Author: Tom Engelhardt

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Yes, the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima on August 6 and Nagasaki on August 9, 1945, would kill staggering numbers of people and be an eerily (if all too grimly) appropriate ending to the war that started with the Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and, by August 1945, had resulted in the saturation bombing of 64 Japanese cities.

The scientist who led read more

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Let me just express my embarrassment that, while I certainly noticed when war broke out in Sudan in April, I simply forgot about it thereafter. You might wonder how I could do that, but it’s all too true. I quite read more

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It could be the greatest crime in history and that, believe me, is saying a lot. I’m talking, of course, about the broiling of a planet where heat records are being set globally on an almost daily basis in what’s likely to be the hottest year in possibly — yes! — a million years (long before, that is, human beings even existed).

And the biggest criminals? The ultimate read more

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TomDispatch regular Andrea Mazzarino was a co-founder of the remarkable Costs of War Project at Brown University’s Watson Institute. There can be no question that it’s proven an all-too-sadly one-of-a-kind resource in these years. Since 2011, it’s followed this country’s disastrous war on terror in a way no place else has even imagined doing.

It doesn’t matter whether read more

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On August 6, 1945, when the mushroom cloud from the first atomic bomb rose over the devastated Japanese city of Hiroshima, who could have imagined the “peaceful atom”? And in the decades that followed who could have imagined just how unpeaceful that second version of atomic power might prove to be? I’m thinking, of course, about, among other disasters, the 1979 almost-meltdown read more

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In this century, everything has been extreme when it comes to the U.S. military. After all, the Pentagon’s budget is larger than those of the next 10 (or is it read more

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A Third Way? Don’t Sell Us Short By Tom Engelhardt

In case you hadn’t noticed — and how could you not? — there have been more than 500 (yes, 500-plus!) wildfires burning across the vast reaches of Canada, an unheard-of read more

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I give myself credit for being significantly ahead of my time. I first came across artificial intelligence (AI) in 1968 when I was just 24 years old and, from the beginning, I sensed its deep dangers. Imagine that.

Much as I’d like to brag about it, though, I was anything but alone. I was, in fact, undoubtedly one of millions of people who saw the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, read more

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No, as TomDispatch regular Juan Cole, creator of the must-read Informed Comment website, points out today, you don’t want to be in the Iraq read more

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Yes, as TomDispatch regular and historian Steve Fraser, author of Class Matters: The Strange Career of an read more