Tomgram: Greg Grandin, Donald Trump, Pornographer-in-Chief

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He descended that Trump Tower escalator on June 16, 2015, to announce his presidential candidacy already bragging about the “great, great wall” he was going to build on the U.S.-Mexico border (“and nobody builds walls better than me… And I will have Mexico pay for that wall”). “When Mexico read more

Tomgram: Engelhardt, The Greatest Wall of All

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A Swiftian Modest Proposal for the President
Or How to Solve the Border and China Problems in One Swell Foop
By Tom Engelhardt

Call me crazy, if you want, but I think I see how to do it!

We have two intractable issues, one intractable president, and an intractable world, but what if it weren’t so? What if those two intractable problems could be swept off the table by a single read more

Tomgram: Alfred McCoy, Climate Change as the End Game for U.S. Global Power

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If you think of the age of Trump as a spectator sport, then perhaps the truly riveting show isn’t on the president’s Twitter feed or in his latest shout-outs to the press or at another of those “cabinet meetings” where everyone is obliged to publicly praise you-know-perfectly-well-who read more

Tomgram: Rory Fanning, The Courage to Say No

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She began cutting school on Fridays and simply sitting on the steps of the Swedish parliament. Her name was Greta Thunberg. She was 15 years old, with a mind of her own and a sign demanding a school strike against climate change. Her parents wanted her to go back to school, but Friday after read more

Tomgram: Stephanie Savell, U.S. Counterterror Missions Across the Planet

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“Training.” It sounds so innocuous. It also sounds like something expected of a military. All professional soldiers undergo some sort of basic training. Think: calisthenics, negotiating obstacle courses, and marksmanship. Soldiers require instruction, otherwise they’re little more than rabble.

Sometimes soldiers from one country even train the troops of another, imparting read more