Asia

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – On July 6, 1917, Auda Abu Tayy led his Howeitat tribesmen in a successful attack on the Ottoman port of Aqaba in what is now Jordan but was then the Ottoman Empire. The Arabs of the Hejaz or Western Arabia and the Transjordan had allied with the British to revolt […]

Bangladesh

Double Whammy of Climate-Driven Monster Cyclone and Coronavirus hits Thousands in India, Bangladesh

Juan Cole

Don’t get complacent: North America is also Vulnerable

Central Intelligence Agency

Coronavirus and Intelligence: Trump is Getting up Conflict with China the way Bush did with Iraq

Bob Dreyfuss

By Bob Dreyfuss | – ( Tomdispatch.com ) – There’s a meme that appears now and then on Facebook and other social media: “Those who don’t study history are doomed to repeat it. Yet those who do study history are doomed to stand by helplessly while everyone else repeats it.” That’s funny. What’s not is […]

China

How China’s Han Empire Predicted America’s Imperial Decay

Martin Powers

Ann Arbor (Special to Informed Comment) – The Han dynasty’s collapse is an abject lesson in imperial decay that prefigures in alarming ways our own national decline. Bad policies replaced professionalism with cronyism and compromised formal checks on administration. Three years of the Trump administration can be compared with Han Imperial decline point for point. […]

European Union

Western Powers must Stop Rolling out the Red Carpet for Modi and Hindu Nationalism amid Pandemic: DiEM25

Arturo Desimone

The Democracy in Europe Movement 2025 (DiEM25) expresses concern for the role of Kashmir in a dispute between two nuclear powers. We call on all participants to pledge to a process of nuclear disarmament of the subcontinent and of the long running India-Pakistan conflict, in which Kashmir represents one of the more inflammatory points. As […]

Afghanistan

Celebrated to Death: Memorial Day Is Killing Us, says an Afghanistan Vet

Tomdispatch

[Note for TomDispatch Readers: Here’s a way to support TomDispatch in tough times and end up with a good book while you’re stuck at home in this pandemic moment. For a donation of $100 ($125 if you live outside the U.S.), you can get a signed, personalized copy of Erik Edstrom’s striking new work, Un-American: […]

Afghanistan

If only we Had that $6.4 Trillion we wasted on Iraq and Afghanistan to Lift the Economy and Fight Coronavirus

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Wouldn’t it be nice if the richest country in the world had some resources stored up to deal with the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression and the worst health crisis since the 1918 Influenza Pandemic that killed 600,000 Americans? I mean, we had a $21 trillion a year […]

China

Trump keeps trying to Blame China for his Bungling on Coronavirus: Enough with the Conspiracy Theories

John Feffer

( Foreign Policy in Focus) – Conspiracy theorists never let a crisis go to waste. When something truly terrible happens, the conspiracy theorist sets to work to determine the dark, hidden forces at work behind the scenes that have produced the crisis. Some people might see God or the Devil as the prime mover behind […]

China

The Coronavirus and Geo-Politics: Trump’s Xenophobia and Weapons of the Weak

Abdullah al-Ahsan

Istanbul (Special to Informed Comment) – The coronavirus pandemic is not over yet and anyone hardly knows when and how it will end, but many observers of international affairs are already expressing their views on the subject. The current situation is very worrisome and everyone wants to get out of it as soon as possible. […]