The appointment of Suzanne Nossel, a former State Department official and longtime government apparatchik, as executive director of PEN American Centeris part of a campaign to turn U.S. human rights organizations into propagandists for pre-emptive war and apologists for empire. Nossel’s appointment led me to resign from PEN as well …
Washington has vociferously denounced Afghan corruption as a major obstacle to the U.S. mission in Afghanistan. This has been widely reported. Only one crucial element is missing from this routine censure: a credible explanation of why American nation-building failed there. No wonder. To do so, the U.S. would have …
Reporting from Afghanistan on Thursday, the Associated Press has published a first hand account of Afghan civilians living under the constant terror of U.S. drone strikes. The reporting by the AP—which the news outlet admits followed “a rare on-the-ground look unaccompanied by [US] military or security”—allowed them to explore the toll the …
Almost half of the 2.2 million troops deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan report difficulties on their return home, but many receive inadequate care from the US Department of Defense and Veterans Affairs, according to a new study published on Tuesday. The Institute of Medicine report, requested by Congress and funded …
Project Censored presents special program produced by Nora Barrows-Friedman, Iraqi Frequences: 10 Years. This radio program is part of a wider initiative to create a resource kit for community organizers, activists, and all people affected by the occupation of Iraq to forge out responses and disseminate information as a means of making sure …
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The Department of Veterans Affairs has failed to provide key information to Congress and the public that shows the agency’s ability to quickly provide service-related benefits has virtually collapsed under President Barack Obama. Internal VA documents, obtained by the Center for Investigative Reporting and authenticated by the agency, reveal that …
Private military and security companies (PMSC) are the modern reincarnation of a long lineage of private providers of physical force: corsairs, privateers and mercenaries. Mercenaries, which had practically disappeared during the XIXth and XXth centuries, reappeared in the 1960’s during the decolonization period operating mainly in Africa and Asia. …
As Obama proclaims that the US adventure in Afghanistan will draw to a close over the next couple years, we may look at the balance sheet with respect to one of the occupation’s alleged justifications: the fight against Afghan heroin. The outcome has been a total failure. In fact, …
I was born in 1991. I’ve lived over half my life in a nation at war. Starting in 2001, when I was just ten years old, the War on Terror and it’s two biggest projects to date, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, have shaped my view of war …
What makes someone join Al Qaeda? In the case of Abu Yahya al-Libi, the Al Qaeda luminary killed in an American drone strike in Pakistan last June, his older brother has no doubt. Americans are culpable for his sibling’s embrace of terrorism. He draws a direct line between al-Libi’s recruitment by …
Over the past four decades, of all the reasons people over a certain age have given for their becoming radicalized against US foreign policy, the Vietnam War has easily been the one most often cited. And I myself am the best example of this that you could find. I …
Barack Obama would never be so crass as to use a State of the Union (SOTU) address to announce an “axis of evil”. No. Double O Bama, equipped with his exclusive license to kill (list), is way slicker. As much as he self-confidently pitched a blueprint for a …
It’s hard for me, an ordinary citizen of Singapore, a medical doctor engaged in social enterprise work in Afghanistan and a human being wishing for a better world, to write this from Kabul. But people are dying. And children and women are feeling hopeless. “What’s the …
The words in President Obama’s “State of the Union” speech were often lofty, spinning through the air with the greatest of ease and emitting dog whistles as they flew. Let’s decode the president’s smooth oratory in the realms of climate change, war and civil liberties. …
Afghan officials say that five children are among the ten civilians killed by a US/NATO missile attack in eastern Afghanistan on Wednesday. “Four women and five children were killed, and five children wounded. One man, who was the leader of the family, was also killed, according to reports …