via LobeLog
by James A. Russell
The globe-trotting travails of the fugitive Edward Snowden have given us an unexpected opportunity to hear from our senior intelligence officials about the necessity of their far-reaching surveillance program designed to protect us from terrorism. But as shown by the testimony of General Keith Alexander, the chief [...]
How to Pre-Convict and Pre-Punish an American Muslim
by Victoria Brittain
via Tom Dispatch
A four-month hunger strike, mass force-feedings, and widespread media coverage have at last brought Guantanamo, the notorious offshore prison set up by the Bush administration early in 2002, back into American consciousness. Prominent voices are [...]
How Many Years Will It Be?
by Andrew J. Bacevich
via Tom Dispatch
For well over a decade now the United States has been “a nation at war.” Does that war have a name?
It did at the outset. After 9/11, George W. Bush’s administration wasted no time in [...]
by Jim Lobe
via IPS News
Responding to growing criticism by human rights groups and foreign governments, U.S. President Barack Obama Thursday announced potentially significant shifts in what his predecessor called the “global war on terror”.
In a major policy address at the National Defense University here, Obama said drone strikes against [...]
by Matthew Duss
via USIP
On April 22, Canadian authorities arrested two men who allegedly planned to derail a U.S.-bound passenger train. Officials said al Qaeda elements in Iran gave “direction and guidance” to Chiheb Esseghaier, 30, and Raed Jaser, 35. But police have not found evidence of Iranian state sponsorship. And Tehran [...]
via Lobe Log
by Wayne White
A major obstacle in the way of sorting through to an internationally acceptable definition of terrorism — largely intentional violence against civilians — was the incredibly broad definition that effectively evolved as acceptable, or necessary, among quite a few prominent governments involved in the course of the titanic [...]
Jeremy Scahill, Blowback Reporter
by Tom Engelhardt
via Tom Dispatch
Chalmers Johnson’s book Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire was published in March 2000 — and just about no one noticed. Until then, blowback had been an obscure term of CIA tradecraft, which Johnson defined as “the unintended consequences of policies [...]
via Lobe Logby Marsha B. Cohen
The F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) is a black hole in the federal budget into which hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars have been sucked and billions more seem destined to vanish.
The most recent reminder came in an April 1 UPI article about the retirement [...]
via Lobe Log
by Daniel Luban
This week, as you’ve probably heard, marks the ten year anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq. Most people who have commented on the milestone have agreed that the war was a catastrophic mistake. But why, exactly, did the Bush administration decide to go into Iraq in the [...]
The Trillion-Dollar Concept That No One Can Define
by Mattea Kramer and Chris Hellman
via Tom Dispatch
Imagine a labyrinthine government department so bloated that few have any clear idea of just what its countless pieces do. Imagine that tens of billions of tax dollars are disappearing into it annually, black hole-style, since it can’t pass a [...]
From IPS News- Storm in a Rice Bowl
- Kyrgyzstan: Russian ’Information Wars’ Heating Up
- U.S. Apache Delivery Highlights Mixed Messaging on Egypt
- Argentina’s Informal Economy Shrinks, But Not Fast Enough
- Persecution of Uganda’s Gays Intensifies as Rights Groups Go Underground
- Japan Seeks Foreign Workers, Uneasily
- Culture Increasingly Unaffordable for Cubans
- U.N. Makes Development Data Open & Interactive
- Bringing the Bridges Home
- U.S.-Russia Sabre Rattling May Undermine Nuke Meeting
