In a Kremlin speech last week, President Vladimir Putin identified Russia's real "enemy" in Ukraine as "the ruling circles of the so-called West" whose "hegemony has a pronounced character of totalitarianism, despotism and apartheid." In...
The Scourge of Conscription
By now Randolph Bourne’s observation that “war is the health of the state” ought to be such a cliché that it would hardly need to be said. And yet, it must be said – often – because many still haven’t gotten the word. If the state is the...
I’ll Never Forget the Call I Got From Eric Garris in March 2009
I’ll never forget the call I got from Eric Garris in March 2009 – more than a decade ago! – asking if I would write for Antiwar.com. That call as a pivotal moment in my career as a journalist. I was writing for the American Conservative then, challenging the...
Iraq Daily Roundup: 28 Killed
From Nabulsi to Shtayyeh: Which Side Is the PA On?
The arrest of a prominent Palestinian activist, Musab Shtayyeh, and another Palestinian activist, by Palestinian Authority police on September 20 was not the first time that the notorious PA’s Preventive Security Service (PSS) has arrested a Palestinian who is wanted...
Iraq Monthly Roundup: 179 Killed during September
Referendums and Joining Russia
On September 27, referendums on joining Russia in the Donbas republics of Donetsk and Luhansk and in the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia oblasts were completed. The referendum in Donbas, which has already declared its independence, asked "Do you support the entry of the...
Something Is Rotten in the US Military
Originally posted at TomDispatch. Here’s the curious thing: since at least the Vietnam War era of the 1960s and early 1970s, the United States has been almost continuously at war. Certain of those conflicts like the Vietnam War itself and those in Iraq and...
Edward Snowden: An American in Moscow
When the Trump administration obtained an indictment of Edward Snowden for violation of the Espionage Act of 1917, many of us who believe that the Fourth Amendment means what it says were deeply critical of the government, and we remain so today. This week, retaining...
How To Turn a Friend Into an Enemy: A Brief History of US-Russia Relations
During the American Civil War Russian Tsar Alexander II helped save the Union by sending two naval squadrons to New York and San Francisco and placing them at the service of President Lincoln. A symbolic statue of these events is located in downtown Moscow, showing...


