Author: Tom Engelhardt

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I first posted a piece by Ariel Dorfman at TomDispatch in October 2004 and began my introduction this way: “I met him in the spring of 1980 soon after he arrived in the United States. He had already been in exile from Pinochet’s Chile for seven years. read more

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

How repetitive history sometimes seems when it comes to slaughter! The response to having 1,200 people in your country, read more

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A Slow-Motion Gaza Or How to Carbonize Planet Earth By Tom Engelhardt

Imagine this: humanity in its time on Earth has already come up with two distinct ways of destroying this planet and everything on it. The first is, of course, nuclear weapons, which once again surfaced in the ongoing nightmare in the Middle East. (An Israeli minister recently read more

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Though I was no athlete — or how would you explain all those grounders that went through the legs of second baseman Tom Engelhardt or why, when I got older, I so often ended up banished to, yes, right field? — I grew up in a world of sports. As a kid in the 1950s, so long before the online universe made more or less everything available, I can remember having one of those read more

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Yes, on a radio show, Israeli Minister of Heritage Amihai Eliyahu insisted that there were “no non-combatants in Gaza” (assumedly including the thousands of read more

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I started this website in the wake of the 9/11 attacks and the launching of what President George W. Bush quickly labeled “the Global War on Terror.” And here we are, 22 years after Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld stood in the ruins of the Pentagon and read more

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Oh, the madness of it all! And I do mean madness. Today, Pentagon expert and TomDispatch regular William Hartung considers just how strikingly the giant weapons-making corporations rule the roost both in Washington and in global war-making. One factor to be added to the nightmare scenario read more

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Yes, it was little short of pathetic. Remember the “big, fat, beautiful wall” that, from the first moment of his 2015-2016 election campaign, Donald Trump swore he’d build to keep read more

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It couldn’t have been less complicated. As a start, the Israelis experienced a crime of the first order at the hands of Hamas militants who broke through their border fortifications and killed not just soldiers but civilians of every sort (including children), while taking other civilians (including children) hostage. That certainly is the definition of war crimes.

The response read more

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Honestly, you know you’re in a new world when the Republicans in the House of Representatives, after a three-week slugfest, finally elect as speaker Mike Johnson, who backed Trump election denialism in a big-time way. (Keep in mind that the House will have the job of certifying the winner of election 2024!) As CNN read more