This past Monday, Dec. 17, the Government Accountability Project (GAP) filed an amicus curiae brief with the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in the case of Hedges v. Obama. That lawsuit challenges provisions contained within the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012 (NDAA 2012). The overbroad and …
There once was a country where the leaders enjoyed playing tricks on the public, and could always count on its friends in the “media” to play along. The joke was to tell the public the same old lie again and again, and see if anyone ever stood up to protest. …
Eight Parallels Between the Collapse of Rome’s Republic and Contemporary America “History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.” -Karl Marx Lawrence Lessig’s Republic Lost documents the corrosive effect of money on our political process. Lessig persuasively makes the case that we are witnessing the loss of our republican form of …
Sometimes prediction is easy. As 2011 bled into 2012, there was panic everywhere about the euro: It was doomed and it was going to take the global economy with it. It was easy for a calm, rational person like myself, with extensive experience of European Union processes, to predict the …
Following a decision last week [1] by the United Nations Security Council to send thousands of soldiers into Mali to combat “Islamist” and “Qaeda” extremists, the Pentagon has announced it will dispatch “small teams” to more than 35 African nations next year. “The teams will be limited to training and equipping efforts, and …
Israel’s large Palestinian minority is often spoken of in terms of the threat it poses to the Jewish majority. Palestinian citizens’ reproductive rate constitutes a “demographic timebomb”, while their main political programme – Israel’s reform into “a state of all its citizens” – is proof for most Israeli Jews that …
The multinational NATO force in Afghanistan has declared that it spent more than $200 million to buy fuel for the Afghan Army in 2010 and 2011, but cannot locate any documents to substantiate the expense or show precisely where the money went, according to a special report by a government …
Over the past year I and other plaintiffs including Noam Chomsky and Daniel Ellsberg have pressed a lawsuit in the federal courts to nullify Section 1021(b)(2) of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). This egregious section, which permits the government to use the military to detain U.S. citizens, strip them …
On Jan. 1, 2000, the world awoke to find that little had changed since the night before. After years of hype around what was then called Y2K — the fear that computer systems across the globe would collapse, unable to handle the year shifting from ’99 to ’00 — the …
There is perhaps no time in American history when our leaders have fought a war with so little support. More than 60 percent of Americans want out of Afghanistan. Even at the peak of the anti-Vietnam-war movement, after a majority had turned against the war, there were still a large number of …
“I do not understand this squeamishness about the use of gas. We have definitely adopted the position at the Peace Conference of arguing in favour of the retention of gas as a permanent method of warfare…. I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes.” (Winston S. Churchill, …
People often ask me, in terms of my argument about “ten steps” that mark the descent to a police state or closed society, at what stage we are. I am sorry to say that with the importation of what will be tens of thousands of drones, by both US military and by commercial interests, …
The United States is risking a disastrous renewal of war in the Caucasus between Armenians and Azeris over the breakaway Armenian-populated Republic of Mountainous Karabagh (RMK, or Artsakh in ancient Armenian). A new war between Azerbaijan and RMK (with its ally, Armenia) would undoubtedly destroy much of Azerbaijan’s energy industry. This includes key …
If there is one word missing from the United States government’s post-9/11 lexicon it is “accountability.” While perfectly legal though illicit sexual encounters apparently continue to rise to the level of high crimes and misdemeanors, leading to resignations, no one has been punished for malfeasance, torture, secret prisons, or extraordinary …
“History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.” -Karl Marx Lawrence Lessig’s Republic Lost documents the corrosive effect of money on our political process. Lessig persuasively makes the case that we are witnessing the loss of our republican form of government, as politicians increasingly represent those who fund their campaigns, rather …