East Asia

TeleSur | – – Donald Trump also recently asked a national security expert three times why, since the US has nuclear weapons, it can’t use them. Japan marked the 71st anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima on Saturday as its Prime Minister Shinzo Abe advocated for eliminating nuclear arms. “We must not have […]

China

The New Interventionists: It isn’t just the Yanquis any more

contributors

Mark Leonard | ( Project Syndicate ) | – – In the 1990s, after genocides in Rwanda and the Balkans, Western countries developed a doctrine of so-called humanitarian intervention. “The Responsibility to Protect” (colloquially known as “R2P”) held countries accountable for their people’s welfare and compelled the international community to intervene when governments failed to […]

Banking

The Chinese are Coming: First ‘New Silk Road’ Train reaches Iran’s Capital

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – In a sign of China’s increasingly powerful role in Central Asia and the Middle East, on Tuesday a Chinese train arrived in Tehran after a 14-day journey. The freight train just used existing rail links to go from China to Kazakhstan, then to Uzbekistan, then Turkmenistan, […]

China

Dragon & Phoenix: Khamenei Lauds New Sino-Iranian ‘Strategic Partnership’

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Iran’s clerical leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, spoke Saturday on the occasion of the state visit to Iran of Chinese President Xi Jinping. He said, “The government and people of Iran have always looked and are still looking for expanding relations with independent and trustworthy countries like […]

China

Dragon v. Eagle: China & the US compete for Eurasia

contributors

By Pepe Escobar | ( Tomdispatch.com ) – – The U.S. is transfixed by its multibillion-dollar electoral circus. The European Union is paralyzed by austerity, fear of refugees, and now all-out jihad in the streets of Paris. So the West might be excused if it’s barely caught the echoes of a Chinese version of Roy […]

China

The new Chinese Century? Can a Green China with no Mideast Entanglements Surpass US?

Neil Thompson

London (Informed Comment) – In the last fifteen years the United States has spent a total of between $4 trillion and $6 trillion on its twin wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, all the while running up its national debt, and damaging its international prestige. The root cause of these foreign entanglements, and America’s costly position […]

Japan

Hiroshima and Nagasaki: the single greatest acts of terrorism in human history?

contributors

by Akil Awan | (The New Statesman) – – Surely 70 years is long enough for us to put to rest the tired canard of the atomic bombings on Japan being “the lesser of the two evils”, and recognise the true gravity of this crime against humanity. Seventy years ago today, the Unites States dropped […]

Japan

How Dropping the A-Bomb on Japan initiated the Military-Industrial Complex

contributors

By Michael Hiltzik | (Author, Big Science) | – – This summer — August 6 and 9, to be precise — marks the 70th anniversary of the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Seven decades on, the social, political, and moral implications of birth of the nuclear age still are widely and bitterly debated. Indeed, […]

China

As GOP fumes re: Iran, Russia & China are outflanking West with New Eurasia Silk Road

contributors

By Pepe Escobar | ( Tomdispatch.com) | – – Let’s start with the geopolitical Big Bang you know nothing about, the one that occurred just two weeks ago. Here are its results: from now on, any possible future attack on Iran threatened by the Pentagon (in conjunction with NATO) would essentially be an assault on the planning […]