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Tag: Tomdispatch


USACE Europe District (CC BY 2.0)

U.S. Africa Command Debates TomDispatch

On July 12, TomDispatch reporter Nick Turse showed how the U.S. Africa Command has spread its influence across that continent, establishing bases and outposts, sending in special operations forces and drones, funding proxy forces, and so on. One week later, Col. Tom Davis, director of the U.S. Africa Command Office of Public Affairs, responded.

Posted on Jul 26, 2012 READ MORE



cjdc (CC BY-SA 2.0)

The Planet Wreckers

“Murderers, tyrants and madmen.” It’s been a tough few weeks for the forces of climate-change denial.

Posted on Jun 4, 2012 READ MORE



fottooo (CC BY-SA 2.0)

The Pentagon Detours to Terminator Planet

The entire episode involves a seamless integration of robots and troops working in tandem, of next-generation drones “wired” together and operating in teams, and of autonomous drones making their own decisions. But there’s a reason you’ve never read about it in the New York Times or the Washington Post. It won’t take place for 20 years.

Posted on May 31, 2012 READ MORE



U.S. Army (CC BY 2.0)

How to Forget on Memorial Day

This Memorial Day, there will undoubtedly be much cant in the form of tributes to “our heroes” and then, Tuesday morning, when the mangled cars have been towed away, the barbecue grills cleaned, and the “heroes” set aside, the forgetting will continue.

Posted on May 24, 2012 READ MORE



garlandcannon (CC BY-SA 2.0)

The Nearly $1 Trillion National Security Budget

With major wars winding down, has Washington already cut war spending so close to the bone that further reductions would be perilous to our safety?

Posted on May 22, 2012 READ MORE  |  2 COMMENTS



pasukaru76 (CC BY 2.0)

Preying on the Poor

The poor provide a juicy target for anyone depraved enough to make a business of stealing from them. The trick is to rob them in ways that are systematic, impersonal and almost impossible to trace to individual perpetrators.

Posted on May 17, 2012 READ MORE  |  13 COMMENTS



An Honorable German (CC BY 2.0)

Predator Nation

The CIA’s global drone assassination campaign has turned much of the rest of the planet into what can only be considered an American free-fire zone.

Posted on May 14, 2012 READ MORE  |  9 COMMENTS



nosha (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Plutonomy and the Precariat: On the History of the U.S. Economy in Decline

After the first few years of the Great Depression there was a sense that “we’re gonna get out of it.” It’s quite different now. For many people in the United States, there’s a pervasive sense of hopelessness, sometimes despair. I think it’s quite new in American history. And it has an objective basis.

Posted on May 8, 2012 READ MORE  |  60 COMMENTS



KendraKaptures (CC BY-ND 2.0)

Welcome to the 2012 Hunger Games

We have a new science fiction trilogy that’s perfect for our moment: Suzanne Collins’ “The Hunger Games,” a dystopian vision set in a North America ruled by decadent, luxurious oligarchs who sacrifice young people in an annual televised Roman-style blood contest.

Posted on May 1, 2012 READ MORE  |  14 COMMENTS



Tony Fischer Photography (CC BY 2.0)

The Obama Contradiction

He has few constraints. No one can stop him or countermand his orders. He has a bevy of lawyers at his beck and call to explain the “legality” of his actions. And if he cares to, he can send a robot assassin to kill you, whoever you are, no matter where you may be on planet Earth.

Posted on Apr 30, 2012 READ MORE  |  46 COMMENTS



Lapham's Quarterly

The Internet as the Toy With a Tin Ear

Why does it come to pass that the more data we collect—from Google, YouTube and Facebook—the less likely we are to know what it means?

Posted on Apr 23, 2012 READ MORE  |  19 COMMENTS



flee the cities (CC-BY)

Locking Down an American Workforce

Prisoners, whose ranks increasingly consist of those for whom the legitimate economy has found no use, make up a virtual brigade within the reserve army of the unemployed whose ranks have ballooned along with the U.S. incarceration rate.

