The big exclusive up at Foreign Policy reveals that Obama's promises to shift the drone war from the shadows of the CIA over to the Defense Department are being broken. The obstacles to completing this promised shift are "practical" as well as bureaucratic, Gordon...
Big Brother’s Loyal Sister: How Dianne Feinstein Is Betraying Civil Liberties
Ever since the first big revelations about the National Security Agency five months ago, Dianne Feinstein has been in overdrive to defend the surveillance state. As chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, she generates an abundance of fog, weasel words,...
New US Plans For Nation-Building in Libya Riddled With Problems
The U.S.-led NATO war to topple the Libyan regime of Muammar Gadhafi helped create a nation of disparate rebel militias that to this day, two years later, refuse to give up their arms. This, along with the weakness of the central government in Libya, is making the...
If You Blindly Believe Gov’t Claims About Drone Victims, You Are A Sucker
Shuaib Almosawa, a freelance journalist in Yemen, has a must-read report up at Foreign Policy investigating a U.S. drone strike in Marib, Yemen on August 8, 2013. It must be read in full, but Noah Shactman, an editor at Foreign Policy, sums up the piece quite...
The Victims of Drones Have Come Out of the Shadows
At each of the over 200 cities I’ve traveled to this past year with my book Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control, I ask the audience an easy question: Have they ever seen or heard from drone strike victims in the mainstream US press? Not one hand has ever...
Signs From US Don’t Bode Well For Iran Talks
Up until now, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, who initiated unprecedented diplomacy with the U.S., has spoken very positively about the negotiations with Western powers. That has apparently changed, with French media reporting the reformist president saying he is...
The US-Israeli Idea of ‘Peace’ Looks A Lot Like Conquest
Later this week, Secretary of State John Kerry is going to Israel to follow up on so-called "peace talks." "We and the parties remain focused on our goal of achieving a permanent agreement which ends the conflict and all claims, and creates peace between the Israelis...
UK Accuses Greenwald’s Partner of ‘Terrorism’
The UK government is charging Glenn Greenwald's partner David Miranda with "terrorism" and "espionage" for trying to carry documents leaked by Edward Snowden through a London airport in August. Reuters: "Intelligence indicates that Miranda is likely to be involved in...
Google’s Eric Schmidt: NSA Spying ‘Outrageous’
The Wall Street Journal interviewed Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt on the latest news reported by the Washington Post that the NSA has been going behind the back of Google and Yahoo and infiltrating their data centers around the world. The first few questions...
Clarifying Snowden’s ‘Freedom’
A common angle from the mainstream U.S. media is that NSA leaker Edward Snowden will regret his asylum in Russia (rather than life in prison in the U.S.). A quote from ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern was used in support of that theme, but he has asked the New York Times...
