By Kelly Denton-Borhaug | – ( Tomdispatch.com ) – Lately, random verses from the Bible have been popping into my mind unbidden, like St. Paul’s famous line from Galatians, “A person reaps what they sow.” The words sprang into my consciousness when I learned of the death of the 95-year-old Vietnamese Buddhist monk and peace […]
The Antiwar Movement That Wasn’t Enough: The Wars We Couldn’t End
By Nan Levinson | – ( Tomdispatch.com ) – When I urge my writing students to juice up their stories, I tell them about “disruptive technologies,” inventions and concepts that end up irrevocably changing industries. Think: iPhones, personal computers, or to reach deep into history, steamships. It’s the tech version of what we used to […]
Why Is Ali the Last American Hero? Who Else Is There?
By Robert Lipsyte | – ( Tomdispatch.com ) – At least once a week, a stranger writing a book, magazine article, newspaper feature, or blog; representing a documentary film, radio serial, or podcast; researching a paper for middle school, high school, or college asks me for an interview about Muhammad Ali. I’m on the short […]
The Pentagon We Don’t Think About: A New Perspective on the Department of Homeland Security
By Andrea Mazzarino | – ( Tomdispatch.com ) – A relative of mine, who works for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) compiling data on foreigners entering the United States, recently posted a curious logo on his Facebook profile: a white Roman numeral three on a black background surrounded by 13 white stars. For those […]
A Tour Guide to Hell on Earth, Small Town-Style: Climate Change, Up Close and Personal
By Jane Braxton Little | – ( Tomdispatch.com ) – Half a mile south of what’s left of the old Gold Rush-era town of Greenville, California, Highway 89 climbs steeply in a series of S-turns as familiar to me as my own backyard. From the top of that grade, I’ve sometimes seen bald eagles soaring […]
The Costs of War (to You): Where So Much of Our Money Really Went
By Andrea Mazzarino | – ( Tomdispatch.com) – As a Navy spouse of 10 years and counting, my life offers an up-close view of our country’s priorities when it comes to infrastructure and government spending. Recently, my husband, a naval officer currently serving with the Department of Energy, spent a week with colleagues touring a […]
Can the Runaway Pentagon Budget ever be Reined in?
By Mandy Smithberger and William Hartung | – Even as Congress moves to increase the Pentagon budget well beyond the astronomical levels proposed by the Biden administration, a new report from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has outlined three different ways to cut $1 trillion in Department of Defense spending over the next decade. A […]
Anti-Imperialism You Can Try at Home: Reparations May Be One Cure for What Ails Us
By Mattea Kramer | – ( Tomdispatch.com ) – Robin Rue Simmons had been very curious about the truth of American life as a young person. But it was only after she finished high school, left her native Evanston, Illinois, and returned as an adult — ready to buy a house in the historically Black […]
The Path to a Livable Future: Or Will Rich Corporations Trash the Planet?
By Noam Chomsky and Stan Cox | – ( Tomdispatch.com) – This month will mark a critical juncture in the struggle to avoid climate catastrophe. At the COP26 global climate summit kicking off next week in Glasgow, Scotland, negotiators will be faced with the urgent need to get the world economy off the business-as-usual track […]