Author: Tom Engelhardt

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

Honestly, if a single corporate entity controlled three-quarters of the global market in a product, you’d call it a monopoly, right? Well, in 2011, that was the situation of the United States when it came to the arms trade. This country sold more than three-quarters read more

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

Honestly, the Ukraine situation is next to nothing by comparison. Just run-of-the-mill, quid-pro-quo Trumpian corruption 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 (and not to notice you’d have to be blind), we’re not exactly alone in this country anymore. We were true pioneers in what might be considered a great American tradition of interfering in the affairs of other nations — think read more

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

I saw the piece in the Guardian in July 2018 and must admit I was stunned by it. It wasn’t that, on the issue of climate change, I hadn’t already read plenty of bad news about what was to come for humanity. Somehow, though, this story read more

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

What a strange world we’re in! Imagine that only recently Donald Trump announced the withdrawal of the remaining 1,000 U.S. military personnel from Syria (launching a bloodbath in Kurdish-controlled areas on its northern border in the process). He was, if you remember, bringing read more

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

In January 2004, Chalmers Johnson wrote this about what he called America’s “empire of bases” or its “Baseworld”:

“As distinct from other peoples, most Americans do not recognize — or do not want to recognize — that the United States dominates the world through its military power. Due to government secrecy, our citizens are often ignorant of the fact read more

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

Down the Rabbit Hole With Donald Trump
Living a Mixed Metaphor
By Tom Engelhardt

There can be no question about it. Donald Trump is Lewis Carroll’s Queen of Hearts. “Off with his head!” was the president’s essential suggestion for — to offer just one read more

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

Here’s the strange thing for the self-proclaimed greatest power in history, the very one that, in this century, has been fighting a series of unending wars across significant parts of the planet: if you exclude Operation Urgent Fury, the triumphant invasion of the island Grenada in 1983, and read more

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

It wasn’t until this sentence in the sixth paragraph of the September 23rd New York Times article on the killing of Afghan civilians that the wedding slaughter was even mentioned: “But Haji Attaullah Afghan, head of the provincial council in Helmand, said read more

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

You know, it’s strange. There are certain moments that you and everyone in your generation never forget. For instance, I can tell you exactly where I was — eating a 25-cent hamburger in a diner that might have been called the Yankee Doodle in New Haven, Connecticut — when a man stuck his head in the front door and said, “The president’s been shot.” That, read more