Category: News

Originally posted at TomDispatch.

It has to be one of the oddities of our history: the near-obsessive level of attention that, for almost 60 years, Washington has lavished on a modest-sized, impoverished island-nation of little strategic importance 90 miles off our southern coast. I’m talking, of course, about Cuba, which the U.S. has embargoed since 1959, as it hasn’t North Korea or any other country on this planet.

It was a U.S. bailiwick with an all-American autocrat running it until 1959 when Fidel Castro’s guerilla movement took the country by storm. Almost immediately, it would become the prize in the Cold War set-to between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Who of a certain age (I’m speaking, of course, about myself) could forget October 22, 1962? That night, President John F. Kennedy addressed the nation by television and radio, offering a chilling warning about an ongoing nuclear stand-off with the Soviets over Cuba. “We will not prematurely or unnecessarily risk the costs of worldwide nuclear war in which even the fruits of victory would be ashes in our mouth,” he said, “but neither will we shrink from the risk at any time it must be faced.” Though we hadn’t known it until that moment, we were in the midst of the Cuban missile crisis during which the world came as close to ending as it ever has in our nuclear era.

And here was the odd thing: when the Soviet Union disappeared from the face of the Earth in 1991, an ebullient (if shocked) Washington declared ultimate victory, proclaimed itself the “sole superpower” on planet Earth, and then continued to embargo the island and obsess about it and its dangers as if the Cold War were still the global paradigm. Cuba has, in other words, been on this country’s mind for almost six decades now. Given this history, it’s hardly surprising that TomDispatch regular Mattea Kramer would visit that island to escape from our increasingly bizarre “American” world and instead meet that world face to face. ~ Tom Engelhardt

Found in Cuba: The American Dream (and Nightmare)
Putting Trump in Perspective by Going Offshore
By Mattea Kramer

I’ll tell you up front that my personal vehicle has crowns of rust on the rear wheel wells and an interior that smells vaguely of dog puke. It’s a 2006 Mazda3 with 150,244 miles on it and it gets me around my modest world well enough, but I sure never considered it the stuff of headlines – until I went to Cuba, an experience that tuned up my feelings about several American phenomena.

Continue reading “Found in Cuba: The American Dream (and Nightmare)”

Two dozen ex-U.S. intelligence officials urge President Trump to rethink his claims blaming the Syrian government for the chemical deaths in Idlib and to pull back from his dangerous escalation of tensions with Russia

MEMORANDUM FOR: The President
FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)
SUBJECT: Syria: Was It Really “A Chemical Weapons Attack”?

1 – We write to give you an unambiguous warning of the threat of armed hostilities with Russia – with the risk of escalation to nuclear war. The threat has grown after the cruise missile attack on Syria in retaliation for what you claimed was a “chemical weapons attack” on April 4 on Syrian civilians in southern Idlib Province.

2 – Our U.S. Army contacts in the area have told us this is not what happened. There was no Syrian “chemical weapons attack.” Instead, a Syrian aircraft bombed an al-Qaeda-in-Syria ammunition depot that turned out to be full of noxious chemicals and a strong wind blew the chemical-laden cloud over a nearby village where many consequently died.

Continue reading “Intel Professionals: Trump Should Rethink Syria Escalation”

House and Senate Republican leaders McConnell and Ryan are praising President Trump’s missile strike on Syria last week in retaliation for an alleged chemical attack on civilians, while when President Obama proposed the same thing in 2013 they strongly opposed the plan. Meanwhile, the mainstream media and even many “progressives” are turning pro-Trump after the US attack. Few are the true progressives like Tulsi Gabbard, who is questioning the claims that Assad gassed his own people. So are we all neocons now? Not so fast! While earning praise from the establishment, Trump’s base and the opinion-makers around his base are furious. We discuss the changing political environment – and whether the accepted narrative makes any sense in today’s Ron Paul Liberty Report:

Reprinted from The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity.

Former presidential candidate and United States House of Representatives Member Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) is not buying the Trump administration line on the US missile attack last week in Syria. Interviewed at Fox News, Kucinich both rejects the reason offered for the attack and says the attack will help the Islamic State (ISIS), which President Donald Trump has said it is a high priority for the US to counter.

Kucinich explains in the interview that there is no clear proof presented that the Syria government used chemical weapons in the country – the purported justification for the US missile attack. Kucinich also asks, “Why are we helping ISIS?” The Syria military that the US attacked last week is attempting to defeat ISIS in Syria.

Continue reading “Dennis Kucinich Asks, ‘Why Are We Helping ISIS?’”

I was in Waikiki, Hawaii, recently. But not for pleasure. I was there out of obligation, fulfilling my parental duty to visit my son and his husband, who live there. I’ll admit, though, that I was getting some pleasure, looking out from the balcony of the 19^th floor studio apartment I had rented. Across the street there were none of the high-rise buildings that block the view from most Waikiki balconies. Instead, there was a large, lush park. Beyond it I could see Diamond Head and the endless blue of the Pacific.

Then curiosity took over. Why such a large open space where the real estate is so fabulously valuable? And why, in the middle of that park, a set of buildings that were only two stories high, while all around the buildings rose to 30, 40, 50 stories?

Google soon gave me the answers. The park is military property, protected from commercial developers. And those two-story buildings are military, too. They house something with the innocent-sounding name, “The Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies.” It has a “non-warfighting mission,” according to its website: to “build capacities and communities of interest by educating, connecting, and empowering security practitioners to advance Asia-Pacific security.” Sounds pretty benign.

Continue reading “We Are Already at War With China”

Vast efforts to portray Donald Trump as Vladimir Putin’s flunky have given Trump huge incentives to prove otherwise. Last Thursday, he began the process in a big way by ordering a missile attack on Russia’s close ally Syria. In the aftermath of the attack, the cheerleading from U.S. mass media was close to unanimous, and the assault won lots of praise on Capitol Hill. Finally, the protracted and fervent depictions of Trump as a Kremlin tool were getting some tangible results.

At this point, the anti-Russia bandwagon has gained so much momentum that a national frenzy is boosting the odds of unfathomable catastrophe. The world’s two nuclear superpowers are in confrontation mode. It’s urgent to tell ourselves and each other: Wake up!

Continue reading “Russia-Baiting Pushed Trump To Attack Syria – and Increases the Risks of Nuclear Annihilation”