Some reflections on Occupied Iraq
Sunday, September 6, 2020
Mike Phipps I Introduction Iraq is back in the news again, partly due to the airing of a five-part BBC documentary. Once Upon a Time in Iraq has…
Amidst the COVID-19 Pandemic, the U.S. War Machine Presses On
Tuesday, July 28, 2020
Jeff Mackler That Russia paid the Taliban financial bounties to kill 18 U.S. and “coalition” soldiers in Afghanistan is in dispute to say the least. Both Democrats and…
Trump Authorized CIA To Wage Cyberwar On Iran And Others
Monday, July 20, 2020
Moon of Alabama Recently there have been a number of incidents in Iran where unexplained fires or explosion have destroyed some infrastructure: Since June, fires or explosions have…
COVID-19, Capitalist Crises, Class Resistance
Sunday, June 14, 2020
The Covid-19 pandemic arrived at a moment of multiple crises of the capitalist system: capital accumulation, ecology, governance, and science. The uprising following the murder of George Floyd…
US imperialism, Zionist and the danger of war
Saturday, June 6, 2020
Mike Macnair, Moshé Machover, Yassamine Mather Crisis and need for conflict Mike Macnair What we are seeing today is a situation where the United States is lashing out…
Fundamentalist Pandemics: What Evangelicals Could Learn From The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam
Wednesday, May 20, 2020
Juan Cole This spring, the novel coronavirus pandemic has raised the issue of the relationship between the blindest kind of religious faith and rational skepticism — this time…
Iran coronavirus: US sanctions could turn crisis into catastrophe
Thursday, March 5, 2020
Nader Entessar & Kaveh Afrasiabi By all accounts, the outbreak of coronavirus in Iran poses a major existential threat that could overwhelm the healthcare system and other resources…
Backdrop & Reverberations of Soleimani’s Assassination (Part 2: Iraq, Syria, and Yemen)
Thursday, February 13, 2020
[On 3 January 2020, the United States assassinated Major General Qassem Soleimani of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Corps Guard (IRGC). The event was an escalation by the Trump Administration…
Blundering into War: What Trump doesn’t know about Iran
Thursday, January 23, 2020
Patrick Cockburn At the time of his assassination, General Qasem Soleimani’s strategy in Iraq and other countries in the Middle East with large Shia populations had become counterproductive. He is…
Trump Administration declares US an Occupying Power in Iraq
Monday, January 13, 2020
Juan Cole The Iraqi prime minister Adil Abdulmahdi late last week requested a meeting with the US government to plan out the departure of US troops, which has…
Trump Unites Iran and Iraq . . . against the United States
Sunday, January 5, 2020
Juan Cole As is always the way with Western colonialists, Trump administration figures such as secretary of state Mike Pompeo gave it out on Friday that the people…
A Lesson for the Palestinian Leadership
Friday, November 15, 2019
Ramzy Baroud The release on November 6 of two Jordanian nationals, Heba al-Labadi and Abdul Rahman Mi’ri from Israeli prisons was a bittersweet moment. The pair were finally…
Up In Smoke: The Neocon Assault on Syria Is Finally Over
Saturday, October 26, 2019
David Stockman By a vote of 354-60 last week the U.S. House of Representative proved that Imperial Washington is addicted to war, and that the level of ignorance,…
The U.S. Led Coup Attempt In Iraq May Further Weaken That Country
Tuesday, October 8, 2019
The current unrest in Iraq began a week ago after a prominent general was removed from his post: Lieutenant General Abdul Wahab al-Saadi was the great Iraqi military…
Kushner’s Threat to Palestine: An Interview with Norman Finkelstein
Wednesday, August 21, 2019
Norman Finkelstein and Colter Louwese. Norman Finkelstein is a leading authority on the Israel-Palestine conflict. While most observers have proclaimed Jared Kushner’s ongoing ‘peace’ initiative to be dead…
Persian Gulf: Tanker wars and propaganda
Monday, July 29, 2019
Yassamine Mather. The conflict between Iran and the United States is in its early stages, yet we are already witnessing war propaganda, and the presentation of outright lies…
It’s Trump Who Needs to be Deterred From War Not Iran
Thursday, July 25, 2019
Robert Fisk. It’s about time we wised up to what is going on in this utterly farcical “crisis” in the Gulf, this charade of lies and pomposity which…
Turkey’s Erdoğan: A vizier or a jester?
Saturday, July 20, 2019
Esen Uslu. The Turkish airforce base at Mürted near Ankara had an interesting history. The name means ‘renegade’, and it has been associated with the Battle of Ankara…
US Media Creating a Climate for War With Iran
Thursday, July 4, 2019
Media outlets are creating a climate for a US military attack on Iran by hyping the idea that Iran is an imminent threat to peace, by failing to…
Manifest Destinies: The tangled history of American and Israeli exceptionalism.
Wednesday, June 5, 2019
Book Review: Our American Israel: The Story of an Entangled Alliance. By Amy Kaplan Rashid Khalidi. The American publishing industry does not skimp when it comes to Israel….
Arms Manufacturers Tell Investors That Iran Tension Fuels Business
Saturday, June 1, 2019
Lee Fang. Defense executives from around the country crowded into Goldman Sachs’ glimmering tower in downtown Manhattan in mid-May, eager to present before a conference of bankers and financial analysts….
Empire and the War in Yemen: A Conversation with Afrah Nasser, Stacey Philbrick Yadav, and Adam Hanieh on The Dig Podcast
Saturday, May 25, 2019
The United States has played a major role in fomenting violence across Yemen, backing the Saudi and United Arab Emirates-led forces attacking the country while also conducting a…
Eyewitness Report: Venezuela Up Close
Monday, May 20, 2019
Pat Fry. It was 7 AM April 30th in Caracas when I awoke to hear gun shots outside my hotel. Our group, seven US citizens and one Canadian,…
9 Easy Propaganda steps to War with Iran
Sunday, May 19, 2019
Juan Cole. The Trump administration is now in full disinformation mode, using all the classical techniques of propaganda to put the gullible US public on a war footing…
Escalating Tensions in Gaza and Kushner’s Supposed “Deal of the Century”
Monday, May 13, 2019
Phyllis Bennis “We don’t want to go through the history on this.” Jared Kushner said in discussing his supposed peace plan for Israel-Palestine. But in fact, it is…
Threat of war in the Middle East is real
Saturday, May 11, 2019
Yassamine Mather. A common question journalists ask these days – if they are not asking about Brexit – is ‘Will there be a war against Iran?’ and, if…
Will Iran Be Forced To Close the Strait Of Hormuz? Between A Rock And A Hard Place
Monday, May 6, 2019
Vincent Lofazo. With the United States strangling Iran’s oil exports, Iran threatened to shut down the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most important shipping lanes. On…
A Palestinian View Of Recent Israeli Elections
Monday, April 22, 2019
Diana Buttu and Dennis J Bernstein Without question, the reporting on recent Israeli elections was devoid of a Palestinian perspective, despite the fact that Palestinians will be deeply…
Noam Chomsky: Confronting Ultranationalist, Reactionary Movements Across the Globe
Sunday, April 14, 2019
On Thursday night, hundreds of people packed into the Old South Church in Boston to hear the world-renowned dissident and linguist Noam Chomsky speak. He looked back at…
Don’t believe the hype, Isis has not yet been defeated
Thursday, March 28, 2019
Robert Fisk. After all the headlines about the supposed defeat of Isis, anyone who doesn’t believe a word of it may seem a bit of a spoilsport. But whenever…