Pentagon

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 […]

Epidemics

Cut the Pentagon 10 Percent, Invest in Public Health

OtherWords

By Lindsay Koshgarian ( Otherwords.org ) – It feels like the world is falling apart. But with a pandemic raging and an eviction crisis looming, the Senate is preparing to spend three quarters of a trillion dollars… not on public health or housing, but on the Pentagon. The United States may be going down, but […]

Congress

We’ve been Sunk by Chickenhawks like Trump, but will the Veterans in Congress Save Us?

Tomdispatch

By Nan Levinson | ( Tomdispatch.com) – If you still follow the mainstream media, you’re probably part of the 38% of registered voters who knew something about the op-ed Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) published in the New York Times early in June, exhorting the president to use the Insurrection Act to “restore order to our […]

Dissent

Undercover Patriots: Trump, Tulsa, and the Rise of Military Dissent

Danny Sjursen

It was June 20th and we antiwar vets had traveled all the way to Tulsa, Oklahoma, in the midst of a pandemic to protest President Trump’s latest folly, an election 2020 rally where he was to parade his goods and pretend all was well with this country. We never planned to go inside the cavernous […]

Pentagon

Police, Prisons, and the Pentagon: Defunding America’s Wars at Home and Abroad

William D. Hartung

( Tomdispatch.com) – Think of it as a war system that’s been coming home for years. The murder of George Floyd has finally shone a spotlight on the need to defund local police departments and find alternatives that provide more genuine safety and security. The same sort of spotlight needs soon to be shone on […]

Pentagon

Amid the Covid-19 Recession, you can’t Afford the Bloated Pentagon Budget but Corporations Can

John Buell

Southwest Harbor, Maine (Special to Informed Comment) – Imagine that as a member of Congress you are a strong advocate of urban public transit facilities. You have succeeded in prying from Congress funding for construction and maintenance of systems throughout midsized cities once almost exclusively dependent on the private auto for their transportation needs. You […]