Digital rights advocates reacted with alarm to a report published Friday detailing how Defense Intelligence Agency analysts in recent years bought databases of U.S. smartphone location data without first obtaining warrants. The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) is...
America Adrift and Aflame: Fix the US Before the World
The Beer Belly Putsch, as the January 6 takeover of the Capitol has been called, created shock waves across the nation’s capital and around the world. It was never as serious as some observers suggested: the president had no coup plan and most of the ragtag protesters...
The Massive and Unseen Costs of America’s Post-9/11 Wars
Perhaps the strangest thing about America’s "forever wars" is how little obvious impact they’ve had here. A country – an imperial power, in fact, that liked to think of itself as the planet’s last or "lone" superpower – goes to war for so long (and...
Iraq Daily Roundup: 19 Killed; Militia Attacked
Battle Lines Drawn on Ending Yemen War
One day before the Inauguration, the Trump Administration added Yemen’s Houthi movement to a list of foreign terrorist organizations. It was just the latest, desperate attempt to hamstring President Joe Biden’s promise to end the war in Yemen. While Trump proudly...
The No Fly List: More Dangerous Than the Capitol Rioters
As I write this, the Capitol Hill riot of January 6 is enjoying its extended 15 minutes of fame, complete with straight-faced comparisons to December 7, 1941 and September 11, 2001. In hindsight, it will hopefully (and hopefully quickly) shrink to its real-life...
Fearing the Palestinian Narrative: Why Israel Banned Jenin Jenin
On January 11, the Israeli Lod District Court ruled against a Palestinian filmmaker, Mahmoud Bakri, ordering him to pay hefty compensation to an Israeli soldier who was accused, along with the Israeli military, of carrying out war crimes in April 2002, in the...
About Suffering: A Massacre of the Innocents in Yemen
In 1565, Pieter Bruegel the Elder created "The Massacre of the Innocents," a provocative masterpiece of religious art. The painting reworks a biblical narrative about King Herod’s order to slaughter all newborn boys in Bethlehem for fear that a messiah had...
Peering Into a Forever-War Crystal Ball
Originally posted at TomDispatch. More than 19 years ago, the U.S. launched the air war that would become the ground invasion and “liberation” of Afghanistan. More than 17 years ago, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld declared “major combat”...


