Author: Tom Engelhardt

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Give Karen Greenberg credit. Back in September 2007, writing her second piece for TomDispatch, she entitled it “Guantánamo Forever.” Well, here we are, 17 years later, and that nightmare prison, first established by the administration of President George W. Bush read more

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

Honestly, when I first became a book editor an eon ago, if you had told me that the pen and the typewriter would go the way of the dinosaurs and that, almost 50 years later, I would be sitting at a computer able to dispatch (yes, as in TomDispatch) things I had written or edited almost instantaneously more or less everywhere on Earth, I would have said you were delusional.

And read more

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

Honestly, for at least some of us, it’s hard to imagine that Donald Trump is once again president — yes, president! — of the United States, no less that he was sworn into office the second time on — can you believe it? — Martin Luther King Jr. Day. That gives irony a bad name. Tell me it doesn’t feel like someone’s bizarre fantasy or the ad for a truly bad (or read more

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Consider it no happenstance that Donald and dystopia both begin with a “d.” Sadly enough, they have all too much in common. Right now, the big D is clearly intent on creating a little d globally. After all, before he was even sworn in as president again he had already launched a dystopian imperial version of foreign policy that read more

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From its very first moments, this country was a nation of immigrants. In fact, Native Americans aside, what could the first settlers in North America, no less the “first” Americans, have been but immigrants? And who in this country can’t trace his or her roots somewhere in the past, recent or distant, to immigrants? My own grandfather was born in what’s now Ukraine read more

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As one politician, all too sadly, returns to Washington — and you know just who I mean — another, all too sadly, is leaving. Call it, if not the end of history, then at least the end of something that matters (and, of course, the beginning of who knows what else). Departing is read more

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Almost 80 years later, it’s sadly all too easy to forget that two nuclear weapons were once used with devastating effect on this planet. Here’s just a small description by one survivor of the atomic destruction of the Japanese city of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, that can be found in the book read more

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Yes, when Hamas attacked Israel brutally on October 7, 2023, at least two tiny children (and possibly more) died. In response, in the year and a quarter since then, the Israelis have read more

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Hey, why not buy (or just take) Greenland? After all, we already have a military base there, once known as Thule Air Base and, in 2023, renamed Pituffik Space Base in honor of the settlement read more

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Let’s face it: our world is, to put it mildly, a distinct mess. It doesn’t matter whether you’re checking out the never-ending, devastating war in Ukraine; the ever more embattled Middle East; North Korea, which has more than 11,000 troops fighting and read more