Tomgram: Michael Klare, Can Trump Trump China (or Vice Versa)?

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

Honestly, here’s my best guess: we’re simply on the wrong planet. After all, as TomDispatch regular Michael Klare makes clear today, in the next set of Trump years, the U.S. and China are likely to face off in a major way — just how major, given the unpredictability of You read more

It’s Time to De-Normalize Murder

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, December 13, 2024
Remarks at December 13 Online U.S.-Iran Town Hall

I was asked to talk about Gaza and Syria, and so I shall, but I also want to talk about de-normalizing murder. There have been human societies in which murder was unthinkable, where the most typical Hollywood movie — marketed to U.S. children — has been seen as horrific and traumatizing. Normalizing murder is an option, not required by genes or economics or physics. I want us to take responsibility read more

Tomgram: Andrea Mazzarino, Broken Heart Syndrome in Trump’s America

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

Yes, in October 2001, less than a month after the 9/11 attacks, the war in Afghanistan began. It would, after a fashion, prove to be a disastrous repeat of the Soviet war there in the 1980s (which the CIA did so much to make far worse). And from that moment on, this country’s war-making only ramped up horrifically for what seemed like endless years.

It’s a story that TomDispatch read more

The U.S. Congress Pretends to Exist

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, December 4, 2024

Whether you object to genocide or internalize every scrap of Israeli propaganda, there isn’t any way in ordinary English to dispute that each shipment of weapons from the United States to Israel, whether given or sold, violates numerous U.S. laws, including the Foreign Assistance Act, the Arms Export Control Act, the Conventional Arms Transfer read more

The Problem with U.S. Culture Summed Up in a New York Times Article About Birds

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, December 3, 2024

A New York Times article from November 26, 2024, kept showing up on my computer screen, and I kept avoiding it in disgust. Finally, I gave in and read it. It began like this:

“Hummingbirds zooming around the garden from flower to flower and sipping nectar probably don’t appear at first glance to be models for instruments of war.”

Probably? Probably? Beautiful things of wonder that appear out of nowhere and can vanish again at any read more