Your bullshit-ometer should be making an awful racket in response to the shifting explanations given for the twenty-four-hour Iranian hostage scare involving two US Navy boats intercepted in the Gulf. First they told us “at least one of the boats” had experienced a...
To awaken Thursday to front-page photos of U.S. sailors kneeling on the deck of their patrol boat, hands on their heads in postures of surrender, on Iran's Farsi Island, brought back old and bad memories. In January 1968, LBJ's last year, 82 sailors of the Pueblo were...
The federal criminal investigation of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's failure to secure state secrets was ratcheted up earlier this week, and at the same time, the existence of a parallel criminal investigation of another aspect of her behavior was made...
Originally posted at TomDispatch. Meet the hottest new commander in the increasingly secretive world of American warfare, Lieutenant General Raymond “Tony” Thomas. A rare portrait in the Washington Post paints him as a “shadowy figure” – an...
Turkish artillery struck Islamic State targets in both Iraq and Syria, killing 200 militants in the two countries. At least 142 were killed in other violence. Ten more were wounded. Militants killed 11 security personnel, including the police chief, in Tal Kusaiba...
The colorful term “headchoppers” has been recently used to describe a barbaric national movement that relies on literally chopping off heads to quell dissent and intimidate the population. Like the recent terms “show runner” (for TV producer) or “shot caller” (for...
The sudden interest of Western media and diplomats in the Syrian city of Madaya has very little to do with the thousands of purportedly starving civilians — and everything to do with propaganda in a war that is not going the way Western capitals wanted. For the past...
Even considering that no one is fit to be president – in that no one should be able to command a state, which rules by threatening and committing violence against innocents – Hillary Clinton is especially unfit. No one who has done what she has done as a...
The new season of the podcast Serial is now in its fourth week, telling the story of Bowe Bergdahl’s capture by the Haqqani, his five year imprisonment in Pakistan, and eventual release in a prisoner exchange. But as the host, Sarah Koenig, explains in the first...
