Militarization

By Ira Chernus | (Informed Comment) | – – This time, it’s the Islamic State (IS). After the attacks in Paris, Barack Obama, spokesman-in-chief for the United States of America, called that crew “the face of evil.” Shades of George W. Bush. The “evildoers” are back. And from every mountaintop, it seems, America now rings […]

Democratic Party

In Bipartisan display of Bigotry, 47 Democrats Join with House GOP to Refuse Syrian Refugees

contributors

By Jon Queally, staff writer | (Commondreams.org) | – – “Not much is bipartisan these days, but apparently bigotry is something both sides of the aisle can come together on.” “Speaker Ryan and this un-American bill’s supporters falsely claim it will simply pause U.S. resettlement of refugees,” said Karin Johanson of the ACLU. “In fact, […]

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 […]

art and photography

War is Beautiful: How Newspapers’ War Photography Conceals the Hideous Reality

contributors

By David Shields | (Informed Comment) | – – The following is an excerpt from War Is Beautiful by David Shields: For decades, upon opening the New York Times every morning and contemplating the front page, I was entranced by the war photographs. My attraction to the photographs evolved into a mixture of rapture, bafflement, […]

Featured

Senior National Security Advisers urge Obama to put Spec Ops Troops close to ISIL Front

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Missy Ryan and Greg Jaffe at the Washington Post reveal that President Obama’s senior national security advisers have recommended positioning US special operations forces closer to the enemy lines of Daesh (ISIS, ISIL) in Iraq and even in Syria. Apparently it is felt that Iraqi troops […]

Militarization

But are they effective? Elite US Forces Deploy to a Record-Shattering 147 Countries in 2015

contributors

By Nick Turse | ( Tomdispatch.com ) | – – They’re some of the best soldiers in the world: highly trained, well equipped, and experts in weapons, intelligence gathering, and battlefield medicine. They study foreign cultures and learn local languages. They’re smart, skillful, wear some very iconic headgear, and their 12-member teams are “capable of […]

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 […]

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 […]