Via ThinkProgress, Bahraini human rights activist Nabeel Rajab was arrested today for the crime of insulting the monarchy in a tweet. He is expected to be in jail for up to 3 months, but knowing the US-supported Bahraini regime's penchant for torture, Rajab could be...
The Bureau of Investigative Journalism has published a must-read interview with Yemeni-American journalist Hakim Almasmari, "a reporter for CNN and editor of the Yemen Post." Hakim is on the ground in Yemen and says that civilian casualties are systematically...
Following news that Israel is refusing to cooperate with UN investigations into illegal settlement building in the West Bank, this illustrative exchange between State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland and AP reporter Matt Lee (via Mondoweiss) VICTORIA NULAND:...
Senator John McCain might have been the first one in Washington to argue for direct US military intervention in Syria. And the most pro-war person in Congress is still lobbying for such action, making headlines all the way. "I’ve always stressed the need to arm the...
Former CIA officer John Kiriakou was one of the first government officials to publicly acknowledge the use of waterboarding during interrogations and to call it what it was - torture. The Obama administration, in its unprecedented war on whistleblowers is trying to...
Lesson one from Cato's Julian Sanchez is that "Government surveillance is now almost entirely off the books." The old way of tallying how many times the national security state attempts to spy on citizens is not taking into account the digital internet age. He...
There are two doomsday scenarios Washington and their welfare recipients in the war industry are predicting if defense budgets get cut. The first is that the defense corporations will have to lay off workers and unemployment will increase massively, sending the...
At the Aspen Ideas Festival last week, retired/fired General Stanley McChrystal gave a ringing endorsement of drone warfare, only to subsequently mention, footnote-style, that the so-called precision bombing of drones don't always spare civilians. "We should be using...
Dexter Filkin's writes in the New Yorker about the potential for civil war to break out in Afghanistan once the US "leaves" in 2014. He interviews Abdul Nasir, who was present in Afghanistan when the Soviets invaded and witnessed what happened when they left. What...
