WISCONSIN JUDGE REFUSES TO DELAY NOVEMBER 16 TRIAL DUE TO COVID-19

November 10, 2020

In a letter dated November 2, 2020, Judge Stacey Smith of the Juneau County District Court in Mauston, Wisconsin, denied the motions made by seven antiwar activists to adjourn their trial scheduled for November 16. The seven, Bonnie Block, Joyce Ellwanger, Joy First, Bob Graf, Jim Murphy, Phil Runkel, all of Wisconsin and Brian Terrell, of Iowa, had been arrested for trespass on November 12, 2019, in a protest at Volk Field, a Wisconsin Air National Guard base that trains personnel read more

Everything Will Fundamentally Change

In June 2019, Joe Biden promised wealthy so-called donors that nothing would fundamentally change. At this moment hundreds of millions of people — from those shooting off fireworks to those ranting as though they will soon shoot up public places in their MAGA hats — seem convinced that everything will fundamentally change. Biden was wrong. Everybody else is right. Either everything will change for the better or one or both of the twin dangers of environmental and nuclear apocalypse will change read more

Talk Nation Radio: Steven Youngblood on Peace Journalism

This week on Talk Nation Radio, we’re discussing peace journalism. Our guest Steven Youngblood is the founding director of the Center for Global Peace Journalism at Park University in Parkville, Missouri, where he is a communications and peace studies professor. He has organized and taught peace journalism seminars and workshops in 27 countries and territories. Youngblood is a two-time Fulbright Scholar (Moldova 2001, Azerbaijan 2007). He also served as a U.S. State Department Senior Subject read more

In 1940, the United States Decided to Rule the World

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, November 3, 2020

Stephen Wertheim’s Tomorrow, The World examines a shift in elite U.S. foreign-policy thinking that took place in mid-1940. Why in that moment, a year and a half before the Japanese attacks on the Philippines, Hawaii, and other outposts, did it become popular in foreign-policy circles to advocate for U.S. military domination of the globe?

In school text book mythology, the United States was full of revoltingly backward creatures called isolationists read more

Tomgram: Engelhardt, We’ve Been on Donald Trump’s Road for a Long, Long Time

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

Beyond Our Control
America in the Mid-Seventies and 2020
By Tom Engelhardt

It was summer almost half a century ago when I got into that Volkswagen van and began my trip across country with Peter, a photographer friend. I was officially doing so as a reporter for a small San Francisco news service, having been sent out to tap the mood of the nation in a politically fraught read more

Glory: The Deadliest Drug

Yale Magrass and Charles Derber’s latest book is called Glorious Causes: The Irrationality of Capitalism, War, and Politics. I hope people are reading it. I worry, because after Mom, apple pie, and shopping, what are more popular than capitalism, war, and politics? Probably not . . . oh, I don’t know . . . analyses of the similarities between the histories of Nazi Germany and the United States. Those are in this book too, and are probably the most interesting parts of it.

In the book’s defense, read more

Tomgram: Karen Greenberg, Don’t Just Blame It on the Pandemic

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

Consider two numbers that tell you a good deal about where the United States is as October ends.

The first is 510,000. The coronavirus is now spiking, particularly across the Midwest and rural West, as Americans start heading indoors for winter amid a chaotic refusal to wear masks read more