US politics

Tiffin, Ohio (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – Quite a few people believe things that are not true, but that do not do much harm. The 70 percent of Americans who believe in angels would be an example of this. On the other hand, some false notions have real-world negative consequences. We will show briefly below […]

Featured

Vice-Presidential Debate: A Successful Governor takes on a Firehose of Hate and Falsehoods

H. Scott Prosterman

Oakland, Ca. (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – As a Southern man of letters, I’ve learned a lot from Tennessee Williams’ plays and films. Watching the Vice Presidential debate, the stench of mendacity wafted all the way from New York to California whenever JD Vance opened his mouth. The Trump/ Vance campaign offers nothing more […]

Hizbullah

Biden’s Israel Policy Has Led Us to the Brink of War on Iran

Medea Benjamin and Nicholas J.S. Davies

( Code Pink ) – On October 1, Iran fired about 180 missiles at Israel in response to Israel’s recent assassinations of leaders of its Revolutionary Guard (IRGC), Hezbollah and Hamas. There are conflicting reports about how many of the missiles struck their targets and if there were any deaths. But Israel is now considering a counterattack that could […]

National Security State

Will the Forever Wars Ever End? The War on Terror 23 Years Later

Karen J. Greenberg

( Tomdispatch.com ) – September marked the 23rd anniversary of al-Qaeda’s 2001 attacks on the United States, which left nearly 3,000 people dead. For the two decades since then, I’ve been writing, often for TomDispatch, about the ways the American response to 9/11, which quickly came to be known as the Global War on Terror, […]

Donald Trump

American Women vs. Maga Men: The 2024 Election is a Gender Battle where Abortion Rights are the Flashpoint

Dan Dinello

Chicago (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – American women reject Trump. From his criminalizing of abortion to the ridiculing of unmarried women, from his predatory sexual harassment to racist attacks on immigrants, Trump has been very successful at repulsing female voters. Women favor Kamala Harris 58-37 in a recent NBC poll, while men prefer Trump […]

Pentagon

The Battle for the Soul of American Science: The Pentagon goes to School

William D. Hartung

( Tomdispatch.com ) – The divestment campaigns launched last spring by students protesting Israel’s mass slaughter in Gaza brought the issue of the militarization of American higher education back into the spotlight. Of course, financial ties between the Pentagon and American universities are nothing new. As Stuart Leslie has pointed out in his seminal book […]

Climate Crisis

Voting for the End of the World: How Trump would (Literally) sink the Planet

Tom Engelhardt

( Tomdispatch.com ) – Imagine yourself in space, looking down on our world and yet unable to return any time soon. Consider it our bad luck, in fact, that Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Sunita Williams were the two Americans sent to the International Space Station, 250 miles above this planet, for a few days in […]

Donald Trump

The Weaponization of Immigrants

John Feffer

( Foreign Policy in Focus ) – The immigrants were arriving on children’s bicycles and sometimes even in wheelchairs. According to Norwegian law, immigrants couldn’t cross the border by foot. So, in 2015, they were traveling from Russia to the far north of Norway on any conveyance they could find. It was an odd choice […]

Militarization

Militarism Abuse Disorder: A Very American Malaise

Frida Berrigan

( Tomdispatch.com ) – My name is Frida and my community is military dependent. (I feel, by the way, like I’m introducing myself at a very strange AA-like meeting with lousy coffee.) As with people who have substance abuse disorders, I’m part of a very large club. After all, there are weapons manufacturers and subcontractors in […]