Originally posted at TomDispatch. Consider it a conundrum. Both parties in Congress and the president simply can’t pour enough money into the Pentagon and the rest of the national security state. As a result, theirs has been a cumulative trillion-dollar budget for years and it’s still on the rise. On the other hand, the domestic …
Continue reading “Ending the Pentagon’s Long Con”
The monthly casualty figures popped up during April.
Russian gun rights activist and graduate exchange student Maria Butina was sentenced to 18 months in prison last week for “conspiracy to act as a foreign agent without registering.” Her “crime” was to work to make connections among American gun rights activists in hopes of building up her organization, the Right to Bear Arms, when …
Continue reading “Why is Maria Butina in Prison?”
You’ve got to give it to the Defense Department – they’re assiduous planners. I know: I used to be one. So the latest news that the DOD is preparing its 40 remaining forever prisoners at the extralegal detention center of Guantanamo Bay for nursing home and hospice care, should come as little surprise. It still …
Continue reading “The United States of Incarceration”
Vieques is a small Puerto Rican island with some 9,000 inhabitants. Fringed by palm trees and lovely beaches, with the world’s brightest bioluminescent bay and wild horses roaming everywhere, it attracts substantial numbers of tourists. But, for about six decades, Vieques served as a bombing range, military training site, and storage depot for the U.S. …
Continue reading “Breaking the Grip of Militarism: The Story of Vieques”
Turkish airstrikes targets PKK sites in northern Iraq.
Originally posted at TomDispatch. More than a decade ago, I saw the future – and it sure looked bleak. I was in Orlando, Florida (like I said, bleak!), for the 26th Army Science Conference, a showcase for emerging military technologies that was nothing if not underwhelming. All these years later, only a few memories leap …
Continue reading “Will Technology Stamp a ‘Forever’ on America’s Wars?”
At least eight people were killed in small attacks across northern Iraq.
A US spokesman confirmed that there is a friendly-fire incident being investigated.
After 18 years of unchallenged power and success, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan suddenly finds himself in the middle of several domestic and foreign crises with no obvious way out. It’s unfamiliar ground for a master politician who’s moved nimbly from the margins of power to becoming the undisputed leader of the largest economy in …
Continue reading “‘Revenge of the Kurds’: Erdogan’s Missteps Are Piling Up” 
