Jeremy Scahill’s ‘Dirty’ Work

Jeremy Scahill’s new book, Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield, is sort of like approaching a dark cavity in an old tree. How many of us would instinctively cry out, “I don’t want to look – there will be creepy crawly things in there and I’m better off not knowing!” Life is filled with … Continue reading “Jeremy Scahill’s ‘Dirty’ Work”

Drones, Sanctions and the Prison Industrial Complex

Editor’s note: Brian Terrell was arrested in April of last year for protesting drone warfare at Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri and wrote the following from Yankton Federal Prison Camp, where he is nearing the end of a six month sentence. In the final weeks of a six month prison sentence for protesting remote … Continue reading “Drones, Sanctions and the Prison Industrial Complex”

Roaches, Mosquitoes, and Birds: The Coming Micro-Drone Revolution

“[Drones are a] game-changing technology, akin to gunpowder, the steam engine, the atomic bomb—opening up possibilities that were fiction a generation earlier but also opening up perils that were unknown a generation ago.”—Peter Singer, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution America will never be a “no drone zone.” That must be acknowledged from the outset. … Continue reading “Roaches, Mosquitoes, and Birds: The Coming Micro-Drone Revolution”

Who Speaks Now for the GOP?

Last Wednesday, Sen. Rand Paul rose on the Senate floor to declare a filibuster and pledge he would not sit down until either he could speak no longer or got an answer to his question about Barack Obama’s war powers. Does the president, Paul demanded to know, in the absence of an imminent threat, have … Continue reading “Who Speaks Now for the GOP?”

Congress, Drones, and The Imperial Presidency

Last week the US Senate took a break from debating the phony cuts known as “sequestration,” for Senator Rand Paul to hold a 13-hour filibuster to force the Obama administration to state whether it believes the President has the right to kill American citizens with drones on US soil. I find it tragic that there … Continue reading “Congress, Drones, and The Imperial Presidency”

Rand Paul’s Message to Obama: Don’t Drone Me Bro

The most positive outcome of Rand Paul’s 13-hour filibuster – which ended when Paul was forced to take a bathroom break – was giving the American public a sense of the treacherous path that President Obama’s drone program could take, i.e. the targeted killing of Americans here at home. It was a marathon civics lesson … Continue reading “Rand Paul’s Message to Obama: Don’t Drone Me Bro”

A Conspiracy of Stupidity

You could, of course, sit there, slack-jawed, thinking about how mindlessly repetitive American foreign and military policy is these days. Or you could wield all sorts of fancy analytic words to explain it.  Or you could just settle for a few simple, all-American ones.  Like dumb. Stupid. Dimwitted. Thick-headed. Or you could speak about the … Continue reading “A Conspiracy of Stupidity”