BREJ, Gaza — Tens of thousands of children in Gaza are still suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) following Israel’s three-week bombing December-January. Several crisis counseling teams run by international organizations and NGOs have been carrying out intervention program aimed at helping Gaza’s most vulnerable put the pieces of their lives back together. But …
Continue reading “Gaza’s Traumatized Children Struggle to Rise Again”
Updated at 5:56 p.m. EDT, Aug. 5, 2009
At least 13 Iraqis were killed and 23 more were wounded in the latest attacks. Eleven Iraqi pilgrims were kidnapped as well. Also, a U.S. soldier died in a non-combat incident yesterday.
Despite evidence implicating the current Pakistani army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Pervez Kayani, in a major military assistance program for the Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan over the past few years, senior officials of the Barack Obama administration persuaded Congress to extend military assistance to Pakistan for five years without any assurance that the Pakistani assistance to …
Continue reading “US Officials Protect Pak Military on Aid to Taliban”
In early July, U.S. Army Col. Timothy Reese committed truth. According to a story by Michael Gordon in the New York Times (reprinted in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, where I saw it), Col. Reese wrote "an unusually blunt memo [concluding] that Iraqi forces suffer from entrenched deficiencies but are now able to protect the Iraqi …
Continue reading “The Silence of the Sheep”
The AIPAC spy scandal was a big setback for Israel’s lobby in the U.S., despite its ambiguous outcome. Yes, the espionage charges against AIPAC officials Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman were eventually dropped – after every effort to obstruct justice and "graymail" the government was made on the defendants’ behalf – yet just the fact …
Continue reading “The ‘Patriotic’ Spy”
A once-fashionable subject in America’s think-tanks was futurology, supposed to be a fruitful method for foreseeing the future (or "possible futures," as it was put at the time). It worked by projecting what were thought to be plausible developments in the situation of a given subject by way of a narrative that would lead to …
Continue reading “Intervention Today Means a Less Secure Tomorrow”
World Wars and Lessons for Empire The Great War began 95 years ago this month, with the guns of August ending what has been described as Europe’s last summer. And 64 years ago this week, two nuclear weapons used against Japanese cities signaled the end of the Second World War. The first conflict broke the …
Continue reading “The Lessons of August”
A former Blackwater employee and an ex-U.S. Marine who has worked as a security operative for the company have made a series of explosive allegations in sworn statements filed on August 3 in federal court in Virginia. The two men claim that the company’s owner, Erik Prince, may have murdered or facilitated the murder of …
Continue reading “Blackwater Founder Implicated in Murder”
At least three Iraqis were killed and nine more were wounded in light violence. Karbala is on high alert for potential attacks ahead of Friday’s religious observance. Also, Gen. Ray Odierno publicly disagreed with a memo suggesting that U.S. troops could accelerate withdrawal from Iraq.
Imagine if you were imprisoned for seven years without charge or trial, and then a judge ruled that the government’s case against you consisted solely of unreliable allegations made by other prisoners (who were tortured, coerced, bribed, or suffering from mental health issues) and a "mosaic" of intelligence, purporting to rise to the level of …
Continue reading “Guantánamo: You Can Check Out Any Time You Like, but You Can Never Leave” 
