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TomDispatch
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[l] at 3/30/23 7:32am
Heres something we seldom focus on when it comes to war, American-style, even during the just-passed 20th anniversary of our disastrous invasion of Iraq: many more soldiers survive armed conflict than die from it. This has been especially so during this countrys twenty-first-century War on Terror, which is still playing out in all too many lands globally. And heres something to add to that reality: even though many more soldiers survive, they do so with ever more injuries of various sorts conditions that the Veterans Affairs (VA) and military doctors euphemistically call polytrauma. For some of this, you can thank ever-more-sophisticated improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and other gems of modern warfare like “smart” suicide bombs that can burn, blind,... Read more Source: To Hell and Back appeared first on TomDispatch.com.

[Category: Tomgram]

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[l] at 3/28/23 7:27am
Some wars acquire names that stick. The Lancaster and York clans fought the War of the Roses from 1455-1485 to claim the British throne. The Hundred Years’ War pitted England against France from 1337-1453. In the Thirty Years’ War, 1618-1648, many European countries clashed, while Britain and France waged the Seven Years’ War, 1756-63, across significant parts of the globe. World War I (1914-1918) gained the lofty moniker, “The Great War,” even though World II (1939-1945) would prove far greater in death, destruction, and its grim global reach. Of the catchier conflict names, my own favorite though the Pig War of 1859 between the U.S. and Great Britain in Canada runs a close second is the War... Read more Source: The War of Surprises in Ukraine appeared first on TomDispatch.com.

[Category: Tomgram]

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[l] at 3/26/23 3:36pm
On March 13th, the Pentagon rolled out its proposed budget for Fiscal Year 2024. The results were or at least should have been stunning, even by the standards of a department thats used to getting what it wants when it wants it. The new Pentagon budget would come in at $842 billion. Thats the highest level requested since World War II, except for the peak moment of the Afghan and Iraq wars, when the United States had nearly 200,000 troops deployed in those two countries. $1 Trillion for the Pentagon? It’s important to note that the $842 billion proposed price tag for the Pentagon next year will only be the beginning of what taxpayers will be asked to... Read more Source: Congress Has Been Captured by the Arms Industry appeared first on TomDispatch.com.

[Category: Tomgram]

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[l] at 3/23/23 7:18am
Indulge me for a moment.This is how The Prophecy in my 1962 high school yearbook began. It was written by some of my classmates in the year we graduated from Friends Seminary in New York City. As I wander, I finally run into one of my classmates, now a skinny old man with bushy white hair, wearing a loose deer skin. And yes, whatever happened (that great invasion) while I was underground in as anyone of that period would have known a private nuclear-fallout shelter, is unclear. Still, in the world I find on emerging, all my former classmates, whom I meet one after another in joking fashion, now live in caves. In other words, it had obviously... Read more Source: Prophecies, Then and Now appeared first on TomDispatch.com.

[Category: Tomgram]

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[l] at 3/23/23 7:18am
Indulge me for a moment.This is how The Prophecy in my 1962 high school yearbook began. It was written by some of my classmates in the year we graduated from Friends Seminary in New York City. As I wander, I finally run into one of my classmates, now a skinny old man with bushy white hair, wearing a loose deer skin. And yes, whatever happened (that great invasion) while I was underground in as anyone of that period would have known a private nuclear-fallout shelter, is unclear. Still, in the world I find on emerging, all my former classmates, whom I meet one after another in joking fashion, now live in caves. In other words, it had obviously... Read more Source: Prophesies, Then and Now appeared first on TomDispatch.com.

[Category: Tomgram]

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[l] at 3/21/23 7:02am
In April 1953, newly elected President Dwight D. Eisenhower, a retired five-star Army general who had led the landings on D-Day in France in June 1944, gave his most powerful speech.It would become known as his “Cross of Iron” address. In it, Ike warned of the cost humanity would pay if Cold War competition led to a world dominated by wars and weaponry that couldn’t be reined in. In the immediate aftermath of the death of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, Ike extended an olive branch to the new leaders of that empire. He sought, he said, to put America and the world on a “highway to peace.”It was, of course, never to be, as this countrys emergent military-industrial-congressional complex (MICC)... Read more Source: A Highway to Peace or a Highway to Hell? appeared first on TomDispatch.com.

[Category: Tomgram]

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[l] at 3/19/23 3:54pm
Bosley Crowther, chief film critic for the New York Times, didn’t quite know what to make of Dr. Strangelove at the time of its release in January 1964. Stanley Kubrick’s dark antiwar satire was “beyond any question the most shattering sick joke Ive ever come across,” he wrote. But if the film had its hilarious moments, Crowther found its overall effect distinctly unnerving.What exactly was Kubrick’s point?“When virtually everybody turns up stupid or insane or, what is worse, psychopathic I want to know what this picture proves.” We may find it odd for an influential critic to expect a movie to “prove” anything. Kubrick’s aim was manifestly not to prove, but to subvert and discomfit. With feature-length hyperbole... Read more Source: On Missing Dr. Strangelove appeared first on TomDispatch.com.

