Tomgram: Engelhardt, Living on a Sci-Fi Planet

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

An All-American Horror Story Three-Quarters of a Century of Nuclear Follies — And That’s Just Where to Begin By

Yes, once upon a time I regularly absorbed science fiction and imagined futures of wonder, but mainly of horror.  What else could you think, if you read H.G. Wells’s War of the Worlds under the covers by flashlight while your parents thought you were asleep?  Of course, that novel was a futuristic fantasy, involving as it did Martians arriving in London to take read more

Nationalism on the Decline

Although, beginning in about 2015, nationalist political parties made enormous advances in countries around the world, more recently they have been on the wane.

The nationalist surge was led by a new generation of rightwing populist demagogues who, feeding on public discontent read more

Tomgram: Hartung and Smithberger, Washington’s National Security Spending Follies

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

These days, a riven Congress is proving essentially incapable of passing significant legislation, no matter the subject. After all, the 2021 congressional version of the Republican Party believes fervently in no-votes and filibusters. New voting rights legislation? read more

Tomgram: Andrew Bacevich, On the Downhill Slope

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Though he’s seldom thought of that way, Joe Biden was, to my mind, Trumpian in his first global trip as president. After all, he delivered a fantasy to much of the world, as well as his own citizenry. In a phrase, it was: America is back! We once again have an alliance beyond compare, an “ read more

Talk World Radio: Michael Messner: Unconventional Combat

Talk World Radio is recorded as audio and video on Riverside.fm. Here is this week’s video and all the videos on Youtube.

This week on Talk World Radio, U.S. military veterans. Our guest, Michael Messner is professor of sociology and gender studies at the University of Southern California. He received his Ph.D. in sociology from the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author or editor of nineteen books, and has in recent years focused his research on U.S. military veterans read more

Guided Missiles, Misguided Policies, and Changing Direction Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love WWIII

By David Swanson, Remarks for Peace and Justice Works, June 24, 2021

Thank you for inviting me. I’d like to speak briefly and spend a good deal of time on Q&A. I’d like to start by considering this question: If it’s true that madness is more common in societies than individuals, and if the society we live in is aggressively hastening (as I think is well-established) climate collapse, ecosystem devastation, wealth inequality, and institutional corruption (in other words, processes read more

Tomgram: Frida Berrigan, Living with World’s End in Plain Sight

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

This editor’s note introduced the single article that took up almost every inch of space in the August 31, 1946, New Yorker magazine:

“TO OUR READERS: The New Yorker this week devotes its entire editorial space to an article on the almost complete obliteration of a city by one atomic bomb, and what happened to the people of that city. It does so in the conviction that read more

Talk World Radio: Julie Varughese on the Unending War on Afghanistan

Talk World Radio is recorded as audio and video on Riverside.fm. Here is this week’s video and all the videos on Youtube.

This week on Talk World Radio, the non-ending of the war on Afghanistan, the ramping up of the cold war on China, and the Black Alliance for Peace. Our guest Julie Varughese has served in an advisory role for the Black Alliance for Peace since it was founded in 2017. She also is the coordinator of the Black Alliance for Peace’s Solidarity Network.

See read more