Tomgram: Stephanie Savell, How America’s Wars Fund Inequality at Home

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On the campaign trail in 2016, Donald Trump wasn’t shy when it came to the issue of debt.  As he told Norah O’Donnell of CBS This Morning at the time, “I’m the king of debt. I’m great with debt. Nobody knows debt better than me. I’ve made a fortune by using debt and read more

Tomgram: Rebecca Gordon, “We Will Always Be Confronted by U.S. Power”

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Two decades ago, when I was working as an editor at a publishing house, Chalmers Johnson, then an eminent scholar of Asia and a former CIA consultant, sent in a proposal for a book he was already calling Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire. I still remember the passage from his prologue that convinced me it was indeed one that simply had to be done:

“One read more

Tomgram: Nomi Prins, What’s the End Game?

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In the rush of Trumped-up events, history — of the last month, week, hour — repeatedly gets plowed (or tweeted) under. Who can remember what happened so long ago? Perhaps it’s not surprising then that, in the wave of abuse from the president and his men (including economic adviser Larry read more

Tomgram: Beverly Gologorsky, What Does Poverty Feel Like?

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When you come from the South Bronx, you have the option of writing about different kinds of characters than those who so often inhabit the universe of fiction we’re used to. That was true of Beverly Gologorsky’s first novel, The Things We Do to Make It Home, which focused on the lost vets of the Vietnam era, their wives, and their children, all desperately trying read more

Tomgram: Engelhardt, A Twenty-First-Century History of Greed

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How the Last Superpower Was Unchained
American Wars and Self-Decline
By Tom Engelhardt

Think of it as the all-American version of the human comedy: a great power that eternally knows what the world needs and offers copious advice with a tone deafness that would be humorous, if it weren’t so grim. If you look, you can find examples of this just about anywhere. Here, for instance, read more

Tomgram: Shammalah and Marlowe, The Return of the Women of Gaza

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We know her name but not, as the courageous Israeli journalist Amira Hass has pointed out, the name of the Israeli sniper who shot her down in cold blood during an unarmed demonstration at the blockaded Gazan border as she ran to aid a man struck in the head by a tear gas shell. read more