In 1933, the Holodomor was playing out in Ukraine. After the “kulaks,” the independent farmers, had been liquidated in the forced collectivization of Soviet agriculture, a genocidal famine was imposed on Ukraine through seizure of her food production. Estimates of the dead range from two to nine million souls. Walter Duranty of the New York …
Continue reading “Is Putin Worse Than Stalin?”
I was originally planning on taking my summer break next week, starting Monday, but medical issues – nothing serious, but pretty distracting – have intervened and so I’m starting it today. I definitely need a rest: hey, I’m not getting any younger! But never fear – I’ll be back on Monday, August 4, rarin’ to …
Continue reading “To My Readers”
A common slur from interventionists is that so-called isolationists condone oppressive regimes, cruel warlords, or bloody civil wars simply because they do not wish to militarily engage. To wish to keep your tax dollars, your name, and more importantly, "your" armed forces out of other countries is to not care when other people are suffering. …
Continue reading “Yes, We Should Care More About ‘Our’ Wars”
Originally posted at TomDispatch. What a world we’re in. Thanks to smartphones, iPads, and the like, everyone is now a photographer, but it turns out that, in the public landscape, there’s ever less to photograph. So here are a few tips for living more comfortably in a photographically redacted version of our post-9/11 world. Even …
Continue reading “Undue Process in Washington”
At least 147 people were killed across Iraq today. Bombs in the Baghdad region took the most lives. The worst attack involved a group of prisoners who were being transported north of the capital. Another 64 people were wounded.
Two reporters for major US TV channels were summarily "removed" last week from covering Israel’s attack on Gaza, moments before Israel launched a ground invasion. NBC pulled out Ayman Mohyeldin, who has been widely praised for the even-handedness of his reporting from Gaza, just as he landed a harrowing scoop. He had kicked a football …
Continue reading “US Plays Decisive Role in Israel’s Attack on Gaza”
While filming a documentary in Syria in the summer of 2003, I visited the Jaramana refugee camp near Damascus. Run by the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine, Jaramana at the time housed around 5,000 registered Palestinian refugees from the Arab-Israeli wars of 1948 and 1967 and their descendants. At Jaramana, rows of decaying …
Continue reading “Refugee Crisis: The Stunning Collapse of Syria’s Safe Spaces”
Prime Minister Maliki’s chances for a third term as premier appear to be slipping away as he loses support from Iran. At least 179 militants were reported killed. Twenty-nine other people were killed as well. Only one person was reported injured.
Washington, D.C., is a world unto itself: inside the bubble, where politicians and their kept pundits endlessly massage each others’ egos (and bank accounts), the world is America’s oyster, to be greedily gulped and washed down with a swig of the Imperial City’s most popular intoxicant – hubris. Oblivious to the unwholesome spectacle of their …
Continue reading “The New Meaning of ‘Isolationism’”
The Middle East is burning in fires of wars, violence, and destruction from Syria, to Yemen, and Iraq. But, amid all these wars, a new one has begun between Israel and the Palestinian people living in Gaza. The truth is that the war between Israel and the Palestinians is the mother of all the wars …
Continue reading “Israel: Occupation, War Crimes, and Apartheid” 
