The Korea Story: Why Is the Media Getting It So Wrong?
As news of the statement by the North Korean vice minister for foreign affairs Kim Kye Gwan spread, the usual suspects could hardly contain their glee: Trump’s vaunted Korean peace initiative had been a fraud all along! The summit was off! The North Koreans had been...
West’s Failure to Act Will Be Cause of the Next Gaza Massacre
The contrasting images coming out of Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories on Monday could not have been starker – or more disturbing. Faced with protests at the perimeter fence in Gaza, Israeli snipers killed dozens of unarmed Palestinians and wounded...
Why the Empire Never Sleeps: The Indispensable Nation Folly, Part 2
Read Part 1 The rise of the murderous Nazi and Stalinist totalitarian regimes during the 1930s and the resulting conflagration of World War II is held to be, correctly, the defining event of the 20th century. But that truism only begs the real question. To wit, were...
Trump’s Plan for Iran: Put Terrorists in Charge
Back in the 2008 presidential race, I explained to then-candidate Rudy Giuliani the concept of “blowback.” Years of US meddling and military occupation of parts of the Middle East motivated a group of terrorists to carry out attacks against the United...
Sadr Offices Bombed; 10 Killed in Iraq
Why the Empire Never Sleeps: The Indispensable Nation Folly, Part 1
Like the case of Rome before it, the Empire is bankrupting America. The true fiscal cost is upwards of $1.0 trillion per year (counting $200 billion for veterans and debt service for wars), but there is no way to pay for it. That's because the 78-million strong Baby...
A Veteran’s Gaza Stream-of-Consciousness: Just What’ve I Been Fighting For?
"After the first death, there is no other." ~ Dylan Thomas I'm ashamed. It's 5:55 AM and I wake up for one more of my last few days in the army – the end of middling soldier's career – here at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. The BBC (I refuse to watch...
An Empire of Nothing at All?
Originally posted at TomDispatch. This essay is the introduction to Tom Engelhardt’s new book, A Nation Unmade by War, a Dispatch Book published by Haymarket Books. As I was putting the finishing touches on my new book, the Costs of War Project at Brown...
My Family’s Home Is and Always Will Be Beit Daras
Although I was born and raised in a Gaza refugee camp, and then moved to and lived in the United States, finding a village that was erased from the map decades earlier was not, at least for me, an irrational act. The village of Beit Daras was the single most important...
