|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
By Orville Schell
By Robert Scheer $10.00
$35
|
|
|
|
 mindfrieze (CC BY-SA 2.0)
|
By Robert Reich — After years of repeated reports of sexual assaults—and years of promises to prevent them, and then years of studies and commissions to find the best way of doing so—a Defense Department study released Tuesday estimates that some 26,000 people in the military were sexually assaulted in the last fiscal year, up from about 19,000 the year before.
Posted on May 9, 2013
READ MORE
|
|
Bill Day, Cagle Cartoons —
Posted on Feb 21, 2013
READ MORE
|
|
Cam Cardow, Cagle Cartoons, The Ottawa Citizen —
Posted on Jan 10, 2013
READ MORE
|
|
Pat Bagley, Cagle Cartoons, Salt Lake Tribune —
Posted on Dec 14, 2012
READ MORE
|
 Thomas Hedges
|
By Thomas Hedges, Center for Study of Responsive Law —
More than 650 companies showcased their weapon systems at the 2012 Association of the United States Army (AUSA) annual meeting and exhibition last month in Washington, D.C.
Posted on Nov 5, 2012
READ MORE
|
|
Luojie, Cagle Cartoons, China Daily, China —
Posted on Sep 3, 2012
READ MORE
|
 Creative Commons
|
The bowels of the Internet can be a scary place, as evidenced by a site called The Armory—a no-questions-asked, anonymous weapons-supply store.
Posted on Jul 19, 2012
READ MORE
|
 Flickr / M Glasgow (CC-BY)
|
By Eugene Robinson — We may not be sure that the bloodbath in Tucson had anything to do with politics, but we know it had everything to do with our nation’s insane refusal to impose reasonable controls on guns.
|
|
Deng Coy Miel, Cagle Cartoons, Singapore —
Posted on Nov 15, 2010
READ MORE
|
 AP / Ramon Espinosa
|
A crowd of about 100 protesters has blocked the entrance to the U.N. military headquarters in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, spraying anti-U.N. slogans on vehicles and carrying banners saying “Down with the occupation!” while news comes that U.N. peacekeeping forces will remain in the beleaguered country for an additional year.
|
 news.bbc.co.uk
|
They say image is everything. To that end, Russia has developed blowup versions of tanks, jets and the rest of its arsenal. The inflatables, which, the BBC reports, appear to be real weapons to radar and thermal detectors, are all about looking tough on the cheap. Remind you of anyone?
|
|
Christo Komarnitski, Cagle Cartoons, Bulgaria —
|
16.jpg) World Economic Forum
|
Responding to mounting international pressure in the wake of its bloody raid on an aid flotilla in May, Israel announced it will ease its three-year-long blockade of the Gaza Strip, forbidding only weapons and related material.
|
 pithhelmet.wordpress.com
|
Once-esteemed (by the government, at least) mercenary corporation Blackwater is in some hot legal water after the company’s former president and four other former employees were slapped with federal charges over the alleged stockpiling of automatic weapons.
|
 Wikimedia Commons
|
The Obama administration is increasing the speed at which the U.S. is deploying military defenses in the Persian Gulf, putting ships and anti-missile systems in the area in response to worries about a possible Iranian missile attack and in an effort to put pressure on Tehran.
|
 Wikimedia Commons
|
The U.S. State Department has defended a proposed deal to sell $6.4 billion in weapons to Taiwan, claiming the exchange would aid “security and stability” between the island and its mainland big brother, China.
|
 AP
|
While the U.S. is by far the world’s largest arms supplier, Russia has reportedly signed a deal with Myanmar—against which many in the West have imposed sanctions—to provide the country formerly known as Burma with 20 MiG-29 fighter planes. For, you know, uh, defense.
|
 dearcinema.com
|
What’s wrong with a $60,000 wand that can detect explosives and truffles from up to a kilometer away? Nothing, if it works. The U.S. military, technicians, journalists and people with eyes have been trying to get Iraqi officials to see reason, but that doesn’t bother one Gen. Jabiri, who says ... (Continued)
|
 Taser
|
Many a protester—and the occasional speeding grannie—has faced off against Taser-wielding law enforcement officers. The Man now has a new rapid-fire stun gun that multiplies all of the ethical problems of gaining “voluntary compliance.” After the jump, a video of Taser employees zapping each other.
