At least 41 people were killed in the recent bombing of Istanbul’s Ataturk Airport. The day before, suicide bombers killed five people in Qaa, a small village in Lebanon. And while the Saudi-led and U.S.-backed war in Yemen continues to rage, an ISIS affiliate claimed responsibility for attacks in the Yemeni port city of Mukalla …
Continue reading “From Paris to Istanbul, More ‘War on Terror’ Means More Terrorist Attacks”
Several small bombings took place in Baghdad.
After months of anticipation, the United Kingdom has decided to leave the European Union (EU). Although, the results were fairly close – 51.9% voted to “Leave” vs. 48.1% elected to “Remain” – the consequences of the decision will be far-reaching. Not only will the Brits negotiate their exit from the EU (thus, the term “Brexit”) …
Continue reading “Searching for a ‘Responsible Adult’: Is Brexit Good for Israel?”
Cluster bombs are some of the cruelest available weapons of war, banned in 119 countries and counting. This June, in a close vote of 204-216, the House of Representatives voted against an amendment to stop the sale of US made cluster bombs to Saudi Arabia, which uses them to commit grievous human rights violations in …
Continue reading “Jack Reed: Cluster Bomb Cheerleader”
US airstrikes near Fallujah left hundreds of militants dead.
The memorandum by 51 State Department officials calling for US military intervention in Syria last week has been treated in news media coverage as a case of dissent from existing Syria policy by individual officials involved in Syria policy. But the memo has all the earmarks of an initiative that had the blessing of the …
Continue reading “The Syria ‘Dissent’ Memo and US Bureaucratic Pressure Strategy”
Is Brexit a move toward British independence? Some Leave and Remain partisans may believe so, differing only over whether that’s good or bad. But, as usual, things are more complicated. We should hope that, in one respect, Britain’s exit from the EU will create a kind of dependence that did not exist while it was …
Continue reading “Brexit: Which Kind of Dependence Now?”
Originally posted at TomDispatch. Here’s an unavoidable fact: we are now in a Brexit world. We are seeing the first signs of a major fragmentation of this planet that, until recently, the cognoscenti were convinced was globalizing rapidly and headed for unifications of all sorts. If you want a single figure that catches the grim …
Continue reading “An Endless Cycle of Indecisive Wars”
Dozens of mass graves could be destroyed before authorities have time to unearth, document, and rebury the victims buried within.
On a Monday morning in September of 2014 White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest stepped out in front of cameras to respond to questions of “intelligence failure” and explained that both the administration and intelligence community were caught completely “surprised” over the shocking and “rapid advance” of ISIS into Iraq over the course of that …
Continue reading “Declassifying the Syrian Jihad: CIA vs. the Pentagon” 
