In October 2011, 16-year-old Tariq Aziz attended a gathering in Islamabad where he was taught how to use a video camera so he could document the drones that were constantly circling over his Pakistani village, terrorizing and killing his family and neighbors. Two days...
Recently the words "fascism" and "fascist" have been used almost casually in political discourse, most notably in the form of the fusion word "Islamofascism" which seeks to conflate Islam with fascist ideology. The use of...
You might think that China’s political system is in no way comparable to our own – and further, you might not be blamed for thinking that the 1973 Chinese Communist propaganda campaign, "Criticize Lin Biao, Criticize Confucius," has zero to do with the...
In the revamp of his national security team for a second term, President Obama gets a mixed review. Barring an unlikely presidential post-re-election epiphany leading to a radical scaling back of the American Empire, Obama probably got the best mainstream...
In late December 2001, not long after Washington’s second Afghan War began, there was that wedding celebration in eastern Afghanistan in which 110 of 112 villagers were reportedly killed by American B-52 and B-1B bombers using precision...
“If the broad light of day could be let in upon men’s actions, it would purify them as the sun disinfects.”—Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis What characterizes American government today is not so much dysfunctional politics as it is...
Would-be tough guys like former CIA torturer-in-chief José A. Rodriguez Jr. brag that “enhanced interrogation” of terrorists – or doing what the rest of us would call “torturing” – has made Americans safer by eliciting tidbits of information that advanced the search...
So who’s the fool? The outfit that turned its business of peddling useless propaganda to U.S. occupied countries onto America itself – by smearing journalists that dared criticize it – or the government that hired them for hundreds of millions in the first place?...
Protests flared in Mosul, where agitated demonstrations tried to take over several army vehicles. Mosul was also the focus of violence that left 10 dead and 15 wounded across the country. In Mosul, shots were fired after protestors climbed on top of army Humvees; four...
