Rebecca Gordon
Rebecca Gordon is the author of the new book American Nuremberg: The U.S. Officials Who Should Stand Trial for Post-9/11 War Crimes and previously, Mainstreaming Torture: Ethical Approaches in the Post-9/11 United States. She teaches in the philosophy department at the University of San Francisco. She is a member of the War Times/Tiempo de Guerras collective. You can contact her through the Mainstreaming Torture website.
Articles by this author
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Views Tuesday, August 15, 2017 When All the World’s a War... Since September 11, 2001, the United States has been fighting a “war on terror.” Real soldiers have been deployed to distant lands; real cluster bombs and white phosphorus have been used; real cruise missiles have been launched; the first MOAB , the largest non-nuclear bomb in the U.S. arsenal, has... Read more |
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Views Tuesday, June 27, 2017 America at War Since 9/11 The headlines arrive in my inbox day after day: “ U.S.-led airstrikes in Syria killed hundreds of civilians, U.N. panel says.” “ Pentagon wants to declare more parts of world as temporary battlefields.” “ The U.S. was supposed to leave Afghanistan by 2017. Now it might take decades.” There are so... Read more |
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Views Thursday, May 25, 2017 Down the Memory Hole: Living in Trump’s United States of Amnesia The Trump administration seems intent on tossing recent history down the memory hole . Admittedly, Americans have never been known for their strong grasp of facts about their past. Still, as we struggle to keep up with the constantly shifting explanations and pronouncements of the new... Read more |
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Views Thursday, April 06, 2017 Resurrecting the Unholy Trinity: Torture, Rendition, and Indefinite Detention Under Trump When George W. Bush and Dick Cheney launched their forever wars -- under the banner of a “Global War on Terror” -- they unleashed an unholy trinity of tactics. Torture, rendition, and indefinite detention became the order of the day. After a partial suspension of these policies in the Obama years,... Read more |
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Views Tuesday, March 07, 2017 American Carnage: Fighting the Forever War In his inaugural address, President Trump described a dark and dismal United States, a country overrun by criminal gangs and drugs, a nation stained with the blood seeping from bullet-ridden corpses left at scenes of “American carnage.” It was more than a little jarring. Certainly, drug gangs and... Read more |
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Views Thursday, February 09, 2017 In the Trump Era, The Enemies of Our Enemy Are Not Our Friends You know you’re living in a looking-glass world when former Vice President Dick Cheney speaks out against one of Donald Trump’s executive orders. He’s a good example of how past adversaries of movements for peace and justice are lining up against our current adversary, the new president. The United... Read more |
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Views Tuesday, January 10, 2017 What Is a Country For? Fighting for the Good Life in Trumplandia Many of the folks I know are getting ready to play serious defense in 2017, and they’re not wrong. Before we take up our three-point stance on the national line of scrimmage, however, maybe we should ask ourselves not only what we’re fighting against , but what we’re fighting for . What kind of... Read more |
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Views Monday, December 12, 2016 It's 2016. Do You Know Where Your Bombs Are Falling? The long national nightmare that was the 2016 presidential election is finally over. Now, we’re facing a worse terror: the reality of a Trump presidency. Donald Trump has already promised to nominate a segregationist attorney general, a national security adviser who is a raging Islamophobe , a... Read more |
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Views Monday, November 21, 2016 Life Under Trump: Night Terrors and Daytime Hopes The night after the election, this long-time pacifist dreamed she shot a big white man carrying an arsenal of guns. He was wandering around a room full of people, waving a pistol and threatening to fire. Someone pushed a gun into my hand and said, “Shoot now, while his back is turned!” I shot... Read more |
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Views Monday, October 17, 2016 Finding Hope in Dismal Times In these dismal days of climate change , imperial decline , endless war , and in my city, a hapless football team , I seem to be experiencing a strange and unaccustomed emotion: hope. How can that be? Maybe it’s because, like my poor San Francisco 49ers who have been “rebuilding” for the last two... Read more |