[Category: Tomgram]

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[l] at 3/16/23 7:29am
In 1937, the American folklorist Alan Lomax invited Louisiana folksinger Huddie Ledbetter (better known as Lead Belly) to record some of his songs for the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. Lead Belly and his wife Martha searched in vain for a place to spend a few nights nearby. But they were Black and no hotel would give them shelter, nor would any Black landlord let them in, because they were accompanied by Lomax, who was white. A white friend of Lomax’s finally agreed to put them up, although his landlord screamed abuse at him and threatened to call the police. In response to this encounter with D.C.’s Jim Crow laws, Lead Belly wrote a song, The Bourgeois Blues, recounting... Read more Source: Don’t Try to Find a Home in Washington, D.C. appeared first on TomDispatch.com.

[Category: Tomgram]

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[l] at 3/14/23 7:30am
Is China really on the verge of invading the island of Taiwan, as so many top American officials seem to believe? If the answer is “yes” and the U.S. intervenes on Taiwan’s side as President Biden has sworn it would we could find ourselves in a major-power conflict, possibly even a nuclear one, in the not-too-distant future. Even if confined to Asia and fought with conventional weaponry alone no sure thing such a conflict would still result in human and economic damage on a far greater scale than observed in Ukraine today. But what if the answer is “no,” which seems at least as likely? Wouldnt that pave the way for the U.S. to work... Read more Source: Is a Chinese Invasion of Taiwan Imminent? appeared first on TomDispatch.com.

[Category: Tomgram]

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[l] at 3/12/23 2:52pm
My long-dead father used to say, “Every human being deserves to taste a piece of cake.” Though at the time his words meant little to me, as I grew older I realized both what they meant, symbolically speaking, and the grim reality they disguised so charmingly. That saying of his arose from a basic reality of our lives then the eternal scarcity of food in our household, just as in so many other homes in New York Citys South Bronx where I grew up. This was during the 1940s and 1950s, but hunger still haunts millions of American households more than three-quarters of a century later. In our South Bronx apartment, given the lack of food, there was no... Read more Source: Empty Tables appeared first on TomDispatch.com.

[Category: Tomgram]

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[l] at 3/9/23 7:23am
Who remembers anymore that, in 2003, we were Vladimir Putin?Today, our cable and social-media news feeds are blanketed with denunciations of the president of the Russian Federation for his lawless and brutal invasion of Ukraine. When Secretary of State Antony Blinken met briefly with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in New Delhi on March 2nd, he told him in no uncertain terms, “End this war of aggression.” Putin himself, however, has a longer memory.In the speech that launched his “special operation,” he pointedly denounced the U.S. for “the invasion of Iraq without any legal grounds.” Then he added, “We witnessed lies made at the highest state level and voiced from the high U.N. rostrum. As a result, we see a... Read more Source: The American War from Hell, 20 Years Later appeared first on TomDispatch.com.

[Category: Tomgram]

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[l] at 3/7/23 6:58am
So many crises from war to mass species die-offs to climate meltdown afflict our world that we often don’t take time to draw insights from what generally passes for the small stuff, the things that happen all too close to home, including aging. Most of us don’t relish the prospect of getting old, much less watching our parents approach their deaths, something thats even worse if youre dying poor. Having a parent die, whatever the circumstances, is bound to be wrenching. The best we daughters and sons can hope for is that our parents finish out their lives on their own terms and where they want to be with loved ones nearby and suffering as little as... Read more Source: A Tale of Two Mothers appeared first on TomDispatch.com.

[Category: Tomgram]

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[l] at 3/5/23 3:53pm
In 2015, according to the talking points being floated by former South Carolina governor and Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley and her team, she alone heroically removed the Confederate flag that flew on the grounds of the state capitol and so healed racial wounds. She implied as much right after it happened, again at the 2020 Republican National Convention, and in subsequent interviews. This “achievement” remains a critical part of her story about why she aspires to become president. Given the weakness of the South Carolina governorship, Haley doesnt have a lot to show for her time in office or, for that matter, defending President Donald Trump as his ambassador at the United Nations. Still, even her claim to that... Read more Source: Make Republicans Great Again? appeared first on TomDispatch.com.

[Category: Tomgram]

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[l] at 3/2/23 7:00am
While the world has been distracted, even amused, by the diplomatic tussle around China’s recent high-altitude balloon flights across North America, there are signs that Beijing and Washington are preparing for something so much more serious: armed conflict over Taiwan. Reviewing recent developments in the Asia-Pacific region raises a tried-and-true historical lesson that bears repeating at this dangerous moment in history: when nations prepare for war, they are far more likely to go to war. In The Guns of August, her magisterial account of another conflict nobody wanted, Barbara Tuchman attributed the start of World War I in 1914 to French and German plans already in place. “Appalled upon the brink,” she wrote, “the chiefs of state who would be... Read more Source: At the Brink of War in the Pacific? appeared first on TomDispatch.com.

