Trump’s Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth argues that “Zionism and Americanism are the front-lines of Western civilization and freedom in our world today” — pedals the usual absurdity that the Hebrew Bible, written 4,000 years ago, can be used to draw contemporary national borders. Chris Hedges Christian Nationalists who form the bedrock of support for Donald Trump… Read More Trump’s Christian Fascists and the War on Palestine
By Juan Cole / Informed Comment Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Ashraf al-Hur reports at al-Quds al-`Arabi [Arab Jerusalem] that the extremist government in Israel has escalated its military attacks on the Gaza Strip in the past few days. The moves come after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declined to start the second phase of the ceasefire… Read More Juan Cole: Israel Returns to Deliberately Starving Palestinian Civilians in Gaza, Planning for Further Total War
In the weeks leading up to the recent presidential inauguration in Washington, this country and an anxious world expected many different things from what might be called, to borrow the title of a famed William Butler Yeats’s poem, “The Second Coming” of Donald J. Trump. But nobody expected this. Nobody at all. “We will restore… Read More Alfred McCoy: Slouching Towards Mount McKinley
NB: Whereas I agree with Professor Mehta’s arguments about the sinister significance of Trump’s treatment of President Zelenskyy; the following is where I disagree. He says the Russian invasion of Ukraine was only the second time since World War II that one country had claimed an entire other country… It was a war to erase… Read More The Mask is Off. After Ukraine, imperialism is now the norm
NB: A very useful appraisal. The sentence “I believe that during the unipolar moment, we were deeply committed to spreading democracy”, is jarring however. American foreign policy has never been committed to democracy but to its strategic interests of global dominance. It would announce its grand intentions only in so far as the ideology (as… Read More The USA’s role in the Ukraine crisis (2022)
Costs of War Project at Brown University indicated that the “war on terror” persisted on several continents. “The war continues in over 80 countries,” said Catherine Lutz, the project’s co-director. The war’s cost to taxpayers, the project estimated, was already at least $8 trillion…. Supplementing the automatic $3.8 billion in annual U.S. military aid to Israel, special new… Read More Norman Solomon: How the Warfare State Paved the Way for a Trumpist Autocracy
I want to share my understanding of the events that have befallen Europe, and I’ll include not only the Ukraine crisis, but also Serbia 1999, the wars in the Middle East, including Iraq, Syria, the wars in Africa, including Sudan, Somalia, Libya. These are to a very significant extent the result of deeply misguided US… Read More The Geopolitics of Peace: Jeffrey Sachs in the European Parliament
This is what Israel is doing now, just to be clear. A Nakba. Gideon Levy Something is happening for the first time in Israeli history. One war has yet to fully die down, but Israel is already stoking the next one. We have been denied the luxury of a moment to breathe or a bit… Read More When the Third Intifada Breaks Out, Don’t Forget That Israel Instigated It
By Middle East Monitor Gary Lineker, Khalid Abdalla, Anita Rani and Miriam Margolyes have joined over 500 film, TV and media workers in condemning censorship and racism after the BBC pulled a documentary about children’s lives in Gaza. The media professionals, including nine BBC staff, sent a letter to the broadcaster’s Director-General Tim Davie, Chair of the Board Samir Shah, Chief Content… Read More 500 Programme-Makers Condemn Censorship, Racism After BBC Pulls Gaza Documentary
Yanis Varoufakis As the annual high-level Munich Security Conference gets underway, the Russia-Ukraine war is dominating the agenda, and we speak to two guests protesting the conference. Economist, progressive leader and former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis says the European project started with a noble goal of promoting peace but finds itself today “cornered” between… Read More “Frenzy of Warmongering”: Critics of Munich Security Summit Warn of Musk, Rising Fascism in Europe
After the truth-shower 