Posted on Apr 19, 2012 READ MORE  |  19 COMMENTS



United States Marine Corps Official Page (CC-BY)

The Afghan Syndrome

Take off your hat. Taps is playing. Almost four decades late, the Vietnam War and its postwar spawn, the Vietnam Syndrome, are finally heading for their American grave.

Posted on Apr 11, 2012 READ MORE  |  13 COMMENTS



Jennuine Captures (CC-BY)

Data Mining for a New American World

I was out of the country only nine days, hardly a blink in time, but time enough, as it happened, for another small, airless room to be added to the American national security labyrinth.

Posted on Apr 4, 2012 READ MORE  |  9 COMMENTS



Kim G. Appels (CC-BY)

We Screwed Up: A Letter of Apology to My Granddaughter

There were plenty of signs we took a wrong turn but we kept on going. Dumb, stubborn, blind: Who knows why we couldn’t stop? Greed maybe—powerful corporations we couldn’t overcome. It won’t matter much to you who is to blame. You’ll be too busy coping in the diminished world we bequeath you.

Posted on Mar 28, 2012 READ MORE  |  20 COMMENTS



Azzazello (CC-BY)

A Tough-Oil World

The world still harbors large reserves of petroleum, but they are of the hard-to-reach, hard-to-refine, “tough oil” variety that will be more costly to extract, refine and buy at the pump.

Posted on Mar 14, 2012 READ MORE  |  8 COMMENTS



mobyhill (CC-BY)

Dead Americans, Dead Goats, and Half a Million Gunmen on the Loose

Since May 2007, 76 NATO soldiers have been killed and an undisclosed number wounded in 46 recorded “deliberate attacks” by members of the Afghan National Security Force. These figures suggest more than a recent “trend of Afghan treachery.”

Posted on Mar 8, 2012 READ MORE  |  47 COMMENTS



nataliej (CC-BY)

Why No One Would Listen

What’s worse: to be persecuted and indicted for trying to expose an act of wrongdoing? Or—like so many in the corporate and financial world—to be ignored for doing so?

Posted on Mar 7, 2012 READ MORE  |  2 COMMENTS



Håkan Dahlström (CC-BY)

How Empires Fall: An Interview With Jonathan Schell

Since Occupy and the Arab Spring, the animating message of Schell’s “Unconquerable World”—that, in the age of nuclear weaponry, nonviolent action is the mightiest of forces—has undergone a renaissance of sorts.

Posted on Mar 3, 2012 READ MORE  |  31 COMMENTS



Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Going Beyond the Tale of a Boy and His Horse

For all the spectacle of thundering cavalry charges, muddy trenches and wartime love and loss, the current popular storytellers of the First World War skip over the conflict’s greatest moral drama by leaving out part of its cast of characters.

Posted on Feb 29, 2012 READ MORE  |  14 COMMENTS



ElDave (CC-BY)

The Arrival of the Warrior Corporation

If Apple made weapons, they would undoubtedly be drones, those remotely piloted planes getting such great press in the U.S.

Posted on Feb 25, 2012 READ MORE  |  10 COMMENTS



Mait Jüriado (CC-BY)

The .0000063% Election

At a time when it’s become cliché to say Occupy Wall Street has changed the nation’s political conversation, electoral politics and the 2012 presidential election have become almost exclusively defined by the 1%. Or, to be more precise, the .0000063%.

Posted on Feb 18, 2012 READ MORE  |  6 COMMENTS



How I See Life (CC-BY)

The Imperial Way: American Decline in Perspective, Part 2

In the years of America’s conscious, self-inflicted decline at home, “losses” have continued to mount elsewhere.

