The US spends spends $5 billion of your tax money a year in “aid” to Afghanistan, plus billions more for the cost of the thousands of American troops and Pentagon-sponsored military contractors there.An “Epidemic of Graft”One of the (many) reasons why all that money...
Protocols exist allowing the president to select American citizens, without a whit of due process, for drone killing.Only overseas, he says, but you can almost see the fingers crossed behind his back. Wouldn’t an awful lot of well-meaning Americans have supported an...
There is an attempt underway for a government to take control of our election process and throw the election to Hillary Clinton. It is not the Russian government. Mark this day — it is when we came to understand that the American government decided to elect a...
I’ve reviewed Oliver Stone’s movie Snowden elsewhere, and it’s well worth seeing just as a movie. But of course the issues brought up by Snowden the man, and Snowden the movie, are more complex than fit into two hours. I had this hit home in a recent discussion with a...
When Islamic State beheads someone it is terrorism. When an Iraqi housewife beheads an ISIS fighter and cooks his skull, it is freedom. That is the CNN doctrine. CNN reports the story of 39-year-old Wahida Mohamed aka Um Hanadi, an Iraqi woman who supposedly leads a...
Snowden is a helluva movie, kicking an audience’s ass on a number of levels. I had a chance to see the film last night at a preview event; it opens everywhere on September 16. Go see it.On one level the film presents Snowden’s story as a political thriller. A brave...
The United States over the weekend denied travel to a former British ambassador, Craig Murray, who was also a British diplomat for some 30 years, and is the author of several books. Murray has stood twice for election to the House of Commons. He was “honored” by being...
When I was a kid, successive presidents told us we had to fight in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, because if we didn’t fight them over there, we’d have to fight them on the beaches of California. We believed. It was a lie. I was a teenager during the Cold War, several...
It was about two years ago to the day I was blacklisted at CNN. I don’t want to remind them they were sadly wrong, but they were. So write this off however you prefer, but understand that we were lied to again to drag us again into an open-ended war in Iraq-Syria....
There is a nasty pattern in American political speech, going back into the 1980s at least: when a senior US official labels you a thug, often times wars follow. Thug is the safest word of American Exceptionalism. So it is with some concern that lots of folks are...
So, Afghanistan. America’s longest and wackiest war will soon enter its 16th year, and is scheduled to run through the next administration, as no one can remember why the US is fighting there anymore and so no one knows when this thing is over. Did we win yet? How...
The bones of our democracy — the core elements that separate that way of life from others — lie in the First Amendment to the Constitution, specifically the rights to free speech and a free press. Without the ability to speak freely, and to have things about our...
Wikileaks over the last few days dumped tens of thousands of emails hacked from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) server. The disclosures of dirty tricks directed against Bernie Sanders contained in those emails are startling, and only add to the whirlpool of...
As terrorism struck again in Nice and Germany and… Donald Trump outlined his policy against Islamic State: as president, he will seek a full declaration of war from Congress, the first such formal invocation since Pearl Harbor. Trump was short on specifics but very...
Cleveland Police Chief Calvin Williams issued a warning to an undisclosed number of masked protesters outside the Republican National Convention: “If you are a member of a group that causes you to have to hide your face, then you probably need a different cause.”...
The suicide bombings in Baghdad by Islamic State, timed for maximum violence, are only the latest reminders that the United States should not downplay the group. Since the wave of Islamic State suicide bombings in May – killing 522 people inside Baghdad, and 148...
Bill Gates’ philanthropic efforts are usually greeted with near-universal praise from people who believe he is a great humanitarian, but Bill Gates knows very little about sustainable, intelligent development. Bolivia to Bill Gates: Go to Hell and Take Your Chickens...
The web’s biggest content providers have started using automation to remove “extremist propaganda” videos from their sites. Censoring Content YouTube (owned by Google) and Facebook are among the sites deploying systems to block or rapidly take down Islamic State...
Ashley Cervantes, a then 18-year-old American citizen, was stopped at the Mexico border and, for some unspecified reason, perhaps related to her being young and of Hispanic ethnicity, accused by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) of smuggling drugs. What Drugs? A...
A new report in the Wall Street Journal reveals emails in which then-Secretary of State Clinton approved CIA drone assassinations in Pakistan from her unsecured Blackberry. Top Secret/SAP Messages The timing and location of these strikes are considered Top Secret/SAP...
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