A Secret War in 135 Countries

Originally posted at TomDispatch. It was an impressive effort: a front-page New York Times story about a “new way of war” with the bylines of six reporters, and two more and a team of researchers cited at the end of the piece. “They have plotted...

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Privatizing the Apocalypse

Originally posted at TomDispatch. Imagine for a moment a genuine absurdity: somewhere in the United States, the highly profitable operations of a set of corporations were based on the possibility that sooner or later your neighborhood would be destroyed and you and...

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Flying the Unfriendly Skies of America

Rebecca Gordon’s piece today triggered a little repressed memory of mine of a trip I took in 2003. Arriving at the airport, I turned my suitcase over to the ticket agent, only to be told that it had been singled out for special inspection. I was already running...

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Garrisoning the Globe

Originally posted at TomDispatch. It’s not that I knew nothing about U.S. military bases before I met Chalmers Johnson. In certain ways, my idea of the good life had been strongly shaped by such a base. Admittedly, it wasn’t in Germany or Japan or South Korea or some...

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Nothing Succeeds Like Failure

Originally posted at TomDispatch. Let’s take a moment to consider failure and its options in Washington. The U.S. has been warring with the Islamic State (IS) for more than a year now. The centerpiece of that war has been an ongoing campaign of bombings and air...

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The Neoconservative Empire Returns

Originally posted at TomDispatch. Everyone knows the basics of the dispute over the nuclear deal with Iran. In no time at all, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu leaped directly into the American political arena to take potshots at that agreement in a way that,...

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Rogue States and Nuclear Dangers

Originally posted at TomDispatch. The first prime-time Republican primary debate of 2015 was an eye-opener of sorts when it came to the Middle East. After forcefully advocating for the termination of the pending nuclear deal with Iran, for example, Wisconsin Governor...

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Time To Hold Military Boots to the Fire

Originally posted at TomDispatch. On July 24th, highlighting the first Turkish air strikes against the Islamic State and news of an agreement to let the U.S. Air Force use two Turkish air bases against that movement, the New York Times reported that unnamed...

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