War

( Tomdispatch.com ) – In an age when American presidents routinely boast of having the world’s finest military, where nearly trillion-dollar war budgets are now a new version of routine, let me bring up one vitally important but seldom mentioned fact: making major cuts to military spending would increase U.S. national security. Why? Because real national […]

Displaced and Refugees

Sudan: Urgent Action Needed on Hunger Crisis

Human Rights Watch

Security Council Should Act on Access for Aid Deliveries ( Human Rights Watch ) – (New York, March 15, 2024) – United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is expected to alert the Security Council in the coming days that Sudan has entered a downward spiral of extreme conflict-induced hunger, Human Rights Watch said today. The council […]

China

The American Empire in (Ultimate?) Crisis

Alfred W. McCoy

( Tomdispatch.com ) – Empires don’t just fall like toppled trees. Instead, they weaken slowly as a succession of crises drain their strength and confidence until they suddenly begin to disintegrate. So it was with the British, French, and Soviet empires; so it now is with imperial America. Great Britain confronted serious colonial crises in […]

Islam

The Meaning of the Ramadan Fast for those in Gaza and other War Zones

The Conversation

By Mahan Mirza, University of Notre Dame | – Ramadan in the Gaza Strip this year will be anything but “normal.” Malnutrition and disease are claiming dozens of lives. The Gaza Health Ministry said on March 6, 2024, that at least 20 people had died of malnutrition. Many others, it said, were “dying silently,” unable […]

journalism

Is there a Journalism that doesn’t love a War?

Tomdispatch

By Nan Levinson ( Tomdispatch.com ) – War, what is it good for? Well, the media for starters. Shortly after the Biden administration responded to the killing of three American soldiers in a drone attack on a base in Jordan by bombing 85 Iran-connected targets in Iraq and Syria, the Columbia Journalism Review (CJR) asked in […]

Climate Crisis

Living on the Wrong World: A Planetary Cease Fire is Desperately Needed

Tom Engelhardt

( Tomdispatch.com ) – On this planet of ours, it almost doesn’t matter who’s right and who’s wrong when it comes to our wars. Actually, let me correct that thought slightly: it certainly does matter, but what matters so much more is that we humans simply can’t stop fighting them. That is (or at least […]

Featured

War, Trauma, and Forgetting

Hugh J. Curran

Orono, Maine (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – Our memories are often suppressed by trauma, a word derived from “Traumatiko”, a wound or mental shock. Examples of traumatic events are people being compelled to leave their homes due to war, disease, drought, famine or similar events. Recent sociological studies on the after-effects of war reveal […]

Pentagon

War is Bad for you — And the Economy: Biden touts the Alleged Benefits of the Arsenal of Democracy

William D. Hartung

( Tomdispatch.com ) – Joe Biden wants you to believe that spending money on weapons is good for the economy. That tired old myth — regularly repeated by the political leaders of both parties — could help create an even more militarized economy that could threaten our peace and prosperity for decades to come. Any […]

nuclear weapons

The Utter Madness of Nuclear Arsenals, as Global ‘Titanic’ Picks up Speed

Tomdispatch

By Norman Solomon ( Tomdispatch.com) – Yes, the Doomsday Clock keeps ticking — it’s now at 90 seconds to midnight, according to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists — but the ultimate time bomb never gets the attention that it deserves. Even as the possibility of nuclear annihilation looms, this century’s many warning signs retain the status […]