US politics

Washington (AFP) – The top commander overseeing US military involvement in Syria said Thursday he’d received no new instructions to work with Russians since President Donald Trump met with his Russian counterpart in Finland. “No new guidance for me as a result of the Helsinki discussions as of yet,” General Joe Votel, who heads US […]

Donald Trump

US War on the Weak: Trump in Mideast helps Crush Palestinians, Yemenis

Rebecca Gordon

San Francisco (Tomdispatch.com) – My father and I always had a tacit agreement: “We will never speak of That Part of the World.” He’d grown up in an Orthodox Jewish family in Norfolk, Virginia. His own father, a refugee from early-twentieth-century pogroms in what is now Ukraine, had been the president of his local Zionist […]

Donald Trump

Benedict Trump

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – White House spokesperson Sarah Sanders acknowledged that Russian President Vladimir Putin asked Donald Trump to let Russian security forces interrogate former US ambassador in Moscow Mike McFaul on US soil, and that Trump did not dismiss the request out of hand. He would, Sanders said, take it under consideration and […]

Donald Trump

Can Republicans find the Spine to “Contain” Trump?

Michael Mathes

Washington (AFP) – Donald Trump’s unsettling embrace of Russia’s Vladimir Putin this week drew derision across the US political spectrum, but it remains to be seen whether Republicans have the will to rein in their president. The two major American political parties appear largely united in their desire to keep the Kremlin in check, particularly […]

Donald Trump

What exactly did Trump Promise Putin on Syria, START Nuclear Treaty?

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – There was a difference of opinion in the Russian press about whether the Putin-Trump Helsinki summit was contentless or whether new agreements were reached, especially on strategy and Syria. BBC Monitoring of the Russian press reports an editorial in the Vedomosti business daily on the Helsinki summit, which says that […]

Pentagon

Overstretch? US Special Ops Military deployed to 144 Countries Last Year

Nick Turse

(Tomdispatch.com) – Early last month, at a tiny military post near the tumbledown town of Jamaame in Somalia, small arms fire began to ring out as mortar shells crashed down. When the attack was over, one Somali soldier had been wounded — and had that been the extent of the casualties, you undoubtedly would never […]

Supreme Court

Are your Personal Liberties at Stake if Brett Kavanaugh Joins the Court?

Olivia Alperstein

Washington, D.C. (Otherwords.org) – If Americans lose the right to privacy enshrined in Roe, they’ll lose a lot more than abortion access. President Donald Trump has nominated Judge Brett Kavanaugh to replace former Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy. Why should you care? Because everything from reproductive rights to voting, education, and health care is now […]

Donald Trump

Trump calls EU “Foe,” on Eve of Putin Summit, on basis of his Zero-Sum Mercantilism

Juan Cole

In an Interview with CBS Evening News, Trump categorized the European Union as a “foe” of the US, appearing to put it on the same footing as Russia and China, which he also characterized as “foes.” The EU strongly overlaps with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the chief US military alliance. Trump said, “Well, I […]

National Security State

For 40 Million US Working Poor, Trillion-Dollar Foreign Military Adventures Don’t Bring Security

Rajan Menon

(TomDispatch) – So effectively has the Beltway establishment captured the concept of national security that, for most of us, it automatically conjures up images of terrorist groups, cyber warriors, or “rogue states.” To ward off such foes, the United States maintains a historically unprecedented constellation of military bases abroad and, since 9/11, has waged wars […]