A blog about a criminal enterprise
By Dave Lindorff
Two hugely important people were taken down by COVID-19 this past week. Both have left a legacy, the importance of which cannot be ignored.
John Prine
The first struck down last week is one of the greatest modern songwriters of my lifetime, John Prine. One of my favorite musicians, Prine was a humble, funny and extremely deep and sometimes powerfully political folk musician who had the remarkable ability to infuse his songs with all those characteristics
Decades ago, when I began teaching international history, I used to ask students if they thought it was possible for nations to end their fighting of wars against one another. Their responses varied. But the more pessimistic conclusions were sometimes tempered by the contention that, if the world’s nations faced a common foe, such as an invasion from another planet, this would finally pull them together.
I was reminded of this on March 23, when the UN Secretary-General, António
By Laurie Dobson
As people come to grips with the announcement today that Bernie Sanders has suspended, i.e. dropped out of, his campaign, a myriad of collective feelings will have to run their inevitable course.
My first reactions are that I feel profoundly let down. In the middle of Holy Week, for God’s sake! While the virus is peaking and people are losing things right and left, how does it help that he does this now?
Bernie has always had terrible timing, a consequence
This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To receive TomDispatch in your inbox three times a week, click here.
I’m sure you still remember them. The president regularly called them “my generals.” They were, he claimed, from “central casting” and there were three of them: retired Marine Corps General John Kelly, who was first
The film “Prosecutor,” tells the story of the International Criminal Court, with a focus on its first chief prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, with lots of footage of him in the year 2009. He held that office from 2003 to 2012.
The film opens with the Prosecutor helicoptering into an African village to inform the people that the ICC is bringing its form of justice to locations all over the world, not just their village. But, of course, we all know it isn’t true, and we know now that even in
This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To receive TomDispatch in your inbox three times a week, click here.
Think of Donald Trump as a revolutionary when it comes to the alphabet. How many presidents have spent so much time on the basic ABCs the way he has? After all, since the moment he arrived at the White House, he’s been laser-focused on eliminating four letters in any association whatsoever from that alphabet. You know which four they are — A-B-O-M — which, curiously
David Dayen is the executive editor of The American Prospect magazine. He is the author of Chain of Title: How Three Ordinary Americans Uncovered Wall Street’s Great Foreclosure Fraud, winner of the Studs and Ida Terkel Prize. His next book, Monopolized: Life in the Age of Corporate Power, will be released in June. His work has also appeared in The Nation, The Intercept, The New Republic, Vice, HuffPost, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times,
This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To receive TomDispatch in your inbox three times a week, click here.
You know how, every now and then, something just crystalizes everything for you? Here’s an example from my own life. In November 2017, I read a piece at the Guardian website headlined “Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and Warren Buffett are
We live with a profound paradox. Our lives are powerfully affected by worldwide economic, communications, transportation, food supply, and entertainment systems. Yet we continue an outdated faith in the nation-state, with all the divisiveness, competition, and helplessness that faith produces when dealing with planetary problems.
As we have seen in recent weeks, the coronavirus, like other diseases, does not respect national boundaries, but spreads easily around the world. And how is it being