The French, British and Israeli governments have all accused Syria’s regime of using chemical weapons in its ongoing struggle with foreign-backed rebels. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon is urging Assad to allow UN inspectors into the country to verify or disprove the...
The Profligate Nuclear Pentagon
American taxpayers don’t get their money’s worth from their ever-growing annual investment in the Pentagon. It’s a bottomless pit that makes a hydrofracked well look like a pothole. Most taxpayers would be happy to spend considerably less. The massive size, baroque...
Tamerlan Tsarnaev and the Penumbra of Terror
The semi-official story coming out of Washington, and the Western media, is that the Tsarnaev brothers were "self-radicalized" loners, "losers," as their uncle Ruslan put it, unconnected to any larger organization or terrorist network. The poor babies were so...
Avoid Drumbeat to Escalate in Syria
Many politicians in Washington--not yet realizing that the still-broken American economy can no longer sustain an informal, globe-girdling U.S. empire—have sought to use Bashar al-Assad’s alleged use of chemical weapons on a small scale to escalate U.S. involvement in...
Twenty Iraqis Killed in Scattered Attacks
Obama and US Military Divided Over Syria?
Has Syria crossed the "red line" that warrants a U.S. military invasion? Has it not? The political establishment in the United States seems at odds with itself. Obama's government cannot speak with one voice on the issue, and the U.S. media is likewise spewing from...
Bedouins Prepare for Israel’s Expulsion Plan
Dozens of metal and wooden tents cling to the rocky hillside, just outside of Jerusalem along the road leading to the Dead Sea, while the unmistakable red roofs of Israeli settlements peak out from behind opposite hilltops. For 49-year-old Eid Hamis Jahalin, this...
Jeremy Scahill’s ‘Dirty’ Work
Jeremy Scahill’s new book, Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield, is sort of like approaching a dark cavity in an old tree. How many of us would instinctively cry out, “I don’t want to look – there will be creepy crawly things in there and I’m better off not...
Their War, Not Ours
"The worst mistake of my presidency," said Ronald Reagan of his decision to put Marines into the middle of Lebanon's civil war, where 241 died in a suicide bombing of their barracks. And if Barack Obama plunges into Syria's civil war, it could consume his presidency,...