National Security State

Killing Democracy in America: The Military-Industrial Complex and Forever Wars as our other Pandemic

( Tomdispatch.com) – The phrase “thinking about the unthinkable” has always been associated with the unthinkable cataclysm of a nuclear war, and rightly so. Lately, though, I’ve been pondering another kind of unthinkable scenario, nearly as nightmarish (at least for a democracy) as a thermonuclear Armageddon, but one that’s been rolling out in far slower […]

Authoritarianism

Understanding Trump’s game plan in Portland could be the key to preventing a coup in November

Waging Nonviolence

George Lakey | – (Waging Nonviolence ) – While outrage was still growing in Oregon over federal agents’ intervention in Portland, President Trump on July 20 named Chicago, New York, Detroit, Baltimore and Oakland, California as possible next targets. Since then Albuquerque was added to the list. Although the agents’ mission was supposedly to protect […]

Bush

First the Nat’l Security State Surged Baghdad, now it is Surging Portland and Seattle

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – USA Today’s headline went, “Mayors see broken trust, political agenda in Trump’s surge of federal officers to US cities.” Surge? For those of us old enough to remember George W. Bush’s Iraq War, the use of the word “surge” to describe Federal agents sent into Democratic cities to break heads […]

Bill of Rights

The Attack of the Feds from the Deep: Autocratic Trump is Testing his Limits

John Feffer

( Foreign Policy in Focus) – Federal agents poured into Portland, Oregon this month to crack down on anti-racism protests. They beat up peaceful protesters and fired impact munitions at demonstrators, seriously injuring one of them. They drove around the city in unmarked vans pulling people off the street. Oregon officials at every level — […]

Donald Trump

Trump’s ISIL Reelection Scheme: Send Federal Agents to Provoke Protesters in Dem Cities, Scare Suburbs

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Part of Trump’s reelection strategy is to scare the white suburbs, which polls show have soured on him, with “urban” (read: minority) violence. This is clear from his current campaign ads, which try to paint the gentlemanly Joe Biden as a bomb thrower. It now appears clear that part of […]

Afghanistan

Was there Really a Russian Bounty on US Troops in Afghanistan? A Story with Holes

Reese Erlich

(48Hills.org ) – On June 26, in a major front page story, The New York Times wrote that Russia paid a bounty to the Taliban to kill US soldiers in Afghanistan last year. The story quickly unraveled. While the military is investigating the allegations, Mark Miley, chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff says there’s […]

Epidemics

Cut the Pentagon 10 Percent, Invest in Public Health

OtherWords

By Lindsay Koshgarian ( Otherwords.org ) – It feels like the world is falling apart. But with a pandemic raging and an eviction crisis looming, the Senate is preparing to spend three quarters of a trillion dollars… not on public health or housing, but on the Pentagon. The United States may be going down, but […]

Militarization

Defund the Pentagon, Too

Sonali Kolhatkar

(Foreign Policy in Focus) – When Congresswoman Barbara Lee (D-CA) introduced a resolution recently to cut $350 billion from the Defense budget, the only media outlets that covered her bill were independent progressive ones. In a statement on her website Lee said, “For years, our government has failed to invest in programs that actually keep […]

Militarization

A General once Warned against Military-Industrial Complex: Today’s West Point Mafia is It

Danny Sjursen

(Tomdispatch.com ) – Every West Point class votes on an official motto. Most are then inscribed on their class rings. Hence, the pejorative West Point label “ring knocker.” (As legend has it, at military meetings a West Pointer “need only knock his large ring on the table and all Pointers present are obliged to rally […]