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HOLLYWOOD AND THE CIA — Film historian Ed Rampell details Hollywood’s entangled relationship with the CIA and the Pentagon; HOUSES OF THE DEAD: Nancy Kurshan exposes the cruel human rights offenses taking place inside America’s vast gulag of Control Unit Prisons; BROTHERHOOD OF SUMMER: David Macaray charts the history of the most powerful union in the US: the Baseball Players Association; TAR SANDS COME TO AMERICA: Steve Horn explains how the Keystone Pipeline debates have diverted attention from Big Oil’s other plans to transport Alberta’s oil into the US. PLUS: Jeffrey St. Clair on CONSTITUTIONAL ENTROPY; Mike Whitney on HOW THE BANKS TARGETED BLACKS; Chris Floyd on THE RISE OF BRITAIN’S TEA PARTY; Kristin Kolb on THE NEEDLE AND THE DAMAGE DONE; Kim Nicolini on the FILMS OF WILLIAM FRIEDKIN; and Lee Ballinger on POETS VS. THE ONE PERCENT.
Archives by Tag 'drones'
On Monday, the Associated Press revealed that the Department of Justice used subpoenas to obtain phone records of its editors and reporters from April and May 2012. The records were obtained due to the investigation and supposed leak to the AP last year that the CIA had ...
Alternate realities in the conflict Pakistan is waging against insurgents in its tribal areas tend to be regular affairs. Intrinsic to them is the contorted relationship the country has with the United States, three bits domestic violence to two bits political expediency....
If there are possible legal grounds for drone assassinations based on the White paper, then these are post hoc ergo propter hoc confirmations of a fait accompli. In other words, when questionable acts are committed by the President, can you justify them legally after th...
As we know, Candidate Obama in ’08 pledged to close Guantanamo; President Obama, now in his Second Term, as we also know, lied so egregiously, on a matter of extreme importance to the every meaning of the rule of law (because puking on Magna Charta and centuries ...
At last we know. The mysterious legal authority for Barack Obama’s killer drone program flows from another administration with an elastic interpretation of executive power: that of Richard Nixon.
In a chilling 16-page dossier known simply as the White Paper, one ...
On May first, which we in the United States celebrate as Law Day, presumably to honor, at latest count, the principle and practice of indefinite detention, which includes torture, solitary confinement, and now, forced feeding, to pacify, break the will, and otherwise puni...
The Pentagon, military, intelligence agencies and military contractors are longtime proponents of UAVs for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) missions. Following President Bush’s declaration of a “global war on terrorism,” the White House became dir...
If the Brothers Tsarnaev’s bombing at the Boston Marathon is an argument against immigration, then Tim McVeigh’s bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City is an argument against reproductive freedom.
Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev came to the Unit...
In watching the massive media coverage and the reaction to the brutal bombing at the finish line of the Boston Marathon, the wise poem “To A Louse…” composed in 1785 by the Scottish poet Robert Burns came to me:
“O wad some Pow’r the giftie gi...
The United States and the Central Intelligence Agency have never acknowledged the potential for “blowback,” or negative fallout, from their military and covert actions. The Watergate burglary by the veterans of the Bay of Pigs was an obvious example of blowback. C...
The drone war may have just taken out a high value target—former President of Pakistan and Bush Administration partner in the War on Terror, Pervez Musharraf.
No, he didn’t get blown to bits by a ...
On the day of the Boston Marathon bombings, President Obama stood in the White House briefing room and ...
Paris.
As I write this, we still don’t know who was responsible for the horrific bombing attack in Boston. Perhaps it will turn out to be the work of home grown rightwing nuts; perhaps it’s the act of foreign terrorists. But, whatever the source, what ...
An Associated Press photograph brought the horror of l...
Bina Shah has written an excellent ...
Again we hear (NYT ed., 4/6) about “the damage wrought by the gun lobby,” as though a cabal of manufacturers and other interested parties was responsible for the diseased mentality centered on gun violence in America. What a convenient scapegoat, when in real...
Hundreds of prisoners of the US War of Terror languish in prisons around the world, in Guantanamo and on the US mainland. Some have been there as long as 12 years some have sentences that extend beyond the span of their life; many have never been charged with a cri...
On the internet there have been photographs going round of a row of puffy-faced North Korean generals with flabby chests covered in medals. Their decorations are absurd, of course, because none of these chubbies has heard a shot fired in anger. And western propaganda m...
When Barack Obama first appeared on the national scene, he was a Rorschach inkblot upon whom gullible liberals projected their hopes and anxious “conservatives” their fears.
The scare quotes are justified because then, as now, there was not much that is genuine...
One thing you can say about Kentucky Senator Rand Paul is that he’s a crafty politician. His thirteen-hour filibuster to protest President Obama’s nomination of National Security Advisor John Brennan as CIA...
In today’s Washington Post (Mar. 27) Greg Miller and Julie Tate report on John Brennan’s facing “a quandary over clandestine service appointment,” the term “quandary,” in this case, ordinarily signifying perplexity or doubt, is really not quite accurate...
Drones are still hovering over the capital – figuratively, for the time being. The images generated by Eric Holder’s disquieting testimony and Rand Paul’s filibuster are lingering. They have not ignited an uproar of protest against targeted assassinations, signature...
“Fascism is capitalism plus murder.”
― Upton Sinclair
“If the president does it, it isn’t illegal.”
― Richard M. Nixon
In a 5-4 ruling labelled “Kafkaesque” the Supreme Court refused an application by ...
Frogs in the marsh mud drone their old laments.
— Vergil, Georgics
It is wonderful how a new weapon can rejuvenate a word that has long been something of a dullard. The reinvigorated word is “drone.”
In days...
This week marks the 10th anniversary of the start of the Iraq War. As one of the longest and one of the most costly wars in U.S. history, the true costs in dollars, lives, environmental contamination and opportunity costs may never be fully appreciated. This “preventi...