War

( Tomdispatch.com) – 2021 was another banner year for the military-industrial complex, as Congress signed off on a near-record $778 billion in spending for the Pentagon and related work on nuclear warheads at the Department of Energy. That was $25 billion more than the Pentagon had even asked for. It can’t be emphasized enough just […]

Pentagon

Did our Lost Imperial Wars turn America into our present Trumpian Dystopia?

Andrew J. Bacevich

( Tomdispatch.com) – In the long and storied history of the United States Army, many young officers have served in many war zones. Few, I suspect, were as sublimely ignorant as I was in the summer of 1970 upon my arrival at Cam Ranh Bay in the Republic of Vietnam. Granted, during the years of […]

nuclear weapons

Only Fools Replay Doomsday: The Cold War, Reborn and Resurgent

William J. Astore

( Tomdispatch.com ) – In the early 1960s, at the height of America’s original Cold War with the Soviet Union, my old service branch, the Air Force, sought to build 10,000 land-based nuclear missiles. These were intended to augment the hundreds of nuclear bombers it already had, like the B-52s featured so memorably in the […]

African-Americans

How the Vietnam War pushed MLK to embrace global justice, not only civil rights at home

The Conversation

By Anthony Siracusa | – On July 2, 1964, Martin Luther King Jr. stood behind President Lyndon Baines Johnson as the Texan signed into law the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Although not the first civil rights bill passed by Congress, it was the most comprehensive. King called the law’s passage “a great moment … […]

Displaced and Refugees

America’s Bombing Wars Haven’t Ended, with 1,178 dropped under Biden

Medea Benjamin and Nicholas J.S. Davies

The Pentagon has finally published its first Airpower Summary since President Biden took office nearly a year ago. These monthly reports have been published since 2007 to document the number of bombs and missiles dropped by U.S.-led air forces in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria since 2004. But President Trump stopped publishing them after February 2020, […]

Drones

The Rise of the (Real) Murderbots and why we Need to Abolish Them before it is is too Late

Rebecca Gordon

( Tomdispatch.com ) – Here’s a scenario to consider: a military force has purchased a million cheap, disposable flying drones each the size of a deck of cards, each capable of carrying three grams of explosives — enough to kill a single person or, in a “shaped charge,” pierce a steel wall. They’ve been programmed […]

Authoritarianism

Dick Cheney says he doesn’t Recognize current GOP, but he Helped pave way for Insurrection

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Former Vice President Dick Cheney accompanied his daughter, Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY), to the Capitol on Thursday to join the moment of silence in commemoration of the Jan. 6 insurrection. They were the only Republicans to attend. The elder Cheney was quoted as saying of the Republican House leadership, “It’s […]

Pentagon

Congress Keeps Spending Nearly 1/4 of our Budget on the Pentagon, but it Hasn’t won any Wars for Decades

Andrew J. Bacevich

( Tomdispatch.com ) – Professional sports is a cutthroat business. Succeed and the people running the show reap rich rewards. Fail to meet expectations and you get handed your walking papers. American-style war in the twenty-first century is quite a different matter. Of course, war is not a game. The stakes on the battlefield are […]

Displaced and Refugees

Urgent UN Action needed on Yemen Atrocities to end “Pandemic of Impunity”

Human Rights Watch

Human rights Watch – (New York) – The United Nations General Assembly should act swiftly to establish an investigative mechanism to gather and preserve evidence of serious human rights abuses and violations of the laws of war in Yemen, a coalition of more than 60 organizations said. Failure to act would not only be a […]