Posted on Feb 16, 2012 READ MORE  |  12 COMMENTS



125o4 (CC-BY)

Silent State: Washington’s Campaign Against Whistle-Blowers

There can be little doubt that government retaliation against whistle-blowers is not an isolated event, nor even an agency-by-agency practice. The number of cases in play suggests an organized strategy to deprive Americans of knowledge of the more disreputable things their government does.

Posted on Feb 9, 2012 READ MORE  |  11 COMMENTS



Blyzz (CC-BY)

Offshore Everywhere: The Plan to End National Sovereignty as We Know It

The defense cuts that will change the American way of war may mean little in monetary terms, but in imperial terms they will make a difference: They will offer a direct challenge to national sovereignty.

Posted on Feb 5, 2012 READ MORE  |  15 COMMENTS



clevercupcakes (CC-BY)

Four Reasons to Watch the Super Bowl

You might think that celebrating the holiest day of violence, consumerism and class warfare on your couch is a betrayal of your values or a waste of time. Not this Sunday. This election season, watch the game to understand how jobs, religion, leadership and health care dominate every American contest.

Posted on Feb 2, 2012 READ MORE  |  9 COMMENTS



Sam-Lehman (CC-BY)

Why Climate Change Will Make You Love Big Government

Don’t expect the present anti-government “consensus” to last. Global warming and the freaky, increasingly extreme weather that will accompany it is going to change all that.

Posted on Jan 28, 2012 READ MORE  |  18 COMMENTS



arimoore (CC-BY)

Fracking Gets Its Own Occupy Movement

While most anti-fracking activists have been responding to harms already done, New York state’s resistance movement has been waging a battle to keep harm at bay.

Posted on Jan 25, 2012 READ MORE  |  10 COMMENTS



NIMATARADJI | photography (CC-BY)

Compassion Is Our New Currency: Notes on 2011’s Preoccupied Hearts and Minds

Usually at year’s end, we’re supposed to look back at events just passed—and forward, in prediction mode, to the year to come. But just look around you! This moment is so extraordinary that it has hardly registered.

Posted on Dec 24, 2011 READ MORE  |  144 COMMENTS



BlaisOne (CC-BY)

The Making of the American 99% and the Collapse of the Middle Class

Until a few months ago, the 99% was hardly a group capable of articulating “the identity of their interests.” It contained, and still contains, most “ordinary” rich people, along with middle-class professionals, factory workers, truck drivers, and miners, as well as the much poorer people who clean the houses, manicure the fingernails, and maintain the lawns of the affluent.

Posted on Dec 17, 2011 READ MORE  |  46 COMMENTS



Ohio AFL-CIO (CC-BY)

Chalk One Up for the 99%

On the evening of November 8th, Occupy Wall Street, the populist uprising built on economic justice and corruption-free politics that’s spread like a lit match hitting a trail of gasoline, notched its first major political victory in the unlikeliest of places: Ohio.

Posted on Nov 26, 2011 READ MORE  |  125 COMMENTS



Kevin H. (CC-BY)

The Art of the Shakedown, From the Nile to the Potomac

In places like Uganda, corruption often arises out of desperation. But in America, as W.E.B. Du Bois noted toward the end of his life, “We let men take wealth which is not theirs; if the seizure is ‘legal’ we call it high profits. And the profiteers help decide what is legal.”

Posted on Nov 5, 2011 READ MORE  |  11 COMMENTS



Metropolitan Books

Freedom Isn’t Free at the State Department

On the same day that more than 250,000 unredacted State Department cables hemorrhaged out onto the Internet, I was interrogated for the first time in my 23-year State Department career by State’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security for posting on my blog a link to a WikiLeaks document already available elsewhere on the Web.

Posted on Oct 3, 2011 READ MORE  |  9 COMMENTS



Flickr / loop_oh

The Drawdown That Wasn’t

Tom Engelhardt, a fellow at The Nation Institute and creator and editor of TomDispatch.com, takes a close accounting of President Obama’s Afghanistan speech delivered in late June, in which Americans were told that this year the U.S. would begin winding down its war in that country. (more)

Posted on Jul 2, 2011 READ MORE  |  12 COMMENTS


Cow Most Sacred: Why Military Spending Remains Untouchable

In defense circles, “cutting” the Pentagon budget has once again become a topic of conversation. Americans should not confuse that talk with reality.

