Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Trump’s Pentagon is allegedly mulling sending 14,000 US troops to the Middle East to counter Iran. Although the Pentagon pushed back against the initial report, that had only said they were considering the troop escalation, and the Pentagon did not deny considering it. Trump has sent 14,000 troops to the […]
Archives for December 2019
Is Iran an Expansionist Power or Just in Defensive Mode?
By Edward Hunt | – (Foreign Policy in Focus) – The Iranian military is focused on deterring external threats not launching an attack on its adversaries. As the Trump administration continues to incite fears about Iran, portraying the country as an aggressor that is destabilizing the Middle East, a new report by the Defense Intelligence […]
Israel-Based Group is Behind Bigoted Facebook Smear Campaign Aimed at Rep. Ilhan Omar
By Eoin Higgins, staff writer | – (Commondreams.org) – “The goal of these anti-Muslim hate campaigns is clear—they put Muslim lives here and around the world at risk and undermine our country’s commitment to religious pluralism.” Reps. Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, the first two Muslim-American women elected to Congress, have been the target of […]
White Anxiety and Imperial Christianity: The GOP Pathologies that Twin them with Trump
(Tomdispatch.com ) – On the Thursday of the second week of the House Intelligence Committee’s impeachment hearings, former U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara had a special guest on his weekly podcast, Carl Bernstein. It was Bernstein, with fellow Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward, whose reporting broke open the story of how the Committee to Re-elect the […]
At NATO, Trump irrelevant as France’s Macron Confronts Turkey on Invasion of Syrian Kurds
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The 70th anniversary of NATO was commemorated with a low-key meeting rather than a summit and was not the united show of success hoped for by Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, reports Al Jazeera. Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan made waves. And a CBC camera crew caught some NATO leaders, including Canada’s Justin […]
Climate Crisis, Not Conflict, Drove Many Syrian Refugees from their Homes
By Hussein A. Amery | – People who fled Syria in recent years are often viewed as war refugees because of the violence that has engulfed much of the country since 2011. But those from the northern and northeastern parts of Syria may more accurately be viewed as climate refugees, fleeing not a worsening conflict […]
The Systematic Torture of Palestinians in Israeli Detention
By Yara Hawari (Al-Shabaka) – Since the establishment of Israel in 1948, the Israeli Security Agency has been torturing Palestinians. Al-Shabaka Senior Palestine Policy Fellow Yara Hawari argues that the use of torture in Israeli detention is systematic and legitimized through domestic law, and outlines steps for the international community to hold Israel to account […]
Voters want an Anti-War Candidate and Trump Isn’t It
By Peter Certo | – (Afterwords.org) – Hard data shows ending our wars would be smart politics — and the first step toward repairing a moral calamity. Like anyone else who was around that day, I can tell you exactly where I was on 9/11. I was a Catholic school eighth grader, fresh off my […]
An Illustrated Guide to the Impeachment of Donald Trump
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – In a nearby place and very recently, Donald J. Trump, Rudy Giuliani, Rick Perry, Mick Mulvaney and Mike Pompeo among others hatched a plot against Joe Biden, whom they fingered as the likely Democratic standard bearer in 2020. The plot was to make sure Biden was smeared as a corrupt […]