Tomgram: Nomi Prins, To Build or Not to Build? That Is the Question

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

My mother died in 1977; my father in 1983; and so many decades later, I think about them ever more often. Partially that’s because, like most kids (I suspect), I wasn’t particularly interested in their lives when they were alive. Only now do I have a thousand-and-one questions for them that can never be answered, including how they first met. I do remember my mother once read more

The biggest threat to US security is here at home: Let’s Stop Pretending Russia and China are Military Threats

By Dave Lindorff

Someone needs to say this, and it looks like it’s gotta be me: China and Russia are not our enemies.

Somehow, the opinion-makers in the media, the bloated military brass with all their ribbons and stars and with little to do but worry about how to keep their massively overbuilt operation afloat with ever more taxpayer money, and the members of Congress who like to gin up fears among the voters so they’ll keep voting for them have gotten everyone read more

Brazil in the World

Next only to the worst destroyers of the earth’s climate slowing their destructive activities, one of the best steps that could be taken for this planet might be for the destroyers of the Amazon rain forests to knock it off. They’re led by one of the world’s leading buffoonish fascist demagogues, who goes by the name Bolsonaro. His leading opponent in Brazilian politics is the man against whom all criminal charges were just dropped — criminal charges that were ginned up read more

Talk World Radio: Todd Miller on the Border Industry

Talk Nation Radio has become Talk World Radio and can now be found at https://talkworldradio.org

Talk World Radio is recorded as audio and video on Riverside.fm. Here is this week’s video and all the videos on Youtube.

Todd Miller is the author of the books Empire of Borders: The Expansion of the U.S. Border Around the World (2019), Storming the Wall (2017), and Border Patrol Nation (2014). He is co-author of the recent report for the Transnational Institute “ read more

John Mueller’s Strange Take on “The Stupidity of War”

How can you not love a book called The Stupidity of War? I’m tempted to count the ways. John Mueller’s new book is an odd one, for which I hope there is a perfect audience out there — though I’m not sure who it is.

The book is virtually free of any contemplation of how it might be wiser to settle disputes nonviolently, of any analysis of the rising power and success of nonviolent action, of any discussion of the growth and potential of international institutions and laws, of any criticism read more