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 […]
Making Sense of a Viral Military: The Pentagon’s Flawed Response to the Pandemic
By Andrea Mazzarino | – ( Tomdispatch.com) – Herd immunity? Don’t count on it. Not if that “herd” is the U.S. military. According to news reports, at least a third of active-duty military personnel or those in the National Guard have opted out of getting the coronavirus vaccine. That figure, by the way, doesn’t even […]
Has the Far Right infiltrated the US Armed Forces?
By Nan Levinson | – ( Tomdispatch.com ) – It was around noon and I was texting a friend about who-knows-what when I added, almost as an afterthought: “tho they seem to be invading the Capitol at the mo.” I wasn’t faintly as blasé as that may sound on January 6th, especially when it became […]
The Border-Industrial Complex in the Post-Trump Era: The Crisis is Capitalism
By Todd Miller | – ( Tomdispatchcom ) – In late February, I drove to see the Trump wall in Sasabe, Arizona. As soon as I parked, a green-striped Border Patrol vehicle stationed a quarter of a mile away began to creep down the dirt road toward us. Just ahead, a dystopian “No Trespassing” sign […]
On January 6th, the U.S. Became a Foreign Country
By Kevin Tillman | – ( Tomdispatch.com) – Just about everyone was shocked by what happened at the Capitol building on January 6th. But as a former soldier in America’s forever wars, horrifying as the scenes were, I also found what happened strangely familiar, almost inevitable. I thought that, if only we had taken our […]
We’re Stalked by the 4 Horsemen of Apocalyptic Media: Rush, Roger, Rupert, and The Donald May Ride Forever
By Robert Lipsyte | – ( Tomdispatch.com) – The Four Horsemen of our media apocalypse — Rush Limbaugh, Roger Ailes, Rupert Murdoch, and Donald Trump — have ridden roughshod over us this past half-century leaving their hoofprints on our politics, our culture, and our lives. Two of them are gone now, but their legacies, including […]
The Real Threats to America are the Pandemic and Poverty; why Give Ever More Money to the Pentagon?
By Mandy Smithberger | – ( Tomdispatch.com) – This country is in a crisis of the first order. More than half a million of us have died thanks to Covid-19. Food insecurity is on the rise, with nearly 24 million Americans going hungry, including 12 million children. Unemployment claims filed since the pandemic began have […]