The Institute for Policy Studies teams up with Naked Edge Films other co-sponsors on a screening about three National Security whistleblowers who fought to reveal the darkest corners of America’s war on terror, challenging a government that is increasingly determined to maintain secrecy.
Veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are holding the U.S. government accountable for innocent victims on all sides of the fighting.
The root of the sexual assault crisis plaguing the military lies in militarism itself.
What will we say when other governments follow our example by providing immunity from prosecution to torturers?
A poem about the theater of cruelty that was Abu Ghraib.
These contemporary poems in defense of global human rights give voice to the dead, the dying, and the degraded.
Some New Yorkers are expressing increasing hostility to plans for new mosques.
Come meet author and Foreign Policy In Focus contributor Tim Shorrock, when he speaks at IPS about his new book, SPIES FOR HIRE: The Secret World of Intelligence Outsourcing.
Since 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq, newspaper headlines and the blogosphere have been afire with revelations about the U.S. government’s enormous use of private sector contractors to carry out the tasks of war: Halliburton’s lucrative Iraqi reconstruction contracts, CACI International’s civilian interrogators at Abu Ghraib, and the shooting of noncombatants in Baghdad by the shadowy security firm Blackwater, to name just a few. But the size and scope of the private sector’s influence on U.S. intelligence agencies—and the government’s unsettling efforts to hide the truth from the public—have never been known until now. In SPIES FOR HIRE: The Secret World of Intelligence Outsourcing (Simon & Schuster; May 6, 2008; $27.00), investigative journalist Tim Shorrock presents the first-ever comprehensive profile of the astonishingly lucrative intelligence contracting industry—where profit often trumps patriotism.
SPIES FOR HIRE exposes how, from the tracking of al-Qaeda to the Bush administration’s warrantless eavesdropping on U.S. citizens, private contractors have infiltrated every corner of intelligence gathering in America. Drawing on insider documents and exclusive interviews with sources including former agency operatives and CEO’s of private intelligence firms, Shorrock lifts the highly secretive veil off the mysterious world of intelligence contracting, demonstrating the shocking truth that over 70 percent of the massive U.S. intelligence budget is now spent on contractors, with minimal congressional oversight. Bankrolled with tax money, these private firms are exerting enormous influence on governmental policies that affect all Americans.
Fernando Botero has created a powerful series of paintings about torture. An interview with two poets on this groundbreaking work.
America’s public diplomacy is handicapped by arrogance, impatience, and a reluctance to listen. In Anti-Americanism and the Rise of Civic Diplomacy, Nancy Snow investigates how Washington can change its image abroad. In their responses to Nancy Snow’s provocative thesis, R.S. Zaharna and John Robert Kelley focus on America’s credibility deficit and the limits of civic diplomacy. Finally, Nancy Snow offers some concluding remarks.
Americas public diplomacy is handicapped by arrogance, impatience, and a reluctance to listen. In Anti-Americanism and the Rise of Civic Diplomacy, Nancy Snow asks whether Washington can change its image abroad.
The Bush administration has launched Round Two of its assault on the Constitution. Now its habeas corpus in the crosshairs.