|
 DoD / Master Sgt. Kevin J. Gruenwald, USAF
|
By Robert Scheer — I’ll believe it when it finally happens. But the news that Congress might actually stop production of a high-tech, job-generating and, most of all, high-profit weapons system because it fills no legitimate national security function is a considerable victory for President Barack Obama and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, as well as for logic.
|
 AP photo / J. Scott Applewhite
|
President Obama signed a weapons acquisition bill on Friday that aims to curb massive cost overruns in defense programs while increasing oversight and stimulating competition for contracts. The bill was passed unanimously by both the House and Senate earlier this week.
|
 AP photo / Eyad Baba
|
Two Palestinians were killed Saturday during Israeli airstrikes on tunnels between Gaza and Egypt that Israel says are used to bring supplies and weapons into Gaza—the first such air raids in two months, according to Al-Jazeera English.
|
 White House / Pete Souza
|
The U.S. led a round of chest-thumping following North Korea’s alleged missile test Sunday, but President Obama also acknowledged that the United States is the only country to have used nuclear weapons against others and, as such, has a “moral responsibility” to lead the world toward a nuclear stockpile of zero.
|
|
By Eugene Robinson — It’s an indictment of our fact-averse political culture that a statement of the blindingly obvious could sound so revolutionary. Nevertheless, Hillary Clinton deserves high praise for acknowledging that the U.S. bears “shared responsibility” for the drug-fueled violence sweeping Mexico.
|
 Flickr / Marcin Wichary
|
More than 6,000 people died in Mexico’s drug war last year, far too many as a result of U.S.-purchased firepower. Though Mexico has strict gun laws, smugglers have no trouble legally purchasing military-grade weapons, such as AK-47 rifles, in the U.S., and then shipping them south of the border, where they are used with devastating effect.
|
 Wikimedia Commons
|
John Isaacs, executive director of the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, joins the podcast with a status report on the spread of nuclear weapons. Cutting a deal with Iran and North Korea while getting the U.S. and Russia to downsize their own arsenals won’t be easy, but it may be only a matter of time—and diplomacy.
|
 abc.go.com
|
By G.W. Schulz, Center for Investigative Reporting —
The inaugural episode of ABC’s newest reality television series did exactly as producer Arnold Shapiro told viewers it would: unabashedly celebrated the Department of Homeland Security. It also failed in every conceivable way to critically examine the largest reorganization of the federal government since World War II.
|
 AP photo / Hatem Moussa
|
By Robert Fisk — We’ve got so used to the carnage of the Middle East that we don’t care anymore—providing we don’t offend the Israelis.
|
|
By Ellen Goodman — The 43rd president is going home with less remorse and fewer regrets than my grandchildren express for spilling their cereal.
|
 mexicanpictures.com
|
Because it worked out so well the last time, the U.S. plans to arm Afghan militias in an effort to police the country. The Pentagon is presenting this plan—and the media are reporting it—as a spinoff of a successful strategy in Iraq, not a revival of the secret war that gave rise to Osama bin Laden and the Taliban.
|
|
By Amy Goodman — President-elect Barack Obama introduced his principal national security Cabinet selections to the world Monday and left no doubt that he intends to start his administration on a war footing. It is revealing that his choice for national security adviser is a director of Boeing, a weapons manufacturer, and Chevron, an oil giant.
|
|
By William Pfaff — The cynical view of national sovereignty holds that it belongs only to those who can defend it. This was said recently at the Pentagon concerning American manned and unmanned attacks inside Pakistan.
|
 AP photo / Hasan Sarbakhshian
|
By Scott Ritter — Now that the presidential election has liberated Barack Obama from the need to play to the fickle whim of domestic politics, he should put away the saber and take a more enlightened approach to Iran.
|
 U.S. Navy / Petty Officer 3rd Class Josue L. Escobosa
|
The Defense Business Board, an official oversight body appointed by the secretary of defense, has warned the president-elect that the Pentagon’s bloated budget ($512 billion this year, not including war costs) is “not sustainable.” An unprecedented spending spree since 9/11 has run head-on into a financial meltdown, and Barack Obama is now stuck in the middle.
|
|
By William Pfaff — Less apparent to most people than the economic crisis, but just as real, are the signs of an impending crash of an American military system in which, since the end of the Cold War, Pentagon dysfunction has metastasized so uncontrollably as to scandalize the men who have overseen it.
