US Foreign Policy

Nashville (Special to Informed Comment) – China’s balloon incursion was no accident but an expression of both internal Chinese politics and of its foreign policy. Beijing is rumbling with important policy disputes and who has what kind of power. Under the uniform surface, China still has political quarrels. “No one in charge” was one explanation […]

Featured

Why is the Biden Administration So Worried about Israel’s New Government? (Juan Cole Video Interview)

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – I am interviewed by prominent journalist Steve Clemons, editor at large of the global news site Semafor, for his Al Jazeera English show, The Bottom Line, on “Why is the US worried about Israel’s new government?” It is a rollicking 24-minute conversation. Here is the YouTube description of the show: […]

Israel

Why Isn’t Israel Helping the only other Jewish Head of State, in Ukraine?

John Feffer

By John Feffer | – ( Foreign Policy in Focus ) – There are currently only two Jewish heads of state in the world. The first, not surprisingly, leads Israel. The second is Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine. They don’t get along. Religious affiliation by itself does not determine political or military alliances. Plenty […]

Featured

US Sec. of State Blinken Offers some Anesthesia while Palestinians are Operated on by Far-Right Israeli Gov’t

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – US Secretary of State Antony Blinken met Tuesday with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank, and offered condolences on the “innocent Palestinians” killed by Israeli security forces or squatters on Palestinian land in the last year –though he did not specify a number and did not name a […]

Featured

Sec. of State Blinken’s Happy Talk Middle East Tour meets Meat Grinder of Rising Israeli Fascism

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The actually existing Middle East is not cooperating with the Washington representation of it. To hear Secretary of State Antony Blinken speak, you would think that a two-state solution to the Israeli Occupation of the Palestinians is still possible. It is not. You would think there was a “peace process.” […]

Saudi Arabia

Mike Pompeo, seeking White House, runs interference for the Saudis, Trashing murdered Journalist Khashoggi

Michael G. Roskin

Nashville – (Special to Informed Comment) – Mike Pompeo asserts that murdered Washington Post columnist Jamal Kashoggi was no mild critic of the Saudi regime but a dangerous radical trying to subvert it. This, I suspect, has been the Saudi line fed to Washington since Kashoggi’s 2018 dismemberment at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. Trump […]

Featured

Turkey’s President Erdogan Says Swedish NATO Application out of Question after Qur’an burning in Stockholm

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Monday that Sweden can forget about membership in the 30-member North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Erdogan is demanding that Sweden cooperate with Turkey in repressing Kurdish activist expatriates in Sweden, all of whom he views as terrorists. He also says he is furious about the […]

China

Climate Change will Supersede Everything: The Pentagon’s Massive Intelligence Failure on China

Michael T. Klare

( Tomdispatch.com) – Given the secrecy typically accorded to the military and the inclination of government officials to skew data to satisfy the preferences of those in power, intelligence failures are anything but unusual in this country’s security affairs. In 2003, for instance, President George W. Bush invaded Iraq based on claims — later found […]

Pentagon

Is America’s bottomless Corporate Welfare for Arms Industry actually Making us Less Safe?

William D. Hartung

( Tomdispatch.com ) – Late last month, President Biden signed a bill that clears the way for $858 billion in Pentagon spending and nuclear weapons work at the Department of Energy in 2023. That’s far more than Washington anted up for military purposes at the height of the Korean or Vietnam wars or even during […]