“[Drones are a] game-changing technology, akin to gunpowder, the steam engine, the atomic bomb—opening up possibilities that were fiction a generation earlier but also opening up perils that were unknown a generation ago.”—Peter Singer, senior...
Deir Yassin, Beit Daras and the Buried History of Massacres
Few with any sense of intellectual or historical integrity would still question the bloody massacre that took place in the village of Deir Yassin 65 years ago, claiming the lives of over 100 innocent Palestinians. Attempts at covering up the massacre have been dwarfed...
Drones and Death Lists: The New Face of Warfare
Watching Senator John McCain foam at the mouth with his calls for war against Syria reminds one that President Barack Obama has done well to resist strident demands from congress and the media to use the U.S. armed forces in a direct role to remove President Bashar...
The Orwellian Warfare State of Carnage and Doublethink
After the bombings that killed and maimed so horribly at the Boston Marathon, our country’s politics and mass media are awash in heartfelt compassion -- and reflexive "doublethink," which George Orwell described as willingness "to forget any fact that...
16 Years for Espionage, Life in Jail for Whistleblowing
Spc. William Millay, a 25-year-old military policeman, was sentenced yesterday to 19 years in jail, a sentence reduced to 16 years after a plea deal, minus time served, for attempting to commit espionage and for illegally communicating "unclassified national...
As West Falters, Arms Spending Rises in Developing World
The spreading economic crisis is taking a bite out of Western military spending – even as the world’s developing nations, along with Russia and China, boosted their arms expenditures last year. In a study released Monday, the Stockholm International Peace...
Attacks Continue Ahead of Provincial Elections in Iraq: 16 Killed
A car bomb exploded at a government office in Abu Ghraib, where it killed three people and wounded seven more. Two soldiers were killed and four more were wounded when gunmen attacked their checkpoint. In Baghdad, a car bomb killed one person and wounded six more in...
Targeted Killings in the Drone War – Illegal and Unconstitutional
Up until recently, we were all laboring under the illusion that U.S. Pakistani “friends” had reluctantly agreed to allow the United States kill al Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban with drone attacks on their soil in exchange for bucket loads of cash in foreign aid. Now we...
Eisenhower’s Reprieve and the Descent Into Fiscal Insanity
Editorial note: The first part of this review appeared on Monday. David Stockman's The Great Deformation is an economic history of the United States as seen through the eyes of a devoted fiscal conservative whose number-crunching abilities have led him to the...
Shell Shock Lite
“Shell shock,” the psychological scourge of World War I, occurred after “a man has been buried, lifted, or otherwise subjected to the physical effects of a bursting shell or other similar explosive.” So wrote Charles Myers, an officer in...