Posted on Jan 27, 2011 READ MORE  |  35 COMMENTS



Flickr / marjoleincc (CC-BY-SA)

Israel’s Gift to Iran’s Hard-Liners

Juan Cole, who offers the single best available running commentary on the Middle East, considers the ways in which, on the first anniversary of the fraudulent Iranian elections and the rise of the Green Movement, the policy moves of both the U.S. and Israel continued to backfire in Iran.

Posted on Jun 10, 2010 READ MORE  |  40 COMMENTS



pagetutor.com

Pox Americana: The Real Cost of Bailing Out Wall Street

In the 20th century, smallpox killed more people than all of that bloody century’s wars combined. It cost $300 million to eradicate the disease. What might have been achieved with the $4 trillion we gave Wall Street?

Posted on Oct 4, 2009 READ MORE  |  23 COMMENTS


Afghan lookout
army.mil

The Afghan Scam

The vision of a reconstructed, peaceful, stable, democratically governed Afghanistan faded fast after the U.S.-led invasion. Most Afghans now believe that it was nothing but a cover story for the Bush administration’s real goal—to set up permanent bases in Afghanistan and occupy the country forever.

Posted on Jan 13, 2009 READ MORE  |  9 COMMENTS


ENTER_ALT_TEXT
U.S. Navy / Jordon R. Beesley

The Military-Industrial Complex: It’s Much Later Than You Think

Since 1961, there has been too little serious study of, or discussion of, the origins of the military-industrial complex, how it has changed over time, how governmental secrecy has hidden it from oversight by members of Congress or attentive citizens, and how it degrades our constitutional structure of checks and balances.

Posted on Jul 27, 2008 READ MORE  |  88 COMMENTS


Iron Man still
gizmodo.com

Torturing Iron Man

Those who haven’t seen this summer’s biggest blockbuster (so far, at least—this weekend’s “Indiana Jones” sequel may well change that) “Iron Man” and are planning to hit the multiplex might want to take a gander at this review. The article points out how “Iron Man” is the latest in a string of “pro-military” movies served up for youngsters’ consumption—even as two disastrous wars rage on overseas.

Posted on May 24, 2008 READ MORE  |  15 COMMENTS


Bush and flag
blog.kir.com

How to Rule the World After Bush

How has the Bush administration changed the world economically, and what it will mean for the next administration? Also, if Bush-style “imperial globalization” is rejected in January, what will American ruling elites try to turn to—Clinton-style economic globalization?

Posted on May 18, 2008 READ MORE  |  22 COMMENTS


sky
ltscotland.org.uk

The Defining Moment for Climate Change

Even for Americans, constitutionally convinced that there will always be a second act, and a third, and a do-over after that, and, if necessary, a little public repentance and forgiveness and a Brand New Start—even for us, the world looks a little Terminal right now.

Posted on May 11, 2008 READ MORE  |  40 COMMENTS


The Pentagon Has Always Gone Hollywood

Remember the game Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon? Nick Turse, author of the new book “The Complex:  How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives,” has come up with a far more sinister version of that fun genealogical party activity—only this time, all proverbial roads lead back to the U.S. military instead of the “Footloose” star.

Posted on Mar 20, 2008 READ MORE  |  8 COMMENTS


American Exceptionalism Meets Team Jesus

There’s a lot of talk about religious fundamentalism these days, but how much do we really know about the brand of Christian fundamentalism that has developed in America since, and in response to, the Enlightenment?  Author James Carroll holds forth on the subject in this interview with TomDispatch editor Tom Engelhardt.

Posted on Sep 17, 2007 READ MORE  |  7 COMMENTS


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