US politics

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – President Obama is announcing Monday morning in Hanover, Germany, that he will send another 250 US troops, likely mostly special operations, into Syria, bringing the total to 300. The 50 troops already there are embedded with the YPG or People’s Defense Units of the leftist Democratic […]

Hillary Clinton

It’s Possible: Koch Brother Says Hillary Clinton Might Be Best Choice for Him

contributors

By Jon Queally, staff writer | (Commondreams.org) | – – Asked if he could actually see himself supporting Hillary Clinton in a hypothetical general election against Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, or John Kasich – billionaire rightwinger Charles Koch smiled, but didn’t say no. (Image: Screenshot/ABC News) When the oligarchs speak, take it with a grain […]

Bush

Not al-Qaeda: Abu Zubayda as Bush’s Mengele Experiment

contributors

By Rebecca Gordon | ( Tomdispatch.com) | – – Intro: Rebecca Gordon catches the nightmarish quality of those [Bush] years, now largely buried, in the grim case of a single mistreated human being. It should make Americans shudder. She has also just published a new book, American Nuremberg: The U.S. Officials Who Should Stand Trial […]

Immigration

Trump’s Bad ideas are just our Current Practices on Steroids

contributors

By Janine Jackson | ( Otherwords.org) | – – Mass deportations? Attacks on innocent [non-]combatants? Punishing abortion restrictions? They’re all happening already. Readers of The Boston Globe were recently treated to an unusual spectacle — a parody front page and insert filled with mock stories of how a Donald Trump presidency might play out. “Deportations […]

Barack Obama

The Iraq War Never Ended: An Interview with Anand Gopal

contributors

By Charles Davis | ( TeleSur | – – The U.S. is at war with the same extremist group it claimed to have defeated five years ago, and it’s relying on sectarian extremists to "win" again. The United States is winning the war on terror, just as it always has. The Islamic State group is […]

CIA

Murdering Civilians: US Drone Whistleblowers Step Out of the Shadows

contributors

By Pratap Chatterjee | (Tomdispatch.com) | – – In a trio of recent action-packed movies, good guys watch terrorists mingling with innocent women and children via real-time video feeds from halfway across the world. A clock ticks and we, the audience, are let in on the secret that mayhem is going to break loose. After […]

African-Americans

Top 7 ways Harriet Tubman is the most Badass Spy & Warrior ever to grace US Currency

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – Despite US schools’ tendency to give students several years of American history, over and over again, most of us probably have only a foggy idea who Harriet Tubman, chosen to replace Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill, was. That she was an abolitionist and helped out […]

Far Right

What GOP New Yorkers just voted for: Torture, Syria Intervention, murder of innocents

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – In the wake of his big win in New York, I want to push back once more against the normalization of Trump as a legitimate presidential candidate, given his policy positions. Let us remember what the Republicans of New York voted for (there are hardly any […]

Bill of Rights

Jailed without trial for Life? Guantanamo’s Lawlessness may outlast the Obama Administration

contributors

By Karen J. Greenberg | (Tomdispatch.com) | – – Can you believe it? We’re in the last year of the presidency of the man who, on his first day in the Oval Office, swore that he would close Guantánamo, and yet it and everything it represents remains part of our all-American world. So many years […]