Relatives of troops killed in the Iraq War have launched an online crowd-funding appeal to pay for possible legal action against Tony Blair. The Iraq War Families Campaign group are trying to raise £50,000 to "bring to justice to those responsible for the war and the deaths of our loved ones". The appeal follows the Chilcot Inquiry, which sharply criticised the decision-making behind the war and said it had been poorly-planned and ended in failure. The appeal had already reached £20,000 by...

News reports about the recently released 28 pages of the Joint Inquiry into the 9/11 attacks are typically dismissive: this is nothing new, it’s just circumstantial evidence, and there’s no “smoking gun.” Yet given what the report actually says – and these news accounts are remarkably sparse when it comes to verbatim quotes – it’s hard to fathom what would constitute a smoking gun. To begin with, let’s start with what’s not in these pages: there are numerous redactions. And they are rather...

I have railed for some time against the maniacal idea of the military draft being extended to include women. Make no mistake, I oppose the draft in all forms; and think it is just as reprehensible to force men to serve and die for a cause they may or may not believe in as well. The military should be an all-volunteer army. And if it’s not, then the entire idea of liberty is nothing more than an elaborate hoax foisted on the masses. The only TRUE liberty belongs to those who cannot be...

Opponents of a central bank should take advantage of the post-Brexit vote revival of secessionist sentiments to promote a secession from central banking, or “Fed-exit.” Ending the Federal Reserve's monopoly on money is the key to restoring and maintaining our liberty and prosperity. By manipulating the money supply to fix interest rates, the Federal Reserve engages in price fixing. After all, interest rates are nothing more than the price of money. Like all prices, they communicate information...

In the aftermath of the suspiciously ill-planned and ill-executed coup attempt in Turkey, the government of President Erdogan has shut down the US military base in Incirlik. According to Stars and Stripes, the Turkish government, after putting down the partial military revolt, has closed the airspace over the US base at Incirlik and has even turned off the power to the base. In response, the US has placed troops on base at the "highest force protection level."The Turkish government has said...

When we described the aftermath of Turkey's failed, and painfully disorganized military coup attempt, we asked rhetorically, "Who wins?" To which we answered: "Why Erdogan of course." As he said during a press conference upon his arrival back in Istanbul in the early Saturday morning hours, the coup is an opportunity to "to purge the military." Erdogan also vowed to exact "the highest price" from the perpetrators. Or, to summarize, the military said Erdogan's power consolidation justifies the...

Less than 24 hours before a man mowed down people with a truck in Nice, France, French President Hollande had confirmed that the state of emergency declared in the wake of the Nov. 2015 Paris attacks was going to expire on July 26, without renewal. During his traditional Bastille Day television interview, Hollande said, “We had to prolong the state of emergency until we could be sure that the law gives us the means to counter the terrorist threat effectively.”Last May, France passed a...

The French have a saying, "un malheur n’arrive jamais seul." That translates into "when it rains, it pours." This week, the heavens opened and poured on the nation’s national fete, Bastille Day. The day began with highly embarrassing revelations by a French satirical newspaper that the unpopular president, Francois Hollande, had a staff hairdresser making $11,000 a month at a time of national austerity. This was a genuine "let them eat cake" moment. That same evening, a frightful attack...

It’s hardly a secret that the hardships of common people are getting worse by the year. Due to continuous attempts by Washington to redraw the map of the world, in many countries, American intelligence agencies have been particularly active in launching so-called “color revolutions” and staging military conflicts, bringing bitter hunger and poverty upon the heads of millions of people in the Middle East and other regions of the world. Consequently those events have triggered a massive and...

Fresh from declaring her support of Oberlin students in claiming the serving of sushi is cultural appropriation, actress Lena Dunham (creator of HBO’s “Girls”), is supporting producer Tami Sagher’s effort to get people to deface the posters for the Jason Bourne movie. The objection is to the inclusion of a gun. So Dunham and Sagher are calling for the work of other artists to be defaced because they disagree with the content. They are doing so without a hint of recognized hypocrisy. Despite...

As the horrific carnage in Syria continues, a depressingly familiar chorus is rising from Washington. The new consensus is the same as it was in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan: Bombing isn’t working, so let’s bomb more. A familiar coalition — generals, defense contractors, and politicians, along with think tanks and much of the press — is demanding escalation of our military campaign in Syria. There may be a limit to how many unwinnable wars the United States wants to wage in the Middle East,...

In the last few days, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal have contained the following news stories: 1. “North Korea Cuts UN Line With US.” The story showed how the US government’s latest round of sanctions against North Korea failed, once again, to bring North Korea to its knees. Instead, in retaliation for the sanctions, North Korea severed the last diplomatic link to the United States, thereby eliminating any possibility of communications between the two regimes. The North Korean...

“I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today: my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of the hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent.”—Martin Luther King Jr. The latest shootings—in Texas, Minnesota, Louisiana, Illinois, New York, Missouri and every other state in the...

The longest war in US history just got even longer. As NATO wrapped up its 2016 Warsaw Summit, the organization agreed to continue funding Afghan security forces through the year 2020. Of course with all that funding comes US and NATO troops, and thousands of contractors, trainers, and more. President Obama said last week that the US must keep 3,000 more troops than planned in Afghanistan. The real reason is obvious: the mission has failed and Washington cannot bear to admit it. But Obama...

This week’s Chilcot report on Britain’s role in the 2003 invasion of Iraq was as polite and guarded as a proper English tea party. No direct accusations, no talk of war crimes by then Prime Minister Tony Blair or his guiding light, President George W. Bush. But still pretty damning. Such government reports and commissions, as was wittily noted in the delightful program "Yes, Prime Minister," are designed to obscure rather than reveal the truth and bury awkward facts in mountains of paper. And...

A nation is its institutions. If those institutions are overrun and no longer exist, so too does the nation itself cease to exist. Institutions range from the offices of government, to education, to agricultural and economic development, to the management of natural resources, national infrastructure including energy and transportation, and security. These are the things we think about when we think about the concept of a modern nation-state. Contrary to popular belief, the invasion and...