Andy Worthington asks a burning question: “Why is Shaker Aamer still at Gitmo?” And after detailing the case of Aamer — an innocent man sold to the American security forces by the human traffickers who partnered with the CIA in Afghanistan, a man who was cleared for release from the American concentration camp seven years ago — Worthington suggests the likely answer: Aamer knows too much about the torture regime at Gitmo, and has been too vocal in standing up for fellow prisoners throughout his illegal captivity — and has made it clear he will continue to speak out against

Moscow-based American writer and critic John Freedman has penned a tremendously powerful piece on his blog, Russian Culture in Landmarks. Writing a response to an article by Russian-born writer Martha Gessen in the New York Times, Freedman has encapsulated, in so many ways, the experience of those of us who, in this grim and ugly century, have “lost” both our countries — the America that gave us birth, and the Russia which, as with Rilke, became our “spiritual homeland” — to bizarre, brutal, murderous, belligerent, xenophobic, mean-spirited, wilfully ignorant perversions of themselves. In America, in Russia, and in so many

Oh dear. Rand Paul, favorite candidate of those who dream of an anti-imperial coalition of hardcore libertarians and the antiwar left, has popped many a bubble this week with his proposed Senate bill to declare war on ISIS. Supporters will doubtless say that Paul (like another young politician on the make who served as a blank screen for his followers’ aspirations for genuine hope and change) is merely playing “11th dimensional chess” with the move, trying to put America’s war machine back on a Constitutional footing, while outflanking potential rivals for the GOP nomination who might otherwise have painted him

“My brother’s blood is crying from the gravebut you can’t hear the voiceI stand in jeopardy every hour,Wonderin’ what reason you have to rejoice. Look at your feet see where they’ve been toLook at your hands, see what they’ve been into…Yonder  comes sin…”– B. Dylan Patrick Smith, man on fire, takes on a theme we were were discussing here the other day — the true nature and origin of terrorism in our benighted Age of Terror. In his piece for Salon.com, Smith focuses on the outrageous and brazen lies of the American political and media establishment concerning the “Arab Spring”

Glenn Greenwald notes the blizzard of bellicose propaganda pieces pouring from the High Media lately concerning the Peace Laureate’s latest flurry of drone killings. In story after story, headline after headline, we hear of “militants” slaughtered by the dead-eyed machinery that floats above the distant villages of the “recalcitrant tribes” who bedevil the Empire with their disobedience — or, in the case of the drone campaign, which overwhelmingly kills innocent civilians, with their mere existence. Greenwald draws on a new article by Steve Coll in the New Yorker, which provides a detailed — and damning — look at the Progressive

[Post corrected below.] While I’ve been off tending various wounds, a number of interesting stories have come over the transom. All of them deserve more unpacking, but for now I’d just like to make note of a few of them for the dwindling number of eyes still casting a gaze this way now and again. Hope to be writing more here soon. 1.As the Masters of the World (or in most cases, the Masters’ temporary flunkies in high office) gather at the G20 summit in Australia, Patrick Smith provides a fascinating look at some behind-the-scenes developments that could help make

Below is a slightly revised version of my column in the latest print edition of Counterpunch Magazine. In the course of a massive clean-out the other day, I came upon a box of overstuffed folders and musty papers — copies of some of the first pieces I’d ever had published, going back 35 years. For almost two decades they’d lain unseen in the bottom of an old trunk in my parents’ basement, stored there during one of the several peripatetic upheavals that punctuated my early adulthood. Then a freak flood hit the town, and most of the papers were damaged

Circumstances have prevented me from digging into the new Mark Ames article on the Omidyariazation of Ukrainian politics as I intended, so let me just point you to it again, with a few choice excerpts (see the original for copious links): Ukraine just held its first post-revolution parliamentary elections, and amid all of the oligarchs, EU enthusiasts, neo-Nazis, nepotism babies, and death squad commanders, there is one newly-elected parliamentarian’s name that stands out for her connection to Silicon Valley: Svitlana Zalishchuk, from the billionaire president’s Poroshenko Bloc party. Zalishchuk was given a choice spot on the president’s party list, at number 18, ensuring her

A few random thoughts on the imbroglio over Matt Taibbi leaving the media stable of oligarch Pierre Omidyar — and the remarkable response to this by the oligarch’s remaining celebs, led by Glenn Greenwald. 1. The Intercept article on Taibbi’s departure — bylined under the names of Greenwald, Laura Poitras, Jeremy Scahill, and John Cook, but almost certainly written mostly by Greenwald — is, at its core, a scurrilous piece of work. Purporting to be a boldly transparent piece — it even (lightly) criticizes the Boss! — it is instead, transparently, an attempt by the oligarch’s organization to get its

Behold the quintessential earnest progressive liberal in the highest moral dudgeon: Digby railing with thunderous fury at the possibility (the very distinct possibility) that Barack Obama is going to suppress the Senate’s report on CIA torture. Digby quotes the recent letter from some of Obama’s fellow Nobel Peace Prize laureates, who are calling on Obama to release the report (and close the concentration camp at Guantanamo Bay, for good measure.) Worthy sentiments and justifiable anger indeed. But then Digby adds this gloss: “Honestly, if they deep six the report (or redact it so heavily that it’s meaningless) I think President