The unclassified version of a report on the war in Afghanistan was finally published for public viewing last Friday. The report is by Lt. Col. Daniel Davis, a seventeen-year Army veteran who just returned from his second tour of duty in Afghanistan. It asserts military leaders in Afghanistan have lost much of their integrity and have routinely distorted the truth of the war.

General Stanley McChrystal told journalist Michael Hastings that he wanted to be on the cover of Rolling Stone and so he was. The resulting story—describing an alcohol fueled dinner in Paris and the General’s staff mocking the Obama Administration—ended McChrystal’s tour as the commander of US forces in Afghanistan and his military career.

The Pentagon is now “investigating” and going after Lt. Col. Daniel Davis, who submitted an 86-page report with classified information to Congress on the war in Afghanistan. He also wrote an unclassified version of the report that he is waiting for Army Public Affairs to review so that he can release it to the public.

If the US fought for the post-carbon economy the way it fights for nebulous state-building goals in foreign wars, the future would be brighter, cleaner, safer and cheaper, with more jobs and perhaps – because it would need to secure less of that foreign oil -fewer wars. If the country built new classrooms with the same urgency it built armored vehicles, more American teens could be choosing between colleges instead of choosing between minimum and sub-minimum wage jobs – and fewer would eventually need public assistance. If the government spent more on blackboards and less on bullets, it would create more jobs today and more innovation in the future.

Leon Panetta has sketched out his vision for an “austerity” military, which only spends slightly less than every country on Earth does on their militaries combined, rather than more. This reflects the cuts from the spending cap version of the debt limit deal, not the trigger cuts which would reduce another $500-$600 billion from Pentagon budgets over 10 years. We’ll be able to fight only one unnecessary ground war and another “not-hostilities” action, plus drones wherever.

So here we are, the week between Christmas and New Years. This is a slow news time (as David Dayen noted here), yet it is a classic time for “take out the trash” type news dumps.

As U.S. drones continue to take flight over Pakistani soil and that country’s restive population becomes more and more resentful of what it views as excessive foreign meddling in its affairs by various actors – the West, Al Qaeda-inspired terrorists, and its old rival India – I think the topic of empire is more relevant than ever to the two countries that I consider my own.

Rania Khalek, a blogger and independent journalist who writes for AlterNet, published two major WikiLeaks stories that garnered a lot of attention—”5 WikiLeaks Hits of 2011 That are Turning the World on Its Head—And That the Media are Ignoring” and “5 WikiLeaks Revelations Exposing the Rapidly Growing Corporatism Dominating American Diplomacy Abroad.” She’s recently been writing about the militarization of police and the ever-expanding surveillance state in America. [*Follow her on Twitter at @rania_ak.]

Widely reported yesterday was the arrest of sixteen individuals alleged to be members of the hacktivist group Anonymous, known engaging in cyber operations for political and social reasons. The Justice Department claimed fourteen of the individuals had been part of the distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks on PayPal back in December 2010, when PayPal suspended WikiLeaks’ accounts making it impossible for the organization to receive donations via PayPal.

One distinctive thing about Zimmerman’s personal story is the fact that he chose to live his life as a full time ‘troublemaker’ (committed leftwing activist), abandoning his extremely promising career as a creative and recognized scientist. He got his PhD in psychology at the University of Chicago in 1967, based on path breaking research on brain function in sleep, and gave up his academic career even though he had every expectation of continuing achievement. Why and how he made this life change reveals a lot about the society of that time—and now—so I hope we can delve into this dimension of his experience.