Chelsea is free!With more than a little irony, while I was in Iraq working for the State Department, Chelsea Manning’s office was across the hall from mine. While I was winning the war by writing emails to the embassy, Manning was across the hall capturing the texts...
Monday was Nakba Day, the day set aside to remember the catastrophe that befell the Palestinian Arabs in 1948 in connection with the creation of the “Jewish State” of Israel. Over 700,000 Palestinians were driven from their homes and villages, and...
It might come as a surprise to many Americans that their government does not classify al-Qaeda in Syria as a terrorist organization. The reason it refuses to make the determination would shock them even more. The Syrian franchise of the organization involved in the...
The latest "Russiagate" breathless revelation is that President Trump revealed secret information to the Russians in the Oval office. The Washington Post cites unnamed "former and current" intelligence sources for the leaked information. The leakers were obviously not...
At this moment, it’s hard to think of a better symbol of American militarism than a giant bomb with a U.S. flag on it. President Donald Trump touted the use of the “mother of all bombs” (MOAB) in Afghanistan as a “very, very successful mission” even though...
The Baltic countries, and some of their Scandinavian neighbors, are mortally terrified of Russia. Or so they would have us believe. They clamored to join NATO as soon as the Soviet Union collapsed and are currently among the most shrill anti-Russian voices outside of...
"Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? That's not my department," says Wernher von Braun.~ From Tom Lehrer’s ballad of Wernher von BraunFrom MAD to Madness: Inside Pentagon Nuclear War Planning is the enlightening memoir by Paul Johnstone, a man who...
The "Appeal to womanhood throughout the world" (later known as "Mother's Day Proclamation") by abolitionist Julia Ward Howe was an appeal for women to unite for peace in the world. Written in 1870, Howe's "Appeal to womanhood" was a...
The Turks are not at all happy about President Trump's plan to provide heavy weapons to the Kurds fighting as US proxies against ISIS in Syria. The Turks bombed some 20 Kurdish fighters in Syria just weeks ago but with US advanced weapons in Kurdish hands, future such...
For those who woke a week ago to discover the First Amendment is under attack, I lost my job at the Obama/Clinton State Department in 2012 for writing We Meant Well, a book the government did not like, and needed the help of lawyer Jesselyn Radack and the ACLU to push...
