By Kelly Denton-Borhaug | – ( Tomdispatch.com) – This summer, it seemed as if we Americans couldn’t wait to return to our traditional July 4th festivities. Haven’t we all been looking for something to celebrate? The church chimes in my community rang out battle hymns for about a week. The utility poles in my neighborhood […]
Who Authorized America’s Wars? And Why They Never End
By Andrea Mazzarino | – ( Tomdispatch.com) – Sometimes, as I consider America’s never-ending wars of this century, I can’t help thinking of those lyrics from the Edwin Starr song, “(War, huh) Yeah! (What is it good for?) Absolutely nothing!” I mean, remind me, what good have those disastrous, failed, still largely ongoing conflicts done […]
What Price “Defense”? America’s Nearly $1.3 Trillion National Security Budget Isn’t Making Us Any Safer
By Mandy Smithberger and William Hartung | – ( Tomdispatch.com ) – President Biden’s first Pentagon budget, released late last month, is staggering by any reasonable standard. At more than $750 billion for the Defense Department and related work on nuclear weapons at the Department of Energy, it represents one of the highest levels of […]
The Wealthy Countries are getting Past the Pandemic, but the Poor are in Catastrophe, which is a looming Catastrophe for the Wealthy
By Rajan Menon | – ( Tomdispatch.com ) – Fifteen months ago, the SARS-CoV-2 virus unleashed Covid-19. Since then, it’s killed more than 3.8 million people worldwide (and possibly many more). Finally, a return to normalcy seems likely for a distinct minority of the world’s people, those living mainly in the United States, Canada, the […]
Lest we Forget: Trump’s and Billionaires’ Covid Profiteering, Debasing Science and Death on the scale of the Civil War
By Nina Burleigh | – ( Tomdispatch.com) – Now that we’re all unmasking and the economy seems set to roar into the 2020s, what will we remember about how disastrously, how malignantly, the Trump administration behaved as the pandemic took hold? And will anyone be held to account for it? The instinct to forget pandemics, […]
Changing the Way the Military Handles Sexual Assault: Or How Not to Leave the Fox Guarding the Henhouse
By Andrea Mazzarino | – (Tomdispatch.com ) – Given the more than 60 Democratic and Republican votes lined up, the Senate is poised to move forward with a new bill that would change the way the military handles sexual assault and other felony crimes by service members. Sponsored by Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and Joni Ernst […]
Bridges, not Walls: Can the U.S. Border be Demilitarized?
By Todd Miller ( Tomdispatch.com) – From the mountaintops of southern Arizona, you can see a world without borders. I realized this just before I met Juan Carlos. I was about 20 miles from the border but well within the militarized zone that abuts it. I was, in fact, atop the Baboquivari mountain range, a […]
Why the Pentagon Budget Never Goes Down: Joe Biden’s First 100 Days Were a Pentagon Prize
By Mandy Smithberger | – ( Tomdispatch.com) – The first 100 days of President Joe Biden’s administration have come and gone. While somewhat exaggerated, that milestone is normally considered the honeymoon period for any new president. Buoyed by a recent election triumph and inauguration, he’s expected to be at the peak of his power when […]
Why We Forget Epidemics and Why This One Must Be Remembered
By Nina Burleigh | – The second Moderna shot made me sick — as predicted. A 24-hour touch of what an alarmed immune system feels like left me all the more grateful for my good fortune in avoiding the real thing and for being alive at a time when science had devised a 95% effective […]