nuclear weapons

No, Iran is not near having a Nuke: Trump source tries Iraq Big Lie Playbook on Reuters, The Independent

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Trump administration is running the same scam on the public that George W. Bush & Co. ran on Iraq in 2002. Some creepy Trump swamp creature emerged to whisper anonymously in the ear of Reuters, which should be ashamed of acting as its stenographer: “The unnamed official told Reuters […]

Donald Trump

Fourth World: Or American Carnage from a Pandemic President

Tom Engelhardt

( Tomdispatch.com) – The year was 1991 and the United States was suddenly the globe’s lone superpower, its ultimate hyperpower, the last and greatest of its kind, the soon-to-be-indispensable nation. The only one left — alone, utterly alone and triumphant atop the world. Who could have asked for more? Or better? It had been a […]

Corruption

Top Six Lessons of Beirut and Hiroshima

John Buell

Southwest Harbor, Maine (Special to Informed Comment) – Did the massive explosion in Beirut, about three quarters of a century after the decimation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, have any lessons or warnings for us. I think the answer is clearly yes. Lesson 1: Early news reports regarding the Beirut blast indicate that government officials had […]

Japan

Atomic Poet Survivors, Military Realists and Millennials: August 6 and 9

H. Patricia Hynes

Greenfield, Mass. (Special to Informed Comment) – Poet survivors of the merciless, savage US atomic bombing of Japan guide us to the deepest, most intimate loss and suffering of survivors, the hibakusha. Give back my Father give back my Mother. Give Grandpa, Grandma back; Give my sons and daughters back. Give me back myself. Give […]

Japan

An Atomic Bomb no bigger than a Pencil

Anne-Ruth Wertheim

By Anne-Ruth Wertheim[1] – It was 24 August 1945. I was ten years old, living with my mother, brother and sister in a Japanese internment camp on the Dutch East Indian island of Java. That evening we and all the other internees had been summoned to the large covered area by the main gate. The […]

Donald Trump

Will the Corruption of Trump’s America End on a Ventilator or in a Mushroom Cloud

Medea Benjamin and Nicholas J.S. Davies

Little by little, Americans are understanding just how badly our government has let us down by its belated and disastrous response to the Covid-19 pandemic, and how thousands more people are dying as a result. But there are two other crises we face that our government is totally unprepared for and incapable of dealing with: […]

Australia

Some Technology is Too Dangerous: Iran’s Accidental Ballistic Launch and Australia’s Climate Inferno are Trying to Tell us Something

John Buell

Southwest Harbor, Maine (Special to Informed Comment) – The first month of 2020 has been full of lessons—if we are willing to listen. With over 200 brush fires burning in Australia and an area as big as West Virginia already scorched, Australia’s problems are hardly confined to the subcontinent. In a telling irony the plumes […]

nuclear weapons

Given tensions with Erdogan, is it really Wise for the U.S. to Keep 50 Nuclear Bombs in Turkey?

The Conversation

By Miles A. Pomper | – As the Syrian crisis pits Turkish troops against former U.S.-allied Kurdish forces, Pentagon officials have been reviewing plans to remove 50 nuclear bombs stored at a U.S air base in Turkey. A congressional directive to the Pentagon to quickly assess alternative homes for U.S. “personnel and assets” currently stationed […]

nuclear weapons

Bolton pushed America’s Rush back to Nuclear Weapons, but wasn’t Alone

Foreign Policy in Focus

Lawrence Wilkerson is the former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell. He is current the Distinguished Adjunct Professor of Government and Public Policy in the Government Department of the College of William and Mary. In this interview, Lawrence Wilkerson discusses the Trump administration’s approach to military security. Foreign Policy in Focus ) […]