US politics

By Tom Engelhardt | ( Tomdispatch.com ) | – – Let’s start with the universe and work our way in. Who cares? Not them because as far as we know they aren’t there. As far as we know, no one exists in our galaxy or perhaps anywhere else but us (and the other creatures on […]

FBI

Congressional Efforts to Expand NSA Spying on Americans are still a Danger

contributors

By David Ruiz | (Electronic Frontier Foundation) | – – The debate over how to reauthorize certain NSA surveillance authorities has seen a whirlwind of activity, culminating in the major news that the House Rules Committee postponed a vote today to potentially expand NSA spying powers. As we wrote yesterday: “According to reports published Tuesday […]

Afghanistan

How Hawks and ambitious Generals pioneered our generational Warfare

contributors

By Danny Sjursen | ( Tomdispatch.com) | – – I remember the day President Obama let me down. It was December 1, 2009, and as soon as the young president took the podium at West Point and — calm and cool as ever — announced a new troop surge in Afghanistan, I knew. There wasn’t […]

Donald Trump

Trump Nat’l Security Speech: Is he the real threat to National Security?

Juan Cole

Trump’s National Security Strategy document is about as confused and wrongheaded piece of writing you’d ever want to see. It says, “Jihadist terrorist organizations present the most dangerous terrorist threat to the Nation.” This assertion is not true. The most dangerous threats to the United States are other states, especially the well armed ones. A […]

Donald Trump

Fascism’s return and Trump’s war on youth

Juan Cole

By Henry Giroux | (The Conversation) | – – Fascism is all too often relegated to the history books. The word conjures up a period in which civilized societies treated democracy with contempt, engaged in acts of systemic violence, practised extermination and elimination, supported an “apocalyptic populism,” suppressed dissent, promoted a hyper-nationalism, displayed contempt for […]

Middle Class

The GOP Tax Plan Will Complete the Destruction of America’s Middle Class Wealth

contributors

By Bob Lord | ( Inequality.org ) | – – In fact, if the GOP tax plan becomes law, we may be looking at a future where our 1,600 richest hold more wealth than the nation’s entire middle class. The wealth of America’s middle class, under siege for four decades, is now hanging on life […]

Donald Trump

Our Pyromaniac President in a Flammable World

Rebecca Gordon

San Francisco (Tomdispatch.com) | – “I’ve just heard that my family home near Carpenteria is literally in flames at this moment,” a friend told me recently. She was particularly worried, she said, because “my mom has MS. She and my dad got the call to evacuate after midnight last night. They were able to grab […]

Extreme Weather

Puerto Rico: On top of Everything Else, GOP Tax Bill is Racist

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Puerto Rico’s governor, Ricardo Rosselló Nevares, sent a letter to all the members of Congress yesterday, begging on bended knee for a supplemental disaster aid appropriation. That he had to write this letter is a profound embarrassment to the United States, since he had to remind […]

Donald Trump

Global Spec Ops in Trump’s Pentagon: Elite Commandos in record 149 Countries

Juan Cole

By Nick Turse | ( Tomdispatch.com) | – – “We don’t know exactly where we’re at in the world, militarily, and what we’re doing,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, in October. That was in the wake of the combat deaths of four members of the Special Operations forces […]