US Foreign Policy

Afghanistan Report: U.S. Marines Returned Fire After Suicide Bombing, but No Enemies Were Shooting at Them

By Brian J. Conley and Mohammad J. Alizada, Alive in Afghanistan, and Joshua Kaplan and Joaquin Sapien, ProPublica | – ( ProPublica ) – During the final days of the U.S. evacuation of Afghanistan in August, a suicide bomber killed 13 American service members guarding an entrance to Kabul’s airport and scores of Afghan civilians […]

Donald Trump

How Trump appeased Putin and Endangered Peace in Ukraine

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – I don’t approve of all the loud saber-rattling in Washington on Russia. For reasons I’ll explain below, I nevertheless don’t think Russia has a right to nibble at Ukrainian territory. Although I think Washington over-uses sanctions and in a broad-stroke way that inflicts a lot of harm on innocents, carefully […]

Afghanistan

Afghan Women’s Rights Activists Forcibly Disappeared (HRW)

Human Rights Watch

By Patricia Gossman | Associate Asia Director | ( Human Rights Watch ) – The Taliban’s response to the apparent enforced disappearance of Tamana Paryani, Parwana Ibrahimkhel, and other women activists in Afghanistan has laid bare their intent to eradicate critical women’s voices through unlawful use of force. Taliban leaders have denied arresting the women, […]

Climate Crisis

Europe is dependent on Russian Gas during Ukraine Crisis because it didn’t Ramp up Renewables Faster

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The growing conflict between the United States and the Russian Federation over the Ukraine has taken an increasingly dark turn, with press reports that US embassy personnel and dependents are being pulled out of Kiev and that President Biden is considering sending US troops to Ukraine’s neighbors. The conflict has […]

Pentagon

Did our Lost Imperial Wars turn America into our present Trumpian Dystopia?

Andrew J. Bacevich

( Tomdispatch.com) – In the long and storied history of the United States Army, many young officers have served in many war zones. Few, I suspect, were as sublimely ignorant as I was in the summer of 1970 upon my arrival at Cam Ranh Bay in the Republic of Vietnam. Granted, during the years of […]

Joe Biden

After a Year of Biden, Why Do We Still Have Trump’s Foreign Policy?

Medea Benjamin and Nicholas J.S. Davies

( Code Pink) – President Biden and the Democrats were highly critical of President Trump’s foreign policy, so it was reasonable to expect that Biden would quickly remedy its worst impacts. As a senior member of the Obama administration, Biden surely needed no schooling on Obama’s diplomatic agreements with Cuba and Iran, both of which […]

Afghanistan

Afghanistan: Taliban Deprive Women of Livelihoods, Identity (HRW)

Human Rights Watch

Human Rights Watch – (New York) – Taliban rule has had a devastating impact on Afghan women and girls, new research shows, Human Rights Watch and the Human Rights Institute at San Jose State University (SJSU) said today. The organizations looked at the conditions for women since the Taliban took control in Ghazni province, in […]

Afghanistan

Taliban 2.0 aren’t so different from the first regime, after all

The Conversation

By Atal Ahmadzai and Faten Ghosn | – The international community is closely monitoring the Taliban, after the group re-seized power in Afghanistan in August 2021. There is legitimate reason for concern. The Taliban are again ruling through fear and draconian rules. The Taliban’s last regime, in the mid-1990s, was marked by human rights violations, […]

nuclear weapons

Only Fools Replay Doomsday: The Cold War, Reborn and Resurgent

William J. Astore

( Tomdispatch.com ) – In the early 1960s, at the height of America’s original Cold War with the Soviet Union, my old service branch, the Air Force, sought to build 10,000 land-based nuclear missiles. These were intended to augment the hundreds of nuclear bombers it already had, like the B-52s featured so memorably in the […]