War State America

They didn’t count the Afghans because the Afghans didn’t count. By Sophia A. McClennen Salon (12/14/19) On Monday, December 9, The Washington Post released a confidential trove of 2,000 pages of government documents that revealed that senior U.S. officials repeatedly failed to tell the truth about the war in Afghanistan. They document in detail a practice of lying, deception and whitewashing that covered up unmistakable evidence that the war had no grand plan, no end in sight and no consistent leadership. The series of articles published by Craig Whitlock in the Post, along with the original documents themselves, detail a horrifying pattern of deception and…

    By Jeremy Scahill Intercepted Podcast (1/17/18) For the past year, we’ve all experienced an intense sort of political or news vertigo. It’s making us dumber by the day. Of course, part of this is due to the fact that Donald Trump is president and he constantly scoops the story of the latest outrage about himself by performing yet another outrage just as we start discussing the previous one. It’s exhausting and brain melting. But this is also because major media organizations have all chosen to constantly chase the rabbit. In a way, all of us in media are…

All Thing Considered / NPR (1/6/19) NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly speaks with New York Times reporter John Ismay about his investigation into the deadly history of unexploded cluster bombs accidentally killing U.S. troops that handle them. Link To 4-Minute Audio (Commoner Call cartoon by Mark L. Taylor, 2017. Open source and free for non-derivative use with link to www.thecommonercall.org )

They’re working hand-in-glove with the State Department. By Alex Kane In These Times (5/20/19) PRIYANKA MOTAPARTHY, A RESEARCHER FOR HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH, arrived at a market in the Yemeni village of Mastaba on March 28, 2016, to find large craters, destroyed buildings, debris, shredded bits of clothing and small pieces of human bodies. Two weeks earlier, a warplane had bombed the market with two guided missiles. A Human Rights Watch (HRW) report says the missiles hit around noon on March 15, killing 97 civilians, including 25 children. “When the first strike came, the world was full of blood,” Mohammed Yehia Muzayid, a market…

Reality Asserts Itself / The Real News Network (5/27/19) TRNN Replay from May 10, 2014: Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson says US foreign policy is made by the oligarchs. Link to 21-Minute Video

  Where better to commemorate conflicts that Americans would like to ignore or forget than in a hollowing-out Midwestern town they never knew existed in the first place? By Andrew Bacevich Tom Dispatch (5/23/19) Earlier this month, I spent a day visiting Marseilles to videotape a documentary about recent American military history, specifically the ongoing wars that most of us prefer not to think about. Lest there be any confusion, let me be more specific. I am not referring to Marseilles (mar-SAY), France, that nation’s largest port and second largest city with a population approaching 900,000. No, my destination was Marseilles (mar-SAYLZ),…

Over these last few years, given the wars it has waged and the international treaties it has arbitrarily reneged on, the U.S. government perfectly fits its own definition of a rogue state.  Democracy Now! (5/13/19) [Editor’s Note: Author Arundhati Roy reads a portion of her recent Arthur Miller Freedom to Write Lecture, titled: “A Place for Literature.” — Mark L. Taylor] As the ice caps melt, as oceans heat up and water tables plunge, as we rip through the delicate web of interdependence that sustains life on earth, as our formidable intelligence leads us to breach the boundaries between humans and…