Author: Tom Engelhardt

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

Ukraine in Perspective A Historical Feast of Death and Destruction from the Peloponnesian Wars to Late Tomorrow Night By Tom Engelhardt

Excuse me if I wander a little today — and if it bothers you, don’t blame me, blame Vladimir Putin.  After all, I didn’t decide to invade Ukraine, the place my grandfather fled almost 140 years ago. I suspect, in fact, that I was an adult before I even knew such a place existed.  If I could be accused of anything, maybe you could say that, for most of my life, read more

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

In the spirit of this prolonged moment from hell, let me offer you a homemade conspiracy theory that will hopefully compete with the most vivid — or do I mean livid? — QAnon-ish ones around. Imagine this (even though it’s not true) as an explanation for the origins of the disastrous war in Ukraine: the major weapons-making corporations of our own military-industrial complex read more

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

On a recent trip to Europe as part of his administration’s response to the invasion of Ukraine, Joe Biden visited a convention center in Poland. It was serving as a base for troops from the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne Division. After sharing a pizza with several of those soldiers, he read more

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

In case you hadn’t noticed, we live on an eternally well-oiled and well-gased planet. Only recently, for instance, Joe Biden announced that the U.S. was going to ramp up the read more

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

It seems like the human way. Once again, we’re at war. Earlier in this century, it was the disastrous U.S. global war on (or, more accurately, of) terror in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere across the Greater Middle East and Africa; if you’re Saudi Arabia, it’s still Yemen as attacks there only read more

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

For the first time in years, thanks to the Ukraine conflict, there’s been talk again of that nightmarish Cold War-era nuclear term “mutually assured destruction” (or MAD). Unfortunately, the madness read more

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

Recently, making my way through the New York Times — and yes, at 77 and a creature of habit, I still read its paper version — I found two articles of special interest to me, one above the other, on page 17. These days, I hardly need to say that the front page (and its online equivalent) remains a riot of Ukraine news. That day, four major Ukraine stories were piled read more

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

It’s strange, don’t you think, this feeling of having been here before? Well, not quite here. It wasn’t Ukraine and Europe then, but Afghanistan and the Greater Middle East. And if this is indeed Cold War II, Russia isn’t the Soviet Union, but an read more

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

Consider this perhaps the strangest thing of all in our all-too-strange world: the greatest crisis humanity has ever faced essentially never leads the news. Yes, the immediate crises of our world, most recently Vladimir Putin’s disastrous invasion of Ukraine, are 24/7 headlines for weeks at a time. And any set of events that read more

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

Déjà Vu All Over Again
“Such Consequences That You Have Never Encountered in Your History”

By Tom Engelhardt

He’s our very own emperor from hell, an updated version of Nero who, in legend, burned down Rome on a whim, though read more