Why Netanyahu Is So Enraged by a Deal with Iran
November 8, 2013
Secretary of State John Kerry’s last minute decision to make a surprise visit to Geneva, Switzerland, where negotiations between the P5+1 and Iran are rapidly progressing, led to an enormous amount of speculation that a first-step deal was imminent and may even be signed today. Details of the first-phase deal are limited and speculative, but […]
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US Soldiers Participate in Torture of Afghan Detainees
November 7, 2013
The Rolling Stone‘s Matthieu Aikins, who reported on alleged U.S. war crimes of torture, executions, and disappearances in Afghanistan, has posted another short piece and a video depicting U.S. soldiers standing by as Afghan forces whip a detainee. Aikins: The scene depicted in the video, and similar allegations of torture that were made to Rolling […]
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Why the CIA Is Keeping Its Drone War
November 6, 2013
The big exclusive up at Foreign Policy reveals that Obama’s promises to shift the drone war from the shadows of the CIA over to the Defense Department are being broken. The obstacles to completing this promised shift are “practical” as well as bureaucratic, Gordon Lubold and Shane Harris report, and the DoD just doesn’t seem ready to […]
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Big Brother’s Loyal Sister: How Dianne Feinstein Is Betraying Civil Liberties
November 6, 2013
Ever since the first big revelations about the National Security Agency five months ago, Dianne Feinstein has been in overdrive to defend the surveillance state. As chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, she generates an abundance of fog, weasel words, anti-whistleblower slander and bogus notions of reform – while methodically stabbing civil liberties in the […]
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New US Plans For Nation-Building in Libya Riddled With Problems
November 5, 2013
The U.S.-led NATO war to topple the Libyan regime of Muammar Gadhafi helped create a nation of disparate rebel militias that to this day, two years later, refuse to give up their arms. This, along with the weakness of the central government in Libya, is making the fruits of our “democracy promotion” hard to recognize. […]
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If You Blindly Believe Gov’t Claims About Drone Victims, You Are A Sucker
November 5, 2013
Shuaib Almosawa, a freelance journalist in Yemen, has a must-read report up at Foreign Policy investigating a U.S. drone strike in Marib, Yemen on August 8, 2013. It must be read in full, but Noah Shactman, an editor at Foreign Policy, sums up the piece quite appropriately on Twitter. https://twitter.com/noahshachtman/status/397737724813529089 It really is as simple as […]
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The Victims of Drones Have Come Out of the Shadows
November 5, 2013
At each of the over 200 cities I’ve traveled to this past year with my book Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control, I ask the audience an easy question: Have they ever seen or heard from drone strike victims in the mainstream US press? Not one hand has ever gone up. This is an obvious […]
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Signs From US Don’t Bode Well For Iran Talks
November 4, 2013
Up until now, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, who initiated unprecedented diplomacy with the U.S., has spoken very positively about the negotiations with Western powers. That has apparently changed, with French media reporting the reformist president saying he is “not optimistic.” “The government is not optimistic about the Westerners and the current negotiations,” Rouhani was quoted […]
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The US-Israeli Idea of ‘Peace’ Looks A Lot Like Conquest
November 4, 2013
Later this week, Secretary of State John Kerry is going to Israel to follow up on so-called “peace talks.” “We and the parties remain focused on our goal of achieving a permanent agreement which ends the conflict and all claims, and creates peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians,” the State Department said last week. […]
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