With support for interventionism at an all-time low, the War Party is constantly on the lookout for fresh justifications of their failed and increasingly unpopular overseas meddling. The old saw about how "terrorists" mustn’t be allowed to establish...
Shredding the Fourth Amendment in Post-Constitutional America
Originally posted at TomDispatch. When it comes to spying, surveillance, and privacy, a simple rule applies to our world: however bad you think it is, it’s worse. Thanks to Edward Snowden, we’ve learned an enormous amount about the global surveillance...
260 Killed Across Iraq, But Military Claims Gains in Tikrit
Reverting to the Ummah: Who Is the ‘Angry Muslim’ and Why
"Brother, brother," a young man called on me as I hurriedly left a lecture hall in some community center in Durban, South Africa. This happened at the height of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, when all efforts at stopping the ferocious US-western military...
The ACLU Knocks Militarized Police
This week, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) published their study of 20 different law enforcement agencies’ use of SWAT teams on 800 occasions between 2011 and 2013. Their conclusions may not surprise people who have been following the militarization and the...
Taking Out Our Friends So We Can Install Our Enemies. What?
Once in a while the inconsistencies in American foreign policy become sufficiently clear to reveal the consistency in American foreign policy. Three contemporary inconsistencies in Iraq and Syria, all clearly connected, converge to throw America’s consistent foreign...
135 More Killed in Iraq, But Maliki Still Rejects Unity Government
Impossible – Yet It’s Happening!
Does anybody remember "Impossible – Yet It Happened!"? When I was a kid, that was my favorite part of the comics page. It was a series based on the work of Charles Fort, the chronicler of the odd, all about – well, supposedly "impossible" events...
The New Oil Wars in Iraq
Originally posted at TomDispatch. Imagine the president, speaking on Iraq from the White House Press Briefing Room last Thursday, as the proverbial deer in the headlights – and it’s not difficult to guess just what those headlights were. Think of them as...
Over 4,000 Killed Across Iraq So Far in June
At least 4,695 people were killed across Iraq so far in June, and the tally is only going to get higher as ISIS/DAASH militants continue their trek towards Baghdad. The United Nations also released its preliminary figures for the month, but they are much lower in...