Ahmed Feteha – Saudis Risk Draining Financial Assets in 5 Years, IMF Says

Saudi Arabia may run out of financial assets needed to support spending within five years if the government maintains current policies, the International Monetary Fund said, underscoring the need of measures to shore up public finances amid the drop in oil prices. QuickTake Saudi Arabia The same is true of Bahrain and Oman in the six-member Gulf Cooperation Council, the …

Pepe Escobar – Dr. Strangelove is naked

The whole Global South is now informed about how the Russian campaign in Syria has swiftly smashed all of ‘Exceptionalistan’s’ elaborate plans for a “Greater Middle East.” These plans span everything from the Wolfowitz Doctrine to Dr. Zbig “Grand Chessboard” Brzezinski’s categorical imperative of preventing the emergence of a strategic competitor across Eurasia. But the subtext is even more intriguing: …

Andrew J. Bacevich – On Building Armies (and Watching Them Fail)

First came Fallujah, then Mosul, and later Ramadi in Iraq.  Now, there is Kunduz, a provincial capital in northern Afghanistan.  In all four places, the same story has played out: in cities that newspaper reporters like to call “strategically important,” security forces trained and equipped by the U.S. military at great expense simply folded, abandoning their posts (and much of their U.S.-supplied weaponry) without even …

John Whitehead – Public School Students Are the New Inmates in the American Police State

In the American police state, you’re either a prisoner (shackled, controlled, monitored, ordered about, limited in what you can do and say, your life not your own) or a prison bureaucrat (police officer, judge, jailer, spy, profiteer, etc.). When you’re a child in the American police state, life is that much worse. Microcosms of the police state, America’s public schools …

Bill Gertz – Pentagon Not Targeting Islamic State Training Camps

The Pentagon has not conducted airstrikes against an estimated 60 Islamic State (IS) training camps that are supplying thousands of fighters each month to the terror group, according to defense and intelligence officials. The camps are spread throughout Islamic State-controlled areas of Iraq and Syria and are off limits in the U.S.-led international bombing campaign because of concerns about collateral …

CJ Werleman – America: “The Leading Terrorist State And Proud Of It”

Our refusal to acknowledge the human cost our violence blinds us to the malevolence of US imperialism According to the Pentagon, US led airstrikes against ISIS have killed only two civilians: both children – “likely in Syria”. A new report compiled by the non-profit group Airwars, which tracks coalition airstrikes in the Middle East, documents up to 591 civilian deaths from more …

America’s Endless Air Wars By Nicolas J S Davies

U.S. Central Command’s latest figures on its aerial bombardment of Iraq and Syria reveal that this is the heaviest U.S. bombing campaign since President George W. Bush’s “Shock and Awe” campaign against Iraq in 2003. In the campaign’s first ten months from August 2014 to May 2015, the U.S. and its allies conducted 15,245 air strikes, or an average of 51 air strikes …

Who Is Bombing Whom in the Middle East? – Robert Fisk

Let me try to get this right. The Saudis are bombing Yemen [3] because they fear the Shia Houthis are working for the Iranians. The Saudis are also bombing Isis in Iraq and the Isis in Syria. So are the United Arab Emirates. The Syrian government is bombing its enemies in Syria and the Iraqi government is also bombing its enemies in Iraq. …

America’s Control Over the World Is Rapidly Eroding – Michael Payne

It’s no secret that the U.S. is most certainly not the most loved country in the world because of its government’s long history of highly aggressive military actions, as well as its interference in the internal affairs of countless nations. But what we are seeing today is that an increasing number of nations are turning against the U.S. and taking …

Challenging American Exceptionalism – Marjorie Cohn

President Barack Obama stood behind the podium and apologized for inadvertently killing two Western hostages – including one American – during a drone strike in Pakistan. Obama said, “one of the things that sets America apart from many other nations, one of the things that makes us exceptional, is our willingness to confront squarely our imperfections and to learn from …