Author: Tom Engelhardt

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

The pandemic should remind us that we increasingly live in two ever-less-equal worlds. Think of them as Planet A and Planet B. Right now, the one you read more

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In this pandemic world of ours, there’s a pattern that couldn’t be grimmer. Odd that more isn’t made of it. The three true Covid-19 disaster zones on Planet Earth — the United States (583,000 dead, 32,000,000 confirmed cases), Brazil read more

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Strange, isn’t it? Our secretary of state emphatically claims that China has been acting “more aggressively abroad” and behaving “increasingly in adversarial ways.” No, he read more

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Here’s the strange thing: almost 20 years into a series of chaotic, staggeringly expensive, failing wars across significant parts of the planet, the U.S. military — “the greatest force for human liberation the world has ever known” (George W. Bush), aka read more

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Shouldn’t we be amazed? After all, for almost 20 years, the U.S. military has been supporting, equipping, training, and building up the Afghan military to the tune of more than $70 billion. The result: read more

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It seemed obvious enough to me in 2006. When you included the CIA’s “black sites” around the globe (where prisoners from the war on terror were being kept and regularly tortured), American military prisons like read more

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American-Style War ’til the End of Time? A Lifetime “at War” By Tom Engelhardt

Here’s the strange thing in an ever-stranger world: I was born in July 1944 in the midst of a devastating world war. That war ended in August 1945 with the atomic obliteration of two Japanese cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, by the most devastating bombs in history up to that moment, given the sweet code names “Little Boy” and “Fat Man.”

I was the littlest of boys at read more

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Let me try to put this in context: it was just months ago that I gave up my old flip phone and reluctantly got an iPhone. And though I can indeed make calls on it and use it to check how far I’ve walked each day, footstep by footstep, it’s remarkable how much I can’t do. Don’t ask me to send you a photo of anything or check my email on it or hail an Uber with it. In read more

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It started with three air strikes on September 11, 2001. The fourth plane, heading perhaps for the Capitol (a building that wouldn’t be targeted again until last January 6th), ended up in read more

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World War I was, however faintly, still part of my life when I grew up in the Cold War years. I can remember being hoisted on my father’s shoulders to see the aging American veterans of that global conflict during what must have been a Veterans Day parade down New York City’s Fifth Avenue. My parents talked about their memories of both world wars, as well as the Roaring read more