National Security State

By Tom Engelhardt | (Tomdispatch.com) |- – Recently, a memory of my son as a small boy came back to me. He was, in those days, terrified of clowns. Something about their strange, mask-like, painted faces unnerved him utterly, chilled him to the bone. To the rest of us, they were comic, but to him […]

Arms Sales

Trump Admin flooding Planet with high Tech Weapons; What could Go Wrong?

contributors

Military-Industrial Complex Set for Huge Expansion

National Security State

From Afghanistan to Somalia, Special Ops Achieves Less with More

contributors

By Nick Turse | ( Tomdispatch.com) | – – At around 11 o’clock that night, four Lockheed MC-130 Combat Talons, turboprop Special Operations aircraft, were flying through a moonless sky from Pakistani into Afghan airspace. On board were 199 Army Rangers with orders to seize an airstrip. One hundred miles to the northeast, Chinook and […]

Donald Trump

“Do Kids die, Mom?” Facing the Future With Trepidation in the Age of Trump

Juan Cole

Frida Berrigan | ( Tomdispatch.com) | – – As a mother and an activist, here’s what I’ve concluded as 2018 begins: it’s getting harder and harder to think about the future — at least in that soaring Whitney Houston fashion. You know the song: “I believe the children are our future, teach them well and […]

Donald Trump

The Map: Costs of 76 ongoing American Wars

contributors

By Tom Engelhardt | (Tomdispatch.com) | – – He left Air Force Two behind and, unannounced, “shrouded in secrecy,” flew on an unmarked C-17 transport plane into Bagram Air Base, the largest American garrison in Afghanistan. All news of his visit was embargoed until an hour before he was to depart the country. More than […]

Donald Trump

Is US National Security Strategy too Important to Leave to the Generals?

contributors

By Ingo Trauschweizer | (The Conversation) | – – President Donald Trump greeted the new year with an angry tweet about U.S. ally Pakistan. Among other things, the tweet accuses Pakistan of giving “safe haven to terrorists we hunt in Afghanistan.” The Pakistani prime minister responded that the tweet was “completely incomprehensible.” While the subjects […]

FBI

Congressional Efforts to Expand NSA Spying on Americans are still a Danger

contributors

By David Ruiz | (Electronic Frontier Foundation) | – – The debate over how to reauthorize certain NSA surveillance authorities has seen a whirlwind of activity, culminating in the major news that the House Rules Committee postponed a vote today to potentially expand NSA spying powers. As we wrote yesterday: “According to reports published Tuesday […]

Donald Trump

Global Spec Ops in Trump’s Pentagon: Elite Commandos in record 149 Countries

Juan Cole

By Nick Turse | ( Tomdispatch.com) | – – “We don’t know exactly where we’re at in the world, militarily, and what we’re doing,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, in October. That was in the wake of the combat deaths of four members of the Special Operations forces […]

Donald Trump

The Falsehood of Trump’s ‘Precision Strikes’ and ‘Clean Wars’

Juan Cole

By Paul Rogers | ( OpenDemocracy.net) | – – Trump’s worldview promises low-cost military success. The blasting apart of civilian lives in Iraq says otherwise. Many previous columns in this series focus on the transition in the western way of war since 9/11 from tens of thousands of “boots on the ground” to “remote warfare”. […]