Author: Tom Engelhardt

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Recently, at a confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Mark Esper, President Trump’s nominee to be the new secretary of defense, faced questioning on all sorts of subjects, including on his past position as the top Washington lobbyist for weapons-maker Raytheon and on Turkey’s purchase of a Russian missile system. Strangely enough, however, one subject read more

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Let me get this straight: Jeffrey Epstein, a billionaire (or purported billionaire) and former read more

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In Donald Trump’s go-back-to-where-you-didn’t-come-from America, where the fear of immigrants (as well as their grotesque read more

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Planet of the Surreal
Turning 75 in the Age of Trump
By Tom Engelhardt

As I turn 75, there’s no simpler way to put it than this: I’m an old man on a new planet — and, in case it isn’t instantly obvious, that’s not good news on either score.

I still have a memory of being a camp counselor in upstate New York more than half a century ago. I was perhaps 20 years old read more

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Congratulations to us! Talk about the art of the deal! Whether we know it or not, in the wake of those presidential Fourth of July festivities on the Washington Mall (“the biggest ever fireworks”), we’re all Saudis now. And here’s the good news: it only cost the read more

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Abortion is about women and women only, right? Their bodies, their pregnancies, their lives. This is a common enough assumption, even though my own experience 36 years ago tells me something different — and even though perhaps no one is playing a greater role, when it comes to abortion, than a man who is the center of everyone’s attention these days. You know, the fellow read more

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What more did you need to know once Secretary of State Mike Pompeo insisted that a suicide bombing in Kabul, Afghanistan, claimed by the Taliban, was Iranian-inspired or plotted, one “in a series of attacks instigated by the Islamic Republic read more

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It’s no small thing to lodge a word or phrase of your own in our language. So give Dwight D. Eisenhower credit. In his presidential farewell address to the American people in 1961, the former five-star general of World War II warned — and who would have known better — of the growth of what he called read more

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We’re Not the Good Guys
Why Is American Aggression Missing in Action?
By Tom Engelhardt

Headlined “U.S. Seeks Other Ways to Stop Iran Shy of War,” the article was tucked away on page A9 of a recent New York Times. Still, it caught my attention. Here’s the first paragraph:

“American intelligence and military officers are working on additional clandestine plans to read more

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Did Donald Trump just make his first genuine mistake in the race for reelection in 2020? As I wrote during the 2016 campaign, The Donald had one striking distinction. He was the only candidate (or essentially American politician) of that moment who didn’t feel read more