Month: September 2013

Here’s a question for you: Can a military tiptoe onto a continent? It seems the unlikeliest of images, and yet it’s a reasonable enough description of what the U.S. military has been doing ever since the Pentagon created an Africa Command (AFRICOM) in 2007. It’s been slipping, sneaking, creeping into Africa, deploying ever more forces … Continue reading “AFRICOM’s Gigantic ‘Small Footprint’”

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, from those who are cold and are not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its … Continue reading “Ten Reasons Why America Does Not Need to Go to War Over Syria”

The American people are "war-weary," we are told, and that’s the only reason they’re overwhelmingly opposed to bombing Syria: this bit of conventional wisdom is invoked by warmongers and peaceniks alike, but is it true? Well, to some degree, no doubt, but not in any tangible sense: after all, there is no conscription, we have … Continue reading “The Lies Behind This War”

At least 16 people were killed and 44 more were wounded in fresh attacks. Kirkuk suffered three bomb attacks alone.

No? Well no one else has heard anything about them either. They could easily become the basis for a joke inside the beltway but for the fact that no one in Washington has a sense of humor. As the Chief US mediator is named Martin Indyk one would think there is sufficient fodder for an … Continue reading “Have You Heard the One About the Middle East Peace Talks?”

President Obama’s request for express congressional authorization for a limited aerial invasion of Syria raises profound legal and constitutional questions. For starters, there is simply no legal basis in international law to support an American invasion of Syria. Yet, notwithstanding that, federal law permits the president to commit U.S. military forces anywhere he wants for … Continue reading “War, War, What Is It Good For?”

“Life is almost normal in the center of Damascus,” local resident Hisham says from the predominantly Christian neighborhood of Bab Touma. “Only the occasional noise of artillery on the outskirts reminds me that we are at war.” The sound of artillery is now normal in Damascus. Hisham tells IPS on the phone from Damascus of … Continue reading “Splintered Damascus Holds Its Breath”

Poor Pol Pot. He just can’t get any respect. Despite a solid resume as a crazed, brutal dictator responsible for killing approximately 1.7 million of his own people, his name never comes up when the caretakers of American empire set their sights on an enemy du jour. The same goes for Josef Stalin, Chairman Mao, … Continue reading “When In Doubt, Say ‘Hitler’”

The Justice Ministry announced the executions of three men convicted on terrorism charges. In today’s attacks, at least 40 Iraqis were killed and 55 more were wounded.

In an increasingly phantasmagorical world, here’s my present fantasy of choice: someone from General Keith Alexander’s outfit, the National Security Agency, tracks down H.G. Wells’s time machine in the attic of an old house in London.  Britain’s subservient Government Communications Headquarters, its version of the NSA, is paid off and the contraption is flown to … Continue reading “Alone and Delusional on Planet Earth”