War

Pearson Institute Panel on Catastrophe in Yemen from October 13, with Juan Cole among the panelists. Pearson Institute: Yemen in Neglect My (much more expert-on-Yemen than I) colleagues in this panel: Afrah Nasser is Yemen Researcher, Human Rights Watch. Shadi Abu Sneida is a humanitarian working with UN High Commissioner for Refugees in Yemen. Stacy […]

Government surveillance

I’ll be Watching You: Military Dependents under Surveillance

Tomdispatch

By Andrea Mazzarino | – ( Tomdispatch.com ) – I know what it means to be watched all too carefully, a phenomenon that’s only grown worse in the war-on-terror years. I’m a strange combination, I suspect, being both a military spouse and an anti-war-on-terror activist. As I’ve discovered, the two sit uncomfortably in what still […]

Arms Sales

Why Do so many in Congress resist funding Childcare But swoon over F-35s?

Medea Benjamin and Nicholas J.S. Davies

( Code Pink) – President Biden and the Democratic Congress are facing a crisis as the popular domestic agenda they ran on in the 2020 election is held hostage by two corporate Democratic Senators, fossil-fuel consigliere Joe Manchin and payday-lender favorite Kyrsten Sinema. But the very week before the Dems’ $350 billion-per-year domestic package hit […]

Corporate Surveillance

Haugen: Facebook has become the Terminator

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Frances Haugen’s whistleblower testimony on Tuesday before the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety and Data Security highlighted Facebook’s interactions with children, but the testimony was a devastating indictment of the pernicious effects of the company’s algorithms on human societies across the planet. Haugen is […]

Afghanistan

Bearing witness in Afghanistan — a conversation with Kathy Kelly on ending war and listening to its victims

Waging Nonviolence

( Waging Noviolence ) – This week, Michael Nagler and Stephanie Van Hook talk to Kathy Kelly, life-long nonviolence activist, co-founder of Voices for Creative Nonviolence and co-coordinator of the Ban Killer Drones Campaign. She discusses her extensive experience in and thoughts about Afghanistan. American intervention, she believes, was — and indeed, continues to be […]

Afghanistan

“A Horrible Mistake”: Recovering from America’s Imperial Delusions

Andrew J. Bacevich

( Tomdispatch.com) – The bad news stemming from the ill-planned and ill-managed U.S. evacuation of the Afghan capital just kept coming in. The Washington Post put it this way in blowing the whistle on the culminating disaster: “U.S. military admits ‘horrible mistake’ in Kabul drone strike that killed 10 Afghans.” Following the August 26th terrorist […]

Drones

The Names You’ll Never Know: A Blue Kia and a Wall of Carnage on the Washington Mall

Nick Turse

( Tomdispatch.com) – As a parting shot, on its way out of Afghanistan, the United States military launched a drone attack that the Pentagon called a “righteous strike.” The final missile fired during 20 years of occupation, that August 29th airstrike averted an Islamic State car-bomb attack on the last American troops at Kabul’s airport. […]

Militarization

A Parable of (All-American) Violence: Accountability and the War of Terror

Tomdispatch

By Kelly Denton-Borhaug | ( Tomdispatch.com ) – As a religious studies professor, I know a parable when I see one. Consider the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks and the final events in this country’s war in Afghanistan as just such a parable taken directly from the history of our moment. The heart-wrenching last […]

Australia

Is US-Australia Nuclear Sub Deal a Proliferation Danger, and does it Justify Iran’s Civilian Enrichment Program?

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Alexander Ward and Quint Forgey at Politico raise a crucial question about the AUKUS alliance among the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia that involves providing Australia with nuclear submarines. Is it a form of proliferation and does it provide justification for Iran’s civilian nuclear enrichment program? Nuclear submarines […]