September 2021 marked the twentieth anniversary of the “War on Terror.” As the war turned 20, the U.S. under the Biden administration initiated a withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, prompting howls of concern and outrage from journalists, pundits, and his political critics in government. The alarm among intellectuals is something I wrote about at…
Judging by the way past US leaders have described their rivals, you’d think Washington has been fighting against the likes of Darth Vader. On March 8, 1983, then-President Ronald Reagan branded the Soviet Union, America’s Cold War adversary, as an “evil empire” that was the “focus of evil in the modern world.” Fast forward nearly…
“Tyranny does not flourish because perpetuators are helpless and ignorant of their actions. It flourishes because they actively identify with those who promote vicious acts as virtuous.”—An academic study into pathocracy Disgruntled mobs. Martial law. A populace under house arrest. A techno-corporate state wielding its power to immobilize huge swaths of the country. A Constitution…
The search for hidden ISIS treasure buried in the ruins of Mosul, the city recaptured from the terror group after a devastating nine-month siege in 2017, is the latest obstacle delaying its reconstruction. Local people accuse the authorities of preventing them rebuilding their houses because officials suspect them of searching for cash or other valuables concealed by ISIS. “A month…
If the notion that, ‘truth always lies 180 degrees opposite to the direction pointed by the corporate media’ is not yet a modern maxim, it should be. A useful corollary might be added to the effect that, ‘the depth to which an event is consigned to the establishment memory hole is inversely related to its…
We all remember 9/11 as we remember so many other days, the Challenger disaster, the Kennedy murders or, for me, the fall of Saigon. For me, 9/11 began a new journey. I had some years ago tried to move my own career from defense and intelligence endeavors to the sane and rational, real work with…
