National Security State

By Tom Engelhardt | ( Tomdispatch.com ) | – – Recently, sorting through a pile of old children’s books, I came across a volume, That Makes Me Mad!, which brought back memories. Written by Steve Kroll, a long-dead friend, it focused on the eternally frustrating everyday adventures of Nina, a little girl whose life regularly […]

Domestic Terrorism

Dear Generation Z: So sorry for bequeathing to you terrorism hysteria and all those Wars

contributors

By Peter Van Buren | ( Tomdispatch.com) | – – I recently sent my last kid off for her senior year of college. There are rituals to such moments, and because dad-confessions are not among them, I just carried boxes and kept quiet. But what I really wanted to say to her — rather than […]

Featured

15 Years after 9/11, can we Recover our Republic?

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – The Founding Fathers thought keeping a standing army was a danger to democracy. The great wars of the twentieth century appear to have imbued the United States with a permanent standing army, and this institution has been reinforced by the September 11 attacks. Or rather it […]

Far Right

The Republicans who fear that Trump isn’t Belligerent Enough

contributors

By Rebecca Gordon | ( Tomdispatch.com ) | – – What Does It Mean When War Hawks Say, “Never Trump”? The Enemies of My Enemy May Be War Criminals By Rebecca Gordon It’s not every day that Republicans publish an open letter announcing that their presidential candidate is unfit for office. But lately this sort […]

National Security State

If the Military had Permission to Speak Freely: They might rescue us from the Politicians’ Forever War

contributors

By William J. Astore | ( Tomdispatch.com) | – – The United States is now engaged in perpetual war with victory nowhere in sight. Iraq is chaotic and scarred. So, too, is Libya. Syria barely exists. After 15 years, “progress” in Afghanistan has proven eminently reversible as efforts to rollback recent Taliban gains continue to […]

Democratic Party

Russian & Iranian Press deplore Hillary Clinton Hawkishness; Israelis complain she’s Dove

Juan Cole

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | – – How is the international press responding to the Democratic National Convention and the formalization of Hillary Clinton’s status as the party’s standard-bearer in the presidential campaign? BBC Monitoring helped me find these reports, which I’m paraphrasing or quoting from their translation: Boaz Bismuth in the Hebrew […]

Guns

Our American Crimes against the Future

contributors

By Tom Engelhardt | ( Tomdispatch.com) | – – I recently dug my mother’s childhood photo album out of the depths of my bedroom closet. When I opened it, I found that the glue she had used as a girl to paste her life in place had given way, and on many pages the photos […]

Drones

Assassination by Robot is now US Policy

contributors

By Rebecca Gordon | ( Tomdispatch.com ) | – – Think of it as the Trojan Drone, the ultimate techno-weapon of American warfare in these years, a single remotely operated plane sent to take out a single key figure. It’s a shiny video game for grown ups — a Mortal Kombat or Call of Duty […]

Militarization

Has the US Military become a B Movie Alien for the rest of the World?

contributors

By William J. Astore | ( Tomdispatch.com ) | – – Perhaps you’ve heard the expression: “We have met the enemy and he is us.” Cartoonist Walt Kelly’s famed possum, Pogo, first uttered that cry. In light of alien disaster movies like the recent sequel Independence Day: Resurgence and America’s disastrous wars of the twenty-first […]