war on terror

I’m in my mid-thirties, which means that, after the 9/11 attacks, when this country went to war in Afghanistan and Iraq in what President George W. Bush called the “Global War on Terror,” I was still in college. I remember taking part in a couple of campus antiwar demonstrations and, while working as a waitress in 2003, being upset by customers who ordered “freedom fries,” not “French fries,” to protest France’s opposition to our war in Iraq.

On this month’s subscriber-only podcast I talk about my political and personal motives for doing this sort of work as well some of my thoughts on strategies for tackling political problems. I discuss the history of anarchism – both intellectual and terroristic – and how I see my work fitting into that, as well as […](Read more...)

Ted Kaczynski is most famous for both being the most prolific serial bomber in US history and for writing the Unabomber Manifesto – a political-philosophical tract that was published by major newspapers and by the FBI. This week I take a look at the life of Ted Kaczynski and conduct a philosophical analysis of Industrial […](Read more...)

Aside from Ian Fleming, there is no more influential spy author than Tom Clancy. Clancy’s books (and the films and computer games based on them) benefited from his close contact with the US government. This week we shed light on his relationships with the CIA and the NSA, and ask whether the CIA’s public affairs […](Read more...)

Just as with James Bond and Ian Fleming, the CIA’s CREST database is littered with reference to Tom Clancy.  In preparation for this weekend’s podcast I put together a collection of over 100 pages of internal Agency memos and open source records that record Clancy’s relationship with the CIA for several years after the publication […](Read more...)

On this month's subscriber-only podcast I explain my criticisms of 21st Century Wire and Patrick Henningsen in particular.

21st Century Wire says…
War: What is it good for? We know it causes untold destruction and human despair around the world daily – by those who peddle it and carry it out from the highest ranks of government to their mainstream media cheerleaders.

At least 36,898 people were killed, and 8,753 were wounded in Iraq during 2017. These figures should be considered lowball estimates, especially considering that the number of casualties being reported publicly was reduced. During 2016, 52,369 people were killed 21,795 were wounded. The Iraqi government chose to censor information about security casualties and perhaps even civilian ones.

For a long time, Russia and the United States have differed on strategies in Syria, and have seen one another deliberately trying to undermine the other’s efforts. Russian Chief of Staff Gen. Valery Gerasimov sees such an effort by the US coming out of the base at the al-Tanf border.

Pearse invited me onto PPR to talk 2017: the highs, the lows, the overrated, the underrated, and Trump.  We discuss our favourite film and TV of the year, the most overblown news stories, the most important news that didn’t get the attention it deserves and reflect on why this has been a good year for […](Read more...)