Peter Van Buren

April 19, 2016

Heading into its sixteenth year, with no endpoint in sight, America’s longest war is its least talked about. Afghanistan has not come up in any Republican or Democratic debate, except perhaps as one of a list of countries where Islamic State must be destroyed (left out is the reality that no Islamic State existed in […]

Daniel McAdams

April 18, 2016

Over the weekend, the Saudi foreign minister threatened to sell $750 billion in US dollar holdings if Congress passes legislation removing the kingdom’s sovereign immunity from liability should Saudi official involvement in the 9/11 attacks be demonstrated. What would happen to the dollar should a huge dump like this occur? It would have significant impact […]

John Uebersax

April 18, 2016

Last week Dan Sanchez proposed that one way to protest war and criminally inept government is to stop attending political events and not voting in elections. I agree with him on this much: that to boycott public appearances by warmonger politicians makes a powerful statement. (On the other hand, chatting, texting, and taking selfies during […]

Peter Van Buren

April 17, 2016

So once again people from The World’s Most Frightened Country (C) fully overreacted to nothing. One of the 230 million people worldwide who speak Arabic happened to be on an airplane and happened to use one of the most common expressions in his language. Hilarity ensued. Bigoted, frightened, discriminatory hilarity, in keeping with the American […]

Peter Van Buren

April 16, 2016

I am very proud to call these two people friends: Jesselyn Radack, who blew the whistle on Department of Justice malfeasance in the handling of the “American Taliban” John Walker Lindh. Jess went on to become a key part of Edward Snowden’s defense team (full disclosure: Jess was also one of my lawyers in my […]

Peter Van Buren

April 15, 2016

Rules are for fools, and in this case the fools in question are you, me and what’s left of the American democratic system. Obama, in an interview, basically made it clear nobody is going to indict Hillary Clinton for exposing classified material via her unclassified email server, even if it requires made-up rules to let […]

Daniel McAdams

April 13, 2016

Washington (under pressure from “allies” Turkey and Saudi Arabia) has taken advantage of the ceasefire in Syria to ship massive amounts of weapons to the “moderates.” Even the mainstream media has reported that 50 percent of what is shipped to the “moderate” Free Syrian Army finds its way into the hands of al-Qaeda’s Nusra Front, […]

Daniel McAdams

April 12, 2016

According to studies done by government-affiliated doctors, multiple combat deployments have nothing to do with the sharp rise in military suicides over the past several years. The problems are elsewhere, they claim, not the stresses on the military produced by the policy of perpetual war. If we are only allowed to monitor the emails and […]

Paul-Martin Foss

April 7, 2016

Despite the lifting of international sanctions against Iran earlier this year, the United States government intends to continue denying Iranian companies access to the US financial system. This highlights how the US financial system is viewed not as a market-based system in which private companies are free to do what they want, but rather as […]

Daniel McAdams

April 7, 2016

Yesterday’s “no” vote in a Dutch referendum on Ukrainian accession to the European Union has Brussels in a panic. None of the other EU member states allowed a popular vote on bringing in basket case Ukraine — their parliaments rubber-stamped the agreement. But because unanimity is required for any new members, the Dutch “no” — […]