Author: Tom Engelhardt

This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To receive TomDispatch in your inbox three times a week, click here.

You could say metaphorically that the poor in America have long lived under pandemic conditions. In the last two-plus years, however, that metaphorical reality became all too literal, as indicated in a recent pandemic report read more

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At some level, it seems so obvious. At the very least, there should be a steep price to pay for invading another country and fighting a war of aggression there. The question that Alfred McCoy, TomDispatch read more

This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To receive TomDispatch in your inbox three times a week, click here.

Back in September 2008, Senator Joe Biden offered a bit of wisdom while running for vice president on Barack Obama’s ticket. In a speech criticizing the Republican presidential campaign of senatorial colleague John McCain, he claimed to be quoting his own father when he said: “Show me your budget and I’ll tell you what you value.”

Almost 14 years later, how apt his father read more

This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To receive TomDispatch in your inbox three times a week, click here.

I have to admit that, as I read the nightmarish front-page stories daily — and yes, I’m old enough to still read the New York Times in print every morning — and absorb the latest read more

This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To receive TomDispatch in your inbox three times a week, click here.

I don’t normally do this, but in the context of TomDispatch regular Rebecca Gordon’s latest all-too-well-timed piece on paying (or rather not paying) one’s taxes, let me quote a couple of paragraphs I once wrote for this site about my own distant past and then briefly explain why:

“And here’s a little story from the Neolithic age we now call ‘the Sixties’ about read more

This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To receive TomDispatch in your inbox three times a week, click here.

Ukraine in Perspective A Historical Feast of Death and Destruction from the Peloponnesian Wars to Late Tomorrow Night By Tom Engelhardt

Excuse me if I wander a little today — and if it bothers you, don’t blame me, blame Vladimir Putin.  After all, I didn’t decide to invade Ukraine, the place my grandfather fled almost 140 years ago. I suspect, in fact, that I was an adult before I even knew such a place existed.  If I could be accused of anything, maybe you could say that, for most of my life, read more

This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To receive TomDispatch in your inbox three times a week, click here.

In the spirit of this prolonged moment from hell, let me offer you a homemade conspiracy theory that will hopefully compete with the most vivid — or do I mean livid? — QAnon-ish ones around. Imagine this (even though it’s not true) as an explanation for the origins of the disastrous war in Ukraine: the major weapons-making corporations of our own military-industrial complex read more

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On a recent trip to Europe as part of his administration’s response to the invasion of Ukraine, Joe Biden visited a convention center in Poland. It was serving as a base for troops from the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne Division. After sharing a pizza with several of those soldiers, he read more

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In case you hadn’t noticed, we live on an eternally well-oiled and well-gased planet. Only recently, for instance, Joe Biden announced that the U.S. was going to ramp up the read more

This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To receive TomDispatch in your inbox three times a week, click here.

It seems like the human way. Once again, we’re at war. Earlier in this century, it was the disastrous U.S. global war on (or, more accurately, of) terror in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere across the Greater Middle East and Africa; if you’re Saudi Arabia, it’s still Yemen as attacks there only read more