The news that the Obama administration covertly contacted the Iranian government to confirm that the US would not back an Israeli strike so long as Iran doesn't attack US assets in the Persian Gulf is at once a dramatic development and utterly predictable. (The White...

The following is authored by Chris Woods and Jack Serle at The Bureau of Investigative Journalism. Reprinted here with permission.  Pakistan: August sees the highest number of CIA strikes in Pakistan since October 2011. A number of senior militants are killed along...

From the newest issue of Foreign Affairs, How China Sees America by Andrew J. Nathan and Andrew Scobell has some valuable insights. The diplomatic relationship between the US and China has soured recently, due especially to President Obama's bellicosity in the Asia...

Foreign Policy reports there are "many Yemenis who have come to suspect that their government is not fighting, but helping cultivate, jihadi activity in their country." According to sources in Yemen's Interior Ministry and Defense Ministry, as well as independent...

The American Conservative's Jordon Bloom ran into a befuddled John Bolton at the Republican National Convention yesterday and had a timely question for him: He was on his way in to observe the speeches, and I knew he wouldn’t have much time to answer more than a...

The Economist has published interviews with ordinary Yemenis revealing what should be obvious - but clearly isn't in our Orwellian political world - that continuously bombing another country that we are not at war with tends to generate hatred and create new enemies....

The New York Times has a short documentary video (which they won't allow people to embed, so you must follow the link) directed by Laura Poitras about William Binney, the former NSA analyst and mathematician-turned whistleblower. Binney described details about Stellar...

Completely under the radar, Obama has sent 200 additional US Marines to Guatemala on another drug war adventure. Associated Press: A team of 200 U.S. Marines began patrolling Guatemala's western coast this week in an unprecedented operation to beat drug traffickers in...

Via, Mondoweiss, a new resolution passed by the California State Assembly attempts to limit criticism of Israeli policy on college campuses by equating it with anti-Semitic hate speech. The law urges "California colleges and universities to squelch nascent...