|
|
The government on Wednesday released some of the evidence collected against biological weapons researcher Bruce E. Ivins, who died of suicide July 29. Anonymous sources peppered media reports earlier in the week, saying that much of the case relied on circumstantial evidence. So far, those reports appear to have been correct.
|
 AP photo / Brennan Linsley
|
By Scott Ritter — The war between the United States and Iran is on. American taxpayer dollars are being used, with the permission of Congress, to fund activities that result in Iranians being killed and wounded, and Iranian property destroyed. This wanton violation of a nation’s sovereignty would not be tolerated if the tables were turned.
|
 Flickr / throwthedamnthing
|
Taking a move from the McCain playbook and latching on to the bogeyman that is Iran, Barack Obama responded to Tehran’s long-range weapons tests Wednesday with calls for tougher economic sanctions against the country, whose missiles are now deemed capable of hitting American bases in the region.
|
|
By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — In knocking down the District of Columbia’s 32-year ban on handgun possession, the conservatives on the U.S. Supreme Court have shown again their willingness to abandon precedent in order to do whatever is necessary to further the agenda of the contemporary political right.
|
|
By Eugene Robinson — As much as I abhor the possible real-word impact of the Supreme Court’s Second Amendment ruling, I fear that it’s probably right.
|
 commons.wikimedia.org
|
The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that Washington, D.C., overreached with its handgun ban and must allow residents to keep guns in their homes. While it is considered a major pronouncement on the Second Amendment, it will take time, lawsuits and possibly even more rulings from the high court before the decision’s full impact is known.
|
 AP photo / Henry Arvidsson / United Nations
|
As a former U.N. weapons inspector, Scott Ritter knows a thing or two about nuclear threats around the world. So when so-called experts go on television or appear in print to help make the case for war with Iran, it gets his attention.
|
 lemonodor.com
|
One hundred eleven countries have signed a comprehensive ban on the use, production, transfer and stockpiling of cluster bombs, concluding a 12-day meeting on the issue in Dublin. Notably absent from the list of signatories was the U.S.—the largest cluster bomb manufacturer in the world—as well as military heavyweights Israel, Russia, China, India and Pakistan.
|
 sfgate.com
|
Did he or didn’t he? Four years ago, A.Q. Khan, often referred to as the “Father of the Pakistani Bomb,” confessed that he had passed nuclear secrets to North Korea, Iran and Libya. Now, as he awaits his possible release from house arrest, Khan says he made a false confession.
|
|
Thanks to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the privatization of the military and the surge in defense spending since 9/11, individual Pentagon auditors now have to keep track of more than three times as much money as they did 10 years ago. Because of limited resources, the Defense Department inspector general revealed in a recent report, about half of the military’s $316 billion weapons budget went under the radar last year.
|
 National Archives / White House Staff Photographers
|
Israel’s nuclear arsenal is something of a mystery. In fact, it doesn’t officially have one, but it doesn’t officially not have one either (wink wink). Former President Jimmy Carter lifted the shroud of secrecy over the weekend when he revealed that “Israel has 150 or more” nukes. Carter was attempting to put Iran’s alleged nuclear shenanigans in perspective.
|
 Flickr / Nrbelex
|
If Hillary Clinton becomes the next president, her administration will have a hell of a time improving relations with Iran, a country that has a few cards to play when it comes to stability in Iraq and the price of oil. That’s because Clinton recently threatened Iran’s annihilation and it turns out that the Iranian government pays attention to these things.
|
 Flickr / openDemocracy
|
According to a newly released State Department report, Pakistan experienced twice as many terrorist attacks against nonmilitary targets in 2007 than it did in 2006, killing 1,335 people. That kind of instability would be pretty frightening if Pakistan had dozens of nuclear weapons. Oh, wait a second, it does.
|
 opendemocracy.net
|
On Friday, a day after an American cargo ship fired warning shots at two small boats off the coast of Iran, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Michael Mullen said the Pentagon is considering various options, including military action, to deal with what he characterized as the Iranian government’s “increasingly lethal and malign influence” in Iraq.
|
|
By Eugene Robinson — Once the meaningless inquisition about loose semantics and questionable acquaintances was done, Wednesday night’s debate between Obama and Clinton got interesting.
|
View older articles:
1 2 3 >
View the most popular tags overall?
|
|