US politics

By Juan Cole | — Iraqi Prime Minister Haydar al-Abadi announced to his parliament on Sunday that inspectors had uncovered 50,000 non-existent soldiers in four divisions of the Iraqi Army. Their pay was presumably being diverted to the officers in the division. This ziggurat of corruption was one reason the army collapsed on June 9, […]

African-Americans

Rudy Giuliani Wants To Prosecute Ferguson Witnesses

contributors

The Young Turks | — “Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani weighed in on the Ferguson grand jury decision Tuesday night and said that if it were his case, he would prosecute some witnesses to the police shooting of unarmed teen Michael Brown for lying about what they saw. In an appearance on Fox News’ […]

Bill of Rights

Can the Police Phone-Track you without a Warrant?

contributors

Hanni Fakhoury and Jennifer Lynch (Electronic Frontier Foundation) Once again, a federal court will decide whether police can track your movements over an extended period of time without a search warrant. Federal and state courts have divided over whether the Fourth Amendment requires police seek a search warrant to obtain historical cell site location information […]

Afghanistan

What if it was Russia and China invading and Bombing? The Blindness of MSM and Washington

contributors

By Tom Engelhardt (Tomdispatch.com) | — Let’s play a game, the kind that makes no sense on this single-superpower planet of ours. For a moment, do your best to suspend disbelief and imagine that there’s another superpower, great power, or even regional power somewhere that, between 2001 and 2003, launched two major wars in the […]

African-Americans

Racial Fearmongering and Ferguson: US Stereotype of “violent” African-American Men as old as Slavery

contributors

By Peter Bloom, The Open University (The Conversation) The decision not to charge police officer Darren Wilson with the unlawful shooting of unarmed teen Michael Brown has reignited protests across the US. The judgment was met by violent outrage on the streets of Ferguson. After months of deliberation, a grand jury ruled that there was […]

African-Americans

Race inequality between US Whites and African-Americans by the Numbers (Again)

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | — With regard to employment, African-Americans got hit harder by the Bush Depression than did whites, and jobs have not come back for them at nearly the same rate: This vast difference between Euro-American and African-American rates of employment holds true regardless of educational level; college-educated African-Americans are also twice as […]

African-Americans

The Ferguson, Mo. Shooting in American History: What to Tell the Children

contributors

By Julian Hipkins III (Zinn Education Project) In light of the grand jury decision, we share this collection of teaching ideas and resources, originally published by Teaching for Change in August of 2014. By Julian Hipkins III As the new school year begins, first and foremost on our minds and in our hearts will be […]

Barack Obama

Sen. Lindsey Graham furious GOP House Benghazi Report Shows He Wasted All our Time & Money

contributors

The Young Turks | — “”Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) on Sunday blasted a House GOP-led investigation that recently debunked myths about the 2012 Benghazi attack. “I think the report is full of crap,” Graham said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” The House Intelligence Committee released a report on Friday evening, which took two years […]

Dissent

Top Five Washington Assumptions on Mideast that Are not True

contributors

By Andrew J. Bacevich (Tomdispatch.com) | — “Iraq no longer exists.” My young friend M, sipping a cappuccino, is deadly serious. We are sitting in a scruffy restaurant across the street from the Cathedral of St. John the Divine on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. It’s been years since we’ve last seen each another. It may […]