The bomb attack on innocent civilians and subsequent shooting of two law enforcement officials was a reprehensible act of terrorism, but the saturation media coverage and resulting societal frenzy is unwarranted and actually harmful. Apparently, the lone surviving...
Filling the Empty Battlefield
Chalmers Johnson’s book Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire was published in March 2000 -- and just about no one noticed. Until then, blowback had been an obscure term of CIA tradecraft, which Johnson defined as “the...
Protest Clashes and Random Attacks Leave 111 Killed, 233 Wounded Across Iraq
‘Boston Strong’: Marching in Lockstep with the Police State
"Of all the tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive." -C.S. Lewis Caught up in the televised drama of a military-style manhunt for the suspects in the Boston Marathon explosion, most Americans fail to realize that...
People Vanishing from Iraq War History
Ten years and the scripted media narrative of the Iraq War -- now receding into the rear-view of our embarrassingly short American memory -- is about as satisfying as the obligatory drum solo at your standard 1980’s rock concert. In other words, a milquetoast,...
Israel’s Ill-Treatment of Detained Palestinian Children ‘Widespread’
“Three interrogators questioned me for three hours. I was handcuffed. They beat me, slapped me, kicked me, boxed me, accused me of throwing stones; played a video of a demonstration. I denied I was there. So again, they beat me up,” recounts Zein Abu-Mariya, 17,...
Soldier Killed in a Clash in Northern Iraq
Clashes in Mosul left one soldier dead and another wounded. Three soldiers were wounded in a bombing. An explosion wounded a member of the Bani Saad council. In Baghdad, a bomb wounded three people. A blast near a mosque in Sadr City wounded one person. In Mahaweel, a...
Israel’s ‘Dove’ and Hawk in its War against Iran
It has been abundantly clear to those who closely follow the political developments in the Middle East that, for at least two decades, Israeli politics has been moving continuously toward extreme, reactionary right. The left, and the center-left represented by the...
Congress Exploits Our Fears to Take Our Liberty
This week, as Americans were horrified by the attacks in Boston, both houses of Congress considered legislation undermining our liberty in the name of “safety.” Gun control continued to be the focus of the Senate, where an amendment expanding federal “background...
Who’s Behind the Boston Marathon Attack?
The investigation into the Boston Marathon terrorist attack is now focused on what is the most important question: Did they act alone? In my view, the answer is no. To begin with, the brothers engaged in a firefight with police and held their own, throwing bombs at...