( Tomdispatch.com ) – The future isn’t what it used to be. As a teenager in the 1970s, I watched a lot of TV science fiction shows, notably Space: 1999 and UFO, that imagined a near future of major moon bases and alien attacks on Earth. Movies of that era like Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A […]
Failing Upward: Pentagon’s more and more Expensive Boondoggles (that don’t even work)
( Tomdispatch.com) – Cancel culture is a common, almost viral, term in political and social discourse these days. Basically, somebody expresses views considered to be outrageous or vile or racist or otherwise insensitive and inappropriate. In response, that person is “canceled,” perhaps losing a job or otherwise sidelined and silenced. In being deplatformed by Twitter, […]
Joe Biden’s Peace Force? A Multipoint Plan to End War as We Know It
( Tomdispatch.com ) – When it comes to war, if personnel is policy, America is yet again in deep trouble. As retired Army Major Danny Sjursen recently pointed out at TomDispatch, when it comes to foreign policy, President Joe Biden’s new cabinet and advisers are well stocked with retired generals, reconstituted neocons, unapologetic hawks, and […]
We’re all POWs Now: When Will America Free Itself From War?
( Tomdispatch.com) – “POWs Never Have A Nice Day.” That sentiment was captured on a button a friend of mine wore for our fourth grade class photo in 1972. That prisoners of war could never have such a day was reinforced by the sad face on that button. Soon after, American POWs would indeed be […]
On being Black and Blue in America
( Tomdispatch.com ) – As I lived through the nightmare of the election campaign just past, I often found myself dreaming of another American world entirely. Anything but this one. In that spirit, I also found myself looking at a photo of my fourth-grade class, vintage 1972. Tacked to the wall behind our heads was […]
Trump’s Over-the-Top War Talk is a War Crime: ‘Systematic, Constant, Vicious, Remorseless’
What pops into your head when you hear the number 1,000 in a political-military context? Having studied German military history, I immediately think of Adolf Hitler’s confident boast that his Third Reich would last a thousand years. In reality, of course, a devastating world war brought that Reich down in a mere 12 years. Only […]
Killing Democracy in America: The Military-Industrial Complex and Forever Wars as our other Pandemic
( Tomdispatch.com) – The phrase “thinking about the unthinkable” has always been associated with the unthinkable cataclysm of a nuclear war, and rightly so. Lately, though, I’ve been pondering another kind of unthinkable scenario, nearly as nightmarish (at least for a democracy) as a thermonuclear Armageddon, but one that’s been rolling out in far slower […]
Light ‘Em Up! How America’s Forever Wars came to our Streets
(Tomdispatch.com) – From their front porches, regular citizens watched a cordon of cops sweep down their peaceful street in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Rankled at being filmed, the cops exceeded their authority and demanded that people go inside their houses. When some of them didn’t obey quickly enough, the order — one heard so many times in […]
How My Dad, Born just before the Spanish Flu, Predicted the Decline of America
( Tomdispatch.com) – My dad was born in 1917. Somehow, he survived the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918-1919, but an outbreak of whooping cough in 1923 claimed his baby sister, Clementina. One of my dad’s first memories was seeing his sister’s tiny white casket. Another sister was permanently marked by scarlet fever. In 1923, my […]
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