It was sad last week to wake up to news of the passing of former New York Democratic congressman Otis G. Pike. During the fierce debates of 1975, known as the “Year of Intelligence” (because the controversies of the day led to the first significant investigations of the actions of U.S. intelligence agencies) Representative Pike …
Continue reading “Remember the 1970s, When Congress Actually Stood Up to the Intelligence Community?”
The Geneva II conference which claims to be seeking to end the war in Syria seems designed to fail and instead to provide an excuse for military intervention by the United States and its allies. Human rights activist, Ajamu Baraka, describes the negotiations as an "Orwellian subterfuge" designed to provide justification for war and a …
Continue reading “Is Syrian ‘Peace’ Conference Laying the Foundation for War?”
In today’s violence, at least 63 people were killed and three more were wounded. But over the whole of January, Antiwar.com compiled 1,284 dead and 2,088 wounded. Another 556 insurgents were also killed.
Individuals make history, but sometimes the process reverses itself and history makes individuals. President Barack Obama may have wanted to bomb Syria, and he certainly did want to meddle in Libya – where the results of his disastrous "humanitarian" intervention backfired badly – and yet his presidency will go down in history as a moment …
Continue reading “Obama, the Reluctant Realist”
Orders to kill from military superiors and the command not to kill that we receive growing up are a contradiction that confounds the understanding of the value of life. This mutual negation is a prime factor in the mental disorders suffered by returning soldiers. It is especially dangerous where the military action fails to meet …
Continue reading “A Nameless Hurt”
The toll numbers were high today as scores of militants were killed in Anbar province. Also, several bombings took place again in Baghdad, but so did the failed takeover of a government building. Overall, at least 93 people were killed in the violence, and 101 more were wounded.
Some territory in Anbar province was recovered from militant control perhaps that is why casualties were low there. Baghdad, however, suffered several bombings. Overall, at least 45 people were killed and 71 more were wounded across the country.
Originally posted at TomDispatch. You want ominous? Then offer a deep bow to conservative Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, a man eager to turn the Japanese military into an ever less defensive force, fully breach his country’s “peace constitution,” and assumedly someday end Japan’s “nuclear allergy” when it comes to a future weapons program. In the …
Continue reading “The Empire’s New Asian Clothes”
They call it the "Good War," one supposes, in order to differentiate it from all the really bad wars we’ve been fighting – and losing – lately: Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and all the future wars our political class has up its collective sleeve. I call it the Worst War, because it fathered all the ones …
Continue reading “It’s Always World War II”
President Obama cares more about the feelings of foreign leaders than he does about the constitutional rights of Americans. In his attempt to stanch the political bleeding from Edward’s Snowden’s revelations on National Security Agency (NSA) spying, Obama made a definite pledge to cease the spy agency’s surveillance of leaders of "close friends and allies" …
Continue reading “When Foreign Leaders Feelings Matter More than Constitutional Rights” 
