President Trump’s policy of “maximum pressure” on Iran has generated Tehran’s policy of “tit for tat,” and the results worry the world. Drones downed. Tankers seized. Insults exchanged. Yet both countries say—and act—like they don’t want a shooting war. Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khameini said in May, “We don’t seek a war and neither do...
Category: Articles
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Mass Shootings Should Make Us Rethink ‘National Security’
After the El Paso massacre, the idea that white nationalist terrorism is a threat to U.S. national security is the new normal. Even President Trump felt obliged to mouth a bromide about white supremacy. Outside of Trumpland, a new sort of consensus is taking hold. Bernie Sanders calls for “redirecting federal resources to address this...
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Pentagon Testing Surveillance Balloons Over America
The Guardian reports that recently released documents from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) reveal the previously unknown extent of the Pentagon’s wide-area surveillance capabilities. South Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, Missouri and Illinois have been playing unknown host to 25 solar-powered balloons as part of a test through U.S. Southern Command since mid-July and the tests...
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Fact Check: The El Paso-MKULTRA Conspiracy Theory
A reader asked me to check out a story on the internet about the possible connection between the El Paso shootings and the CIA’s notorious MKULTRA mind control program. So I did. I doubted there was any connection between MKULTRA (which was shut down in 1971) and the El Paso shootings 48 years later. But...
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What Mueller Didn’t Say About ‘Putin’s Prince’ and His Troll Factory
(This article was first published on Just Security) The narrow testimony and contentious questioning of Robert Mueller has raised questions on the political left as well as the right about one of his most significant findings related to Russia’s secret efforts to influence the 2016 election on behalf of President Donald Trump: the social media...