In a press briefing yesterday with State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland, an unusual question was asked about the morality of the US-led sanctions regime on Iran, which is primarily hurting the population. QUESTION: Do you have any concern about the effects –...
President Obama’s personal involvement in selecting the targets of covert drone strikes means he risks effectively handing a ‘loaded gun’ to Mitt Romney come November, says the co-author of a new report aimed at US policymakers. ‘If Obama leaves, he’s leaving a loaded...
One of the biggest problems (and there are many) with the Obama administration's drone program is that it targets unidentified individuals, the vast majority of whom have not been shown to present any real threat to Americans. According to the recent academic study,...
Friday brought another report of the civil war in Syria by Kelly McEvers of NPR’s Morning Edition. The opening summary tells us that rebels “captured a third major border crossing between Syria and Turkey. The rebels are trying to restore services to a recently...
In a new piece at Foreign Policy, Ammar Abdulhamid meticulously describes how fundamentally disparate, disorganized, and divided are the Syrian rebels. He writes that although they all want the overthrow of Assad, there is no unified goal as to what ought to come...
You can say that again.
The Obama administration has fought tooth and nail to keep the details of its surveillance activities hidden from the public. For years it has insisted that its snooping on Americans' phone and email communications fell perfectly within the law (that is, the extremely...
Charlie Savage in the New York Times, Election May Decide When Interrogation Amounts to Torture: In one of his first acts, President Obama issued an executive order restricting interrogators to a list of nonabusive tactics approved in theArmy Field Manual. Even as he...
In the news section today, it has been revealed through declassified documents that WikiLeaks Julian Assange has been designated an enemy of the state by the US military, a legal classification also assigned to al-Qaeda and which could allow Washington to kill or...
This heartbreaking trailer gives a short preview of the new documentary "Tears of Gaza," from the Norwegian director, Vibeke Løkkeberg. The film will premier at the Varsity Theater in Davis, CA on September 30th, and it documents the bombing of Gaza in 2008 – 2009 by...
