This is my column in the latest edition of CounterPunch print magazine: The title of one of Christopher Logue’s multi-volume reworkings of Homer’s Iliad stands as the perfect encapsulation of our age: All-Day Permanent Red. We live in a time when the collective amygdala has been stoked into overdrive, sending messages of blank, blind fear that overwhelm the centers of reason, empathy and openness in our brains, propelling us into a state of inchoate anxiety that seeks release in tropes of extremist certainty and spasms of violence – active, verbal or vicarious. This natural human propensity – which has waxed

William Arkin has long been an outstanding investigator of the “National Security State,” bringing to light many of its sinister operations. But he seems to have looked into the abyss too long, for now, in a recent article in Cryptome, he is offering a counsel of despair that reflects the worst and most extreme stances of the National Security State toward terrorism, while completely overlooking that same State’s role — still continuing today — in fostering, funding and arming Islamic extremism. We have not even begun to address this “root cause” of violent Islamic extremism in its modern, organized form.

Never seen anything like this. And it’s no surprise that it would take a Black female cop to take this type of stand pic.twitter.com/7wdPFjPqW4 — elle (@spokenELLE) July 7, 2016

Surprised — but glad — to see how scathing the Chilcot Report turned out to be. It’s not a criminal indictment, but already, just the bullet points from Chilcot’s press conference are highly damning of Blair as a leader: rushing headlong into a totally unnecessary war, with very dubious legal backing, ignoring reports on the likely consequences of the invasion, bowing to belligerent US wishes at every turn, showing incredible disregard for the soldiers he was sending in to occupy a country (and for the innocent civilians of that country, who, Chilcot notes, died in vast numbers) and knowingly exaggerating

Deep State is a Terror State, Torture State, Tyrant State — and it’s OK with that. Deep State was formed to bodyguard elites, keeping their dominance ever-refreshed. Deep State doesn’t care what you advocate, just as long as you toe the unsaid line. Deep State is cold, lacks true affect; hates only that which hinders it. Deep State fences the range of opinion like a cattle baron stringing barbed wire. Deep State loves culture war, stokes all sides, thrives on strife, the bitterer the better. Deep State is not in full control; it just knows which way it wants the

JeSuisBaghdad? Iraqi flag colors on the Eiffel Tower, the White House? No? Wrong sort of victims, I guess. The responsibility for Sunday’s carnage in Baghdad — and countless other killings around the world — goes directly to George W. Bush and Tony Blair, who willingly, even eagerly, launched a war of aggression on false evidence and tore the entire region apart. ISIS was spawned in the brutal prisons Bush & Blair set up after the invasion, and has thrived in the chaos that US/UK policies have fomented in all the years since, particularly in Libya and Syria. But these two

The victims in Orlando were killed because of who they loved, who they desired, and for no other reason. The massacre was not “an attack on our country.” It was a savage hate crime against gay people by a known homophobe (and aspiring policeman) trained in the use of weapons by the world’s largest corporate security firm. Although like so many “lone wolf” terrorists (and would-be terrorists), the Orlando killer was “on the FBI’s radar,” we don’t yet know — and may never know — if he, like many of his predecessors, had been encouraged and enabled by the FBI

My latest column from the CounterPunch print magazine: The tangled tropes of Trump are many and various. Most have at least a tincture of veracity in them — although the phenomenon of his candidacy is so vast and gaseous it’s not surprising that some discharge from it would fall, like mist, or a wet clump of coagulate matter, on scattered bits of the truth here and there. One trope says we’ve been here before, with the political triumph of a gleefully ignorant, blustering, bigoted faux populist made famous by show biz: Ronald Reagan. Although he was more closely handled, Reagan’s

Another day, another Trump delegate calling for the violent overthrow of the government.  This sort of thing used to be frowned upon, I believe, but now is simply par for the political course. The odd thing, of course, is that if Obama wasn’t black, he would be a conservative’s dream. He’s opened up more offshore drilling than Bush, expanded fracking, deported more people than any president in history, killed thousands of Muslims (and is currently bombing seven Muslim countries), raised military budgets, cut federal taxes to their lowest levels in 60 years, cut social programs, spent almost 8 years trying