( Tomdispatch.com ) – Class of 2020, wherever you are, I had planned to address you on this graduation day. But how can I? Yes, I know that former President Obama, Oprah Winfrey, and Tom Hanks all took part in elaborate online graduation ceremonies, offering commentary, advice, and encouragement in our now campus-less world, but […]
The Assassin-in-Chief Comes Home
( Tomdispatch.com) – “Be assured of one thing: whichever candidate you choose at the polls in November, you aren’t just electing a president of the United States; you are also electing an assassin-in-chief.” So I wrote back in June 2012, with a presidential election approaching. I was referring then to the war on terror’s CIA […]
Real Security: Wasted Pentagon Trillions that We Could have Spent on Health Care and Pandemic Preparedness
It is not like we’ve won any wars since 1945, anyway
A Planet of Missing Beauties: In Memoriam
( Tomdispatch.com) – The other morning, walking at the edge of a local park, I caught sight of a beautiful red cardinal, the first bird I ever saw some 63 years ago. Actually, to make that sentence accurate, I should probably have put either “first” or “ever saw” in quotation marks. After all, I was […]
Can’t we All get a Presidential Pardon from Life Imprisonment in the Trump Penal Colony?
(Tomdispatch.com) – Here’s the truth of it: I’d like a presidential pardon. Really, I would. And I think I deserve it more than Michael Milken or Rod Blagojevich or — because it’s obviously heading our way — Roger Stone (not to speak of Michael Flynn and Paul Manafort). Unlike the rest of them, I genuinely […]
Is America Addicted to War?
(Tomdispatch.com) – My first question is simple enough: After 18-plus years of our forever wars, where are all the questions? Almost two decades of failing American wars across a startlingly large part of the planet and I’d like to know, for instance, who’s been fired for them? Who’s been impeached? Who’s even paying attention? I […]
We’re All Australians Now: The Climate Conflagration is Coming for Us, too
( Tomdispatch.com ) – Let me betray my age for a moment. Some of you, I know, will be shocked, but I still read an actual newspaper. Words on real paper every day. I’m talking about the New York Times, and something stuck with me from the January 9th edition of that “paper” paper. Of […]
The Global War of Error: and No, that is not a Typo
( Tomdispatch.com) – Yes, our infrastructure stinks, our schools are failing, this country’s a nightmare of inequality, and there’s a self-promoting madman in the White House, so isn’t it time to take pride in the rare institutional victories America has had in this century? Arguably, none has been more striking than the triumphal success of […]
Gatsbyed Half to Death: Is America’s Trump Gilded Age another 9/11?
(Tomdispatch.com) – Here’s the question at hand — and I guarantee you that you’ll read it here first: Is Donald Trump the second or even possibly the third 9/11? Because truly, he has to be one or the other. Let me explain, and while I do, keep this in mind: as 2019 ends, thanks to […]
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