Author: Tom Engelhardt

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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

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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

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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

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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

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When it comes to bravery in relation to the war in Ukraine, let me just tip my cap to all the antiwar protesters in Russia who have taken to read more

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Welcome to an ever more dangerous world. By the way, while you’re reading this, if you happen to be at your desk, you might consider diving under it to practice one of those read more

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Exactly what we needed: an invasion that sends us into the grimmest parts of our Cold War past just as the planet’s scientists are read more

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When was the last time you remember Russian President Vladimir Putin directly threatening Finland and Sweden (should they ever join NATO) or putting his own nuclear forces into “ read more

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Imagine this for a moment: in 2020, Brown University’s invaluable Costs of War Project estimated that, from the Philippines and Afghanistan across the Greater Middle East into northern Africa, Washington’s disastrous two-decade long global war on terror had uprooted and displaced 37 million people. That was, of course, a mind-boggling figure.

Now, having read more

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Since we’re clearly heading into a new Cold War, if not a hot one, how appropriate today to hear at TomDispatch (via Andrew Bacevich) from, of all people, John F. Kennedy. He was the president of my youth, the one I thrilled to see once upon a time (even if at a great distance) giving a speech in New Haven, Connecticut. He was also the one who, on October 22, 1962, read more