War

( Tomdispatch.com) – Whether you’re reading this with your morning coffee, just after lunch, or on the late shift in the wee small hours of the morning, it’s 100 seconds to midnight. That’s just over a minute and a half. And that should be completely unnerving. It’s the closest to that witching hour we’ve ever […]

China

France’s Macron declares Europe’s independence of Trump, stands by Iran Nuclear Deal

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – French President Emmanuel Macron declared independence of the United States and of China for Europe at the UN General Assembly on Tuesday, in the starkest “third way” bid for a French president since Charles De Gaulle withdrew from the military wing of NATO in 1965 and established France’s own nuclear […]

Donald Trump

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

Juan Cole

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 […]

Donald Trump

Trump admits War Crime in Syria as Damascus Slams US ‘Oil Theft’

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Last Monday, CNN reports US troops on patrol in eastern Syria were allowed to move through Syrian territory by the Syrian Arab Army, but then abruptly a small unit of Syrian troops fired on them. The US soldiers fired back, and took no casualties, but killed a Syrian soldier. There […]

Donald Trump

Will Trump Strike Iran as his October Surprise?

Bob Dreyfuss

( Tomdispatch.com ) – Was Donald Trump’s January 3rd drone assassination of Major General Qasem Soleimani the first step in turning the simmering Cold War between the United States and Iran into a hot war in the weeks before an American presidential election? Of course, there’s no way to know, but behind by double digits […]

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 […]