Originally posted at TomDispatch. Isn’t there something strangely reassuring when your eyeballs are gripped by a “mystery” on the news that has no greater meaning and yet sweeps all else away? This, of course, is the essence of the ongoing tale of...

I’ve come down with a bad case of diverticulitis, so I’m in bed, only occasionally able to traipse to my desk. Aside from episodes of sudden extreme pain, it’s the medication that makes it nearly impossible to write, which is frustrating for me. So no column today,...

You’ve probably heard about the recent leaked conversations involving Turkey. It was stunning to hear the highest-ranking Turks causally discussing how to provoke a false flag incident that would justify a large military intervention in Syria. This is a big deal...

As many as 102 people were killed and 62 more were wounded today. Dozens of people were killed during an attack on an army base in Yusufiya. The Interior Ministry and local officials gave inconsistent casualty figures.

In 1948, the village of Tantura fell within the borders of the newly created state of Israel. It was a small, seaside village of approximately 1,200 residents, most of them Arab farmers and fishermen. As the war between Israel and its Arab neighbors escalated, Tantura...

Last week, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced it did not intend to appeal last month’s court decision which removed Rahinah Ibrahim from the "No-Fly list" – making her the first person in years to be taken off that bureaucratic black-hole relic of the...

At least 54 people were killed and 67 more were wounded today. Although attacks were scattered across the northern half of Iraq, as usual, three attacks targeted army troops and recruits in the Kirkuk suburbs of Riyadh, Nissan and Rashad.

No bombing, no casualties, no armed resistance, no "shock & awe" – Crimea isn’t so much an invasion as it is a hook-up. If Russia’s retaking of a region it has held since the days of Catherine the Great is an invasion – and it surely is – then it’s an aggression...

During the Cold War, US strategy was to contain Soviet expansion until the Soviets’ inefficient communist economic system collapsed from within. Despite the perversion of George Kennan’s original political, economic, and military containment strategy into one that...

At least 35 people were killed and 24 more were wounded in fresh attacks, as campaign season officially began today. Also, the Iraqi government and the United Nations released their monthly accountings of violence in Iraq.