joined them in an all-day march through the streets of Caracas, carrying banners saying "No al Carbon!" (No to Coal).

From the New York Times, March 16:

The U.S. military has sent about 800 troops from Kuwait to Iraq for extra security to coincide with an expected surge of pilgrims to Muslim shrines in coming days, officials said in Baghdad on Wednesday.

From the New York Times, March 15:

Ice Retreats in Arctic for 2nd Year; Some Fear Most of It Will Vanish
For the second year in a row, the cloak of sea ice on the Arctic Ocean failed to grow to its normal winter expanse, scientists said yesterday. The finding led some climate experts to predict a record expansion of open water this summer.

India's Maoist Naxalite rebels have been very busy lately, but the wave of attacks is going virtually unreported outside India. From PTI via The Hindu, March 14:

Naxalites this morning released the passenger train that they had seized last evening in a thick forest area in Jharkhand, without causing any harm to the passengers.

An ACLU press release, March 14:

PITTSBURGH – The American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Pennsylvania today released new evidence that the Federal Bureau of Investigation is conducting investigations into a political organizations based solely on its anti-war views.

Just in case you thought it was still the 20th century. From the technology news site The Inquirer, March 15:

Robots break Asimov's first law

And so it begins