Month: December 2017

Despite a lull in conflicts, over 1,000 people still were killed in Iraqi, including a US soldier.

During the mid-1930s, a best-selling exposé of the international arms trade, combined with a U.S. Congressional investigation of munitions-makers led by Senator Gerald Nye, had a major impact on American public opinion. Convinced that military contractors were stirring up weapons sales and war for their own profit, many people grew critical of these "merchants of … Continue reading “The ‘Merchants of Death’ Survive and Prosper”

At least five people were killed, and three more were wounded: Gunmen in Mosul killed a man and wounded his brother. In Baghdad, a blast in the Bayaa district wounded three people. A clash between Turkish forces and Kurdistan Workers Party (P.K.K.) guerrillas in northern Iraq left three soldiers wounded and four guerrillas. The fighting … Continue reading “Turkish Soldiers Wounded in PKK clash; Five Killed in Iraq”

Nobody described the outbreak of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict better than the historian Isaac Deutscher. A man lives in a house that catches fire. To save his life, he jumps out of the window. He lands on a passer-by in the street below and injures him grievously. Between the two a bitter enmity arises. Who is … Continue reading “The Right Will Destroy Israel”

A recently discovered mass grave contained dozens of Yazidi women.

A tribal leader was one of the few killed on a thankfully quiet day in Iraq.

The Trump administration has been telling people for months that the crisis with North Korea is the result of North Korea’s relentless pursuit of a nuclear threat to the US homeland and past North Korean cheating on diplomatic agreements. However, North Korea reached agreements with both the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations that could have averted … Continue reading “How Cheney and His Allies Created the North Korea Nuclear Missile Crisis”

I just finished Daniel Ellsberg’s new book, The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner. Talk about hair-raising! Ellsberg, of course, is famous for leaking the Pentagon papers, which helped to end the Vietnam war and the presidency of Richard Nixon as well. But before Ellsberg worked as a senior adviser on the Vietnam … Continue reading “Ellsberg’s The Doomsday Machine: The Madness of America’s Nuclear Weapons”

“One of the unfortunate ironies of the manufactured ‘Russiagate’ controversy,” my colleague Sheldon Richman writes in his most recent column, is the perception of the FBI as a friend of liberty and justice.” He’s dead right about that, but just whom is he addressing? He can’t mean conservatives, who, these days, are sounding like the … Continue reading “Liberals Getting Back in Touch With Their Authoritarian Roots”

Yazidi militiamen are accused of their own war crimes.