A blog about a criminal enterprise
By Dave Lindorff
As a white male from a middle class family in which both parents had gone to college, and where my dad was a tenured professor with a PhD in electrical engineering and degrees from MIT and U of Penn, and a graduate from an elite private university, Wesleyan, I have always known that I am a person of privilege. So it is with some interest that I find myself now, in this time of Coronavirus pandemic, suddenly in an unprivileged status.
On March 19, 2020, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, spurred to action by the coronavirus pandemic, issued a memorandum that identified the nation’s 2.5 million farmworkers as “essential” workers. Soon thereafter, agribusinesses began distributing formal letters to their farm laborers, also declaring that that they were “essential.”
Of course, it shouldn’t have required a government-business effort to establish this point. Without farmworkers, there is no food. And the
Did you know that the U.S. government has done something odd with your tax dollars? The ones you get so furious and indignant about when they’re used to feed anybody who’s hungry? It has given over 280 billion of those dollars to the government of Israel (not counting classified hush-hush super-secret amounts).
Israel is not a poor country. It is certainly not the poorest in the world. Why is it the top recipient of “aid.”
It isn’t. Its military is. Most of those billions of dollars
Dear Mr. Katstra,
First of all, thanks for your terrific work on the greatest team ever which I think we are all safe in assuming would have repeated last year’s championship this year if the season hadn’t been shut down. Maybe I’m biased. The point is I’m a fan and an alumnus who found very disturbing an article titled “Virginia’s Austin Katstra lays the foundation for a career in counterterrorism.”
That article reported: “Austin Katstra’s interest in counterterrorism began
This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To receive TomDispatch in your inbox three times a week, click here.
My dad came from Brooklyn, which meant I was a Brooklyn Dodgers fan from the start. One year, I even lost whatever I had saved up from my microscopic allowance betting on World Series games with Gus, who worked behind the soda fountain at the local drugstore. When he refused to take my money, my father made me pay anyway. (“A man,” he told me sternly, “always pays his
By Dave Lindorff
The US is heading into uncharted waters as a polity, with the two likely candidates for president this November both clearly suffering from significant cognitive impairment and evidence of continuing mental decline.
Back in 1980, the American voters elected a man, Ronald Reagan, who unbeknownst to them already had the beginnings of Alzheimer’s dementia. By 1984 and his campaign for a second term of office, his White House staff and his wife Nancy
The Lieutenant Governor of Texas is happy to sacrifice the lives of old people for “the economy.” A Congressman from Indiana doesn’t discriminate; he’s willing to let anybody lose their life to maintain what he calls their “way of life.” How they can have
Tim Schwartz is the author of a new book called A Public Service: Whistleblowing, Disclosure, and Anonymity. Tim Schwartz’s career focuses on data privacy and digital information as an artist, activist, and technologist. He specializes in teaching techniques for challenging power while protecting one’s identity. Schwartz co-organizes the digital training organization Los Angeles Cryptoparty, a member of the Electronic Frontier Alliance. He
This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To receive TomDispatch in your inbox three times a week, click here.
So here’s a basic dose of President Trump: On April 14th, he met with a group of Covid-19 survivors in the cabinet room of the White House and, citing the “Spanish Flu” pandemic of 1918 in which, he claimed, 75 million to 100 million people died globally, he offered this bit of typical (and typically only semi-coherent) self-congratulation:
“But not since then have we
By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, April 20, 2020
I know it’s stiff competition, but hear me out.
The threat of nuclear apocalypse is higher than ever. The threat of irreversible climate collapse is higher than ever and massively contributed to by militarism. The trillions of dollars being dumped into militarism are desperately needed for actual