The armed might of the state (and its auxiliary forces) remains in the hands of Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and its "reelected" President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has, according to Neil MacFarquhar of the New York Times, solidified control over the Interior...
The American media in its 24/7 half-life tends to turn the surprises of history, large and small, into flood-tide events. They sweep over us, offering a kind of news satiation that leads quickly enough to forgetfulness -- as the media moves on. And then the subjects...
It helps to have spent a childhood reading sci-fi. It means nothing bizarre really surprises you. In June 2008, TomDispatch regular William Astore wrote a post about how the Air Force had jumped big time into cyberspace. That service had even bigger dreams for a "$30...
When the Abu Ghraib photos were released in 2004, it seemed that most Americans were shocked by such novel and horrific images, but at least one was not. I'm talking about Alfred McCoy, who had been following the Central Intelligence Agency since the early 1970s, when...
It might be terrible times for so many companies suffering through a global economic meltdown, but in the war zone, there seems to be no recession in sight. In fact, with "Obama's war" in the expanding Afghanistan/Pakistan theater of operations revving up, there's...
Murder, torture, abuse… and photos of the same. We've seen some of them, of course. Now, evidently under pressure from his top generals, President Obama has decided to fight the release of other grim photos from the dark side of the Bush years of offshore injustice –...
Back in March, Pepe Escobar, that itchy, edgy global reporter for one of my favorite online publications, Asia Times, began laying out the great, ongoing energy struggle across Eurasia, or what he likes to call Pipelineistan for its web of oil and natural gas...
