In a speech at the National Prayer Breakfast, President Obama declared that promoting freedom of religious faith around the world was a central goal of U.S. foreign policy, because "freedom of religion matters to our national security." Hardly. Obama’s...
The Pentagon Makes History the First Casualty
Originally posted at TomDispatch. Call me human. It turns out that I’m no better at predicting the future than the rest of humanity. If as a species we were any good at it, right now I would undoubtedly be zipping through the gloriously spired skies over my...
Homing in on the Surveillance State
As the masterful drip-drip-drip strategy employed by Edward Snowden drops bomb after bomb on the National Security Agency's formerly secret Panopticon, we are getting closer to the central purpose of what the world’s most famous whistleblower dubbed "the...
142 Killed, 163 Wounded in Iraq Attacks, Clashes
Diplomacy Is a Four Letter Word
Why is the United States so reluctant to negotiate with other countries and so prone to leap immediately to the option of using force or chicanery in lieu of a more deliberative foreign policy? It might partly be because we Americans are not very good at the subtlety...
Bombers Return to Baghdad; 78 Killed, 116 Wounded
Was Twitter Censored by the Venezuelan Government?
The media is our window on the world – but what if that window is dirtied and blurred? How can we really know what’s happening in, say, Venezuela, where an increasingly authoritarian government with Marxist inclinations is up against a rebellion by middle-and-working...
Drone Killing the Fifth Amendment
Originally posted at TomDispatch. Imagine this: a president and his top officials as self-professed assassins – and proud of it, even attempting to gain political capital from it. It’s not that American presidents have never been associated with assassination attempts...


