By Brett Murphy and Anna Maria Barry-Jester | – ( ProPublica ) – Before Peter Marocco was selected to dismantle America’s entire foreign aid sector on behalf of President Donald Trump, he was an official with the State Department on a diplomatic mission. In 2018, during Trump’s first term, Marocco was a senior political appointee […]
Archives for February 2025
The New Ugly American: Manifest Destiny Gets a Reboot Under President Donald Trump
( Tomdispatch.com ) – A few years ago, I came across an old book at an estate sale. Its title caught my eye: “Our New Possessions.” Its cover featured the Statue of Liberty against stylized stars and stripes. What were those “new possessions”? The cover made it quite clear: Cuba, Hawaii, the Philippines, and Puerto […]
Netanyahu’s Quest to Attack Iran with the Mother of all Bombs
The emboldened Netanyahu cabinet is in a war path, again. It is mobilizing to attack Iran and lobbying President Trump into a plan that presumably would use the “Mother of All Bombs” Ever since his rise to power in the late 1990s, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has worked toward a war with Iran, presumably […]
Suspend Arms Transfers to End US Complicity in Israeli Abuses
Human Rights Watch – (Washington, DC) – The United States will be complicit in the Israeli government’s grave violations in Gaza so long as it continues to provide arms and other military aid, Human Rights Watch said today ahead of a meeting between US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Israeli authorities […]
Gaza’s Water Infrastructure, deliberately destroyed by Israel, Desperately needs to be Rebuilt
Thousands of Palestinians have died because of Israeli efforts to choke off Gaza’s water supply. Immediate aid — and long-term infrastructure repairs — are essential to save lives. By Niku Jafarnia | ( Foreign Policy in Focus ) – The current ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas does not include provisions that will aid in […]
Moonbases and Solar Arrays: Will China win the Space Race as Musk’s DOGE cripples NASA?
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The irrational, ignorant and often plain stupid cuts that rogue DOGE operatives of Elon Musk are making to the US government will endanger the health and well-being of American society for decades. Musk himself is a giant contractor for the government and many of his moves may be intended to […]
The Gaza Genocide and the Unravelling of US Hegemony
By Nasim Ahmed | – ( Middle East Monitor ) – Israel’s war on Gaza has shattered whatever illusions remained about the strength of US hegemony in the Middle East. The essays in a recent study “Debating American Primacy in the Middle East” bring into sharp focus the extent to which the US funded Israeli […]
“We’ve Been Essentially Muzzled”: Department of Education Halts Thousands of Civil Rights Investigations Under Trump
By Jennifer Smith Richards and Jodi S. Cohen | – ( ProPublica ) – In the three-and-a-half weeks since Donald Trump returned to the presidency, investigations by the agency that handles allegations of civil rights violations in the nation’s schools and colleges have ground to a halt. At the same time, there’s been a dramatic […]
Proem: The Trauma of Gaza Scholasticide
We are closed in, and the key is turnedon our uncertainty…We had fed the heart on fantasies,the heart’s grown brutal from the fare,more substance in our enmitiesthan in our love; (WB Yeats,The Empty House of the Stare) Traumas make for suffering as scholasticide becomes a destroyer of learning, thus tearing asunder the intricate tapestry […]