Rural communities are experiencing a disproportionate amount of U.S. military deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a new study by the Carsey Institute, a think tank at the University of New Hampshire. "The mortality rate for soldiers from rural America is...
A revealing book I have recently read about the present Middle East is Joris Luyendijk's Almost Human. Luyendijk was a Dutch journalist who spent several years (1998-2003) in Arab countries as well as in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories, working for two...
Updated at 12:59 a.m. EST, Nov. 29, 2006 As media outlets in the United States debated today over which terms to use to describe the violent situation in Iraq, 76 Iraqis were killed or found dead and another 100 wounded. Also, a U.S. Marine was reported killed and the...
PARIS – Whoever poisoned Alexander Litvinenko had two goals: a long and lingering death for the KGB defector and pointing a finger of accusation for his killing right in the face of Vladimir Putin. Which leads me to believe Putin had nothing to do with it. In an...
During the first Lebanon war, I visited Jounieh, a town some 20 km north of Beirut. At the time, it served as a port for the Christian forces. It was an exciting evening. In spite of the war raging in nearby Beirut, Jounieh was full of life. The Christian elite spent...
Many foreign policy experts advocate using economic sanctions to motivate foreign governments to change policy. And, while it may be true that many of these governments could improve their countries with policy reforms, history shows that economic coercion doesn't...
Once again the possibility of reinstating a military draft is being discussed in Washington, and while the idea seems remote, it is not unthinkable. Democratic Congressman Charles Rangel of New York, soon to be a powerful committee chair, has openly called for...
Keep in mind, I've run TomDispatch.com for only a few years, but I've been a book editor in mainstream publishing for over 30 years. Sometime last spring, I was on the phone with former federal prosecutor Elizabeth de la Vega talking about books she might someday...
Updated at 6:20 p.m. EST, Nov. 27, 2006 A curfew that followed a massacre in Sadr City on Thursday was completely lifted today. As clashes resumed in Baghdad, 109 Iraqis were killed or found dead and another 70 wounded during incidents in the capital and elsewhere...
Four major political assassinations with international implications in the past year, three in the last month or so: Rafik Hariri and Pierre Gemayel in Lebanon, and two Russians, Anna Politkovskaya, a journalist, and former KGB officer Alexander Litvinenko. Is it just...
