Pentagon

( Joop) – On 4 March 1971 our train pulled in to Paris’s Gare du Nord station. My then husband Ab van Kammen and I were going to spend a few days in the city. We had left our three daughters with various friends, packed our suitcases and caught the train. It would not just […]

Epidemics

Trump is making us Sick, and Unsafe: Covid Infection Rate Triples in US Military

Tomdispatch

By Andrea Mazzarino | – ( Tomdispatch.com ) – American military personnel are getting sick in significant numbers in the midst of the ongoing pandemic. As The New York Times reported in a piece buried in the back pages of its July 21st edition, “The infection rate in the services has tripled over the past […]

Inequality

Defund the Bloated U.S. Military

contributors

By Eric Stoner | – ( The Progressive) – The bold call by Black Lives Matter activists to defund police has profoundly reshaped the national conversation, but it is only the start of the movement’s sweeping vision for public safety. To reduce our reliance on policing and prisons, racial justice leaders are urging that resources […]

Donald Trump

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

William J. Astore

( 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 […]

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 […]

Donald Trump

Iran’s Khamenei presses Iraq PM to Expel US troops, as Iraqi Parliament Legislated

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Iraq Akhbar (Iraq News) reports on the first visit of Mustafa al-Kadhimi as Iraqi prime minister to Iran. He met with Iran’s clerical Leader, Ali Khamenei, on Tuesday. Khamenei said that Iran wants to see “a strong and independent Iraq that enjoys full sovereignty and internal cohesion.” He pledged never […]

Inequality

A Jubilee Moment? Time to Stop Bankrolling War and the Wealthy

Liz Theoharis

( Tomdispatch.com) – The word jubilee comes from the Hebrew “yovel,” meaning a “trumpet blast of liberty.” It was said that, on the day of liberation, the sound of a ram’s horn would ring through the land. These days, I hear the sound of that horn while walking with my kids through the streets of […]

Drones

Drones, Robots and Automaton Skiffs: In a World of Serial Pandemics, the US Military Dreams of War without Humans

Michael T. Klare

( Tomsdispatch.com ) – On March 26th, the coronavirus accomplished what no foreign adversary has been able to do since the end of World War II: it forced an American aircraft carrier, the USS Theodore Roosevelt, to suspend patrol operations and shelter in port. By the time that ship reached dock in Guam, hundreds 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 […]