The recent attack on a predominantly African-American church by a murderous racist has provoked a passionate debate about who is – and is not – a "terrorist." According to FBI director James Comey, the perpetrator of the Charleston massacre – in which nine people were...
Intense shelling is driving residents out of Garma. The military is peppering the city just east of Baghdad as a precursor to freeing it from militant control. At least 51 were killed and 13 more were wounded in violence: A bomb in Mahmoudiya left three dead and nine...
The story published in the Washington Post on 13 June shows how the US military service chiefs – who make decisions on war policy in light of their own institutional interests – prefer an inconclusive war with IS and existing constraints on US involvement,...
Island disputes are a big thing in Asia. Japan and China both claim the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands. Japan and South Korea tussle over Dokdo/Takeshima. Japan and Russia still haven’t definitively sorted out who owns the Kuriles/Northern Territories. You’d think that these...
The return of civilians to the city of Tikrit and Salah ad Din province has been hampered by fears that Shi’ite militiamen will exact revenge on Sunnis, but that is not their only problem. Residents must also contend with tribal feuds as well a booby-trapped homes and...
Originally posted at TomDispatch. In April 2003, with Baghdad occupied by American troops, the top officials of the Bush administration were already dreaming of building bases in Iraq that would be garrisoned more or less in perpetuity. Everyone was too polite to call...
On Tuesday, The New York Times published the latest look at drone pilots. These Unmanned Aerial Vehicle operators are suffering such a high rate of exhaustion and stress that the US Air Force has been forced to cut drone missions down from a high of about 65 a week....
I've been having some minor but intrusive health problems lately, and today is one of those days – and so, unfortunately, I won't be writing a column. But never fear, I'll be back on Monday, so stay tuned – as we used to say back in the era of television...
About fifty students sat on the concrete floor of a makeshift shack, absorbing the desert heat as they listened to Salim talk about the imminent destruction of Umm al Hiran and Atir, two unrecognized Bedouin villages located twenty minutes from my apartment in...
