Frida Berrigan: All Related Content

This backgrounder makes the case for a new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (“New START”) between the United States and Russia and rebuts the key arguments from critics of the agreement. Specifically, it responds to nine assertions made by the Senate Republican Policy Committee (SRPC) in a report entitled “START Follow-on Do’s and Don’ts.” This report has been chosen because it is representative of the key arguments being made by New START critics.

On the eighth anniversary of the launch of Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan, the spotlight is on the Obama administration's evolving war strategy in a nation long known as the "graveyard of empires."

The current discourse on what is now dubbed "Obama's War" focuses on the number and composition of troops, as well as the overarching strategy (counter-insurgency, rapid withdrawal, a mix of military and reconstruction operations).

The official results of Afghanistan's presidential elections won't be known for weeks. The ballots cast around the country need to be brought to Kabul--some by donkey and helicopter--and counted.

New America's Frida Berrigan interviewed with Democracy Now.

read more

According to Frida Berrigan of the New America Foundation's Arms and Security Initiative, sales in the first half of 2009 reached $27 billion and could hit ...

"If the Pentagon and the military services see cyberspace as a battlefield domain, then the lines protecting privacy and our civil liberties get blurred very, very quickly," peace activist Frida Berrigan - the daughter of renowned Vietnam War protester ...

Once upon a time, soldiers did more than pick up a gun. They picked up trash. They cut hair and delivered mail. They fixed airplanes and inflated truck tires.

Not anymore. All of those tasks are now the responsibility of private military corporations. In the service of the Pentagon, their employees also man computers, write software code, create integrating systems, train technicians, manufacture and service high-tech weapons, market munitions, and interpret satellite images.

As though we don't have enough to be afraid of already, what with armed lunatics mowing down military recruiters and doctors, the H1N1 flu virus, the collapse of bee populations, rising sea levels, failed and flailing states, North Korea being North Korea, al-Qaeda wannabes in New York State with terrorist aspirations, and who knows what else -- now cyberjihadis are evidently poised to steal our online identities, hack into our banks, take over our Flickr and Facebook accounts, and create havoc on the World Wide Web.

At the United Nations, representatives from the world's 190 or so nations are meeting (in typical fashion) to prepare to meet. The preparatory meeting of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) is taking place the first two weeks of May to get ready for the Review Conference of the Treaty, which will happen next year. Closer to home this week, Congress heard from its Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States.

"Shovel ready."

It's the magic incantation to fix our economic woes. Many states and federal agencies have already gone from scouring their budgets for things to cut to green- lighting construction projects. The Obama administration's $787 billion stimulus package is sure to muster many shovels in an effort to rouse a despondent economy and put Americans back to work.

Frida Berrigan, a senior research associate with the Arms Trade Resource Centre at the World Policy Institute, points out that the bulk of Israel's current ...