[Category: Tomgram]

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[l] at 2/28/23 6:57am
In 1946, Albert Einstein shot off a telegram to several hundred American leaders and politicians warning that the “unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.” Einstein’s forecast remains prescient. Nuclear calamity still knocks. Even prior to Vladimir Putin’s bloody invasion of Ukraine, the threat of a nuclear confrontation between NATO and Russia was intensifying. After all, in August 2019, President Donald Trump formally withdrew the U.S. from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, long heralded as a pillar of arms control between the two superpowers. “Russia is solely responsible for the treaty’s demise, declared Secretary of State Mike Pompeo following the announcement. “With the full support of our... Read more Source: Nuclear Armageddon Games in Ukraine appeared first on TomDispatch.com.

[Category: Tomgram]

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[l] at 2/26/23 3:22pm
To residents of Memphis’s resource-poor, predominantly nonwhite neighborhoods, the Scorpions were easy to spot. The plainclothes patrols were known for driving their unmarked Dodge Chargers through the streets, often all too recklessly, sowing fear as they went, spitting venom from their windows, jumping out with guns drawn at the slightest sign of an infraction. On the night of January 7th, Tyre Nichols was two minutes from home when members of that squad pulled him over. Probable cause: reckless driving (if you believe the official story). Five Scorpions, all of them trained use-of-force specialists, proceeded to take turns hitting him with everything they had, including boots, fists, and telescopic batons. The 29-year-old photographer died three days later. Cause of death? “Excessive... Read more Source: Welcome to the Predator State appeared first on TomDispatch.com.

[Category: Tomgram]

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[l] at 2/23/23 7:01am
During a Veterans Day celebration in my small Maryland community, a teacher clicked through a slideshow of smiling men and women in military uniforms. “Girls and boys, can anyone tell me what courage is?” she asked the crowd, mostly children from local elementary schools, including my two young kids. A boy raised his hand. “Not being scared?” he asked. The teacher seized on his response: “Yes!” she exclaimed. “Not being scared.” She proceeded to discuss this countrys armed forces, highlighting how brave U.S. troops are because they fight to defend our way of life. Servicemembers and veterans in the crowd were encouraged to stand. My own children beamed, knowing that their father is just such a military officer. The veterans... Read more Source: Children of War appeared first on TomDispatch.com.

[Category: Tomgram]

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[l] at 2/21/23 7:21am
Can there be any question that were in a mad and loud new age of McCarthyism?Thank you, Kevin! And dont forget the wildly over-the-top members of the so-called Freedom Caucus and their Republican associates, including that charmer, lyin George Santos, Jewish-space-laser-and-white-balloon-carrying Marjorie Taylor Greene, and once again running for president the man who never lost, Donald Trump-em-all. Id like to say it couldnt get crazier. Still, despite watching Greene shout Liar! and other Republicans yell Bullshit! during President Bidens State of the Union Address, I suspect it could get much worse (and more dangerous) in Washington in the months to come. And believe me, thats leaving Hunter Bidens penis aside. When it comes to this eras... Read more Source: McCarthyism, Then and Now appeared first on TomDispatch.com.

[Category: Tomgram]

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[l] at 2/19/23 3:24pm
4,000,000,029,057. Remember that number. It’s going to come up again later. But let’s begin with another number entirely: 145,000 as in, 145,000 uniformed soldiers striding down Washington’s Pennsylvania Avenue. That’s the number of troops who marched down that very street in May 1865 after the United States defeated the Confederate States of America. Similar legions of rifle-toting troops did the same after World War I ended with the defeat of Germany and its allies in 1918. And Sherman tanks rolling through the urban canyons of midtown Manhattan? That followed the triumph over the Axis in 1945. That’s what winning used to look like in America star-spangled, soldier-clogged streets and victory parades. Enthralled by a martial Bastille Day celebration... Read more Source: The U.S. Military is Winning. No, Really, It Is! appeared first on TomDispatch.com.

[Category: Best of TomDispatch]

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[l] at 2/16/23 6:56am
Ron DeSantis, governor of Florida and perhaps the next president of the United States, is waging war against something he and many others on the right identify as “woke communism.” DeSantis even persuaded the Florida legislature to pass a Victims of Communism law, mandating that every November 7th (the anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia), all public schools in the state must devote 45 minutes of instruction to the evils of the red menace. You might reasonably ask: What menace? After all, the Soviet Union fell apart more than 30 years ago and, long before that, communist parties around the world had dwindled in numbers and lost their revolutionary zeal. The American Communist Party was buried alive nearly three-quarters... Read more Source: The Specter of Woke Communism appeared first on TomDispatch.com.

[Category: Tomgram]

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[l] at 2/14/23 6:50am
It’s early in the new Congress, but lawmakers are already hotly debating spending and debt levels. As they do so, they risk losing track of an important issue hiding in plain sight: massive Pentagon waste. At least in theory, combating such excess could offer members of both parties common ground as they start the new budget cycle. But there are many obstacles to pursuing such a commonsense agenda. Pentagon waste is a longstanding issue in desperate need of meaningful action. Last November, the Department of Defense once again failed to pass even a basic audit, as it had several times before. In fact, independent auditors weren’t even able to assess the Pentagon’s full financial picture because they couldn’t gather all... Read more Source: Merger Mania in the Military-Industrial Complex appeared first on TomDispatch.com.

[Category: Tomgram]

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