National Security Agency

By David Greene and Nadia Kayyali | ( Electronic Frontier Foundation) | – – The NSA’s collection en masse of the call detail records of millions of ordinary Americans ended quietly at midnight November 29. The bulk collection was phased out after a 180-day transition period provided for in the USA FREEDOM Act. The USA […]

Government surveillance

After Paris, it’s good detective work that will keep us safe, not mass surveillance

contributors

By Pete Fussey | (The Conversation) | – – Before the dust has even settled from the attacks on Paris, familiar calls for greater surveillance powers are surfacing. The desire for greater security is understandable, but that doesn’t mean we should suspend our judgement on the measures proposed to bring it about. In the aftermath […]

Drone Warfare

2016 Campaign and Forever War: Electorate gone to Disney World

contributors

By Tom Engelhardt | ( Tomdispatch.com ) | – – You may not know it, but you’re living in a futuristic science fiction novel. And that’s a fact. If you were to read about our American world in such a novel, you would be amazed by its strangeness. Since you exist right smack in the […]

Militarization

The Secret to Winning the Nobel Peace Prize Keep the U.S. Military Out

contributors

By Rebecca Gordon | (Tomdispatch.com) | – – Introduction, by Tom Engelhardt To this day, it remains difficult to take in the degree to which the American invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq destabilized the Greater Middle East from the Chinese border to Libya. Certainly, as the recent Republican and Democratic presidential debates suggest, Americans have […]

Bush

Yes, George W. Bush bears some Responsibility for US Vulnerability on 9/11

contributors

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – The Donald Trump-Jeb Bush tiff over whether George W. Bush “kept us safe” is another example of how Donald Trump is better than Karl Rove at politics. Rove had some success with his doctrine of attacking people on their strengths. Like a spiteful child, Trump attacks […]

Afghanistan

Still underestimating al-Qaeda & Taliban despite 1500 Military Analysts

contributors

By Tom Engelhardt | ( Tomdispatch.com ) | – – That figure stunned me. I found it in the 12th paragraph of a front-page New York Times story about “senior commanders” at U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) playing fast and loose with intelligence reports to give their air war against ISIS an unjustified sheen of success: […]

Militarization

Endless Rounds of “Vietnamization” as America’s Colonial Armies Collapse one by One

contributors

By Andrew J. Bacevich | ( Tomdispatch.com ) | – – First came Fallujah, then Mosul, and later Ramadi in Iraq. Now, there is Kunduz, a provincial capital in northern Afghanistan. In all four places, the same story has played out: in cities that newspaper reporters like to call “strategically important,” security forces trained and […]

Democratic Party

When will War be off the Table? Iran & US Trash Talk

contributors

By David M. Faris | (Informed Comment) | – – You have to admire the sheer gall of the Republican presidential field, which has coalesced around the idea of, in Scott Walker’s words, blowing up the Iranian nuclear deal “on day one.” As most candidates also pledge to repeal Obamacare on the first day, one […]

Militarization

How the Sept. 11 Attacks Changed American Lives Forever

contributors

By Tom Engelhardt | ( Tomdispatch.org) | – – Fourteen years later and do you even believe it? Did we actually live it? Are we still living it? And how improbable is that? Fourteen years of wars, interventions, assassinations, torture, kidnappings, black sites, the growth of the American national security state to monumental proportions, and […]