Max Blumenthal is an award-winning journalist and the author of several books, including best-selling Republican Gomorrah, Goliath, The Fifty One Day War, and his latest, which we will be discussing, The
Tomgram: Allegra Harpootlian and Emily Manna, The AI Wars
This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To receive TomDispatch in your inbox three times a week, click here.
More than a decade ago, I saw the future — and it sure looked bleak.
I was in Orlando, Florida (like I said, bleak!), for the 26th Army Science Conference, a showcase for emerging military technologies that was nothing if not underwhelming.
All these years later, only a few memories leap to mind. Watching the Battlefield Extraction Assist Robot, or “BEAR” — a would-be
Breaking the Grip of Militarism: The Story of Vieques
Vieques is a small Puerto Rican island with some 9,000 inhabitants. Fringed by palm trees and lovely beaches, with the world’s brightest bioluminescent bay and wild horses roaming everywhere, it attracts substantial numbers of tourists. But, for about six decades, Vieques served as a bombing range, military training site, and storage depot for the U.S. Navy, until its outraged residents, driven to distraction, rescued their homeland from the grip of militarism.
Like the main island of Puerto
The Secretary of the Navy Lied to Congress
Read this Military.com article from Friday: “Do U.S. High Schools Bar Military Recruiters? Activists Try to Call Pentagon’s Bluff.” It discusses the offer that Pat Elder and I made to award funding to any school that could be identified as one of the over 1,100 public high schools that the Secretary of the Navy told Congress in December bar military recruiters. The article states:
“Addressing members of the Senate Armed Services Committee in December, Navy
Most Americans Reject Trump’s `America First’ Policy
As president, Donald Trump has leaned heavily upon what he has called an “America First” policy. This nationalist approach involves walking away from cooperative agreements with other nations and relying, instead, upon a dominant role for the United States, undergirded by military might, in world affairs.
Nevertheless, as numerous recent opinion polls reveal, most Americans don’t support this policy.
The reaction of the American public to Trump’s withdrawal of the United States from key
Tomgram: Engelhardt, Collusion, Hell, Yeah!
This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To receive TomDispatch in your inbox three times a week, click here.
Suicide Watch on Planet Earth
As the Flames Began to Rise, the Arsonists Appeared
By Tom Engelhardt
As Notre Dame burned, as the flames leapt from its roof of ancient timbers, many of us watched in grim horror. Hour after hour, on screen after screen, channel after channel, you could see that 850-year-old
Westminster Abbey to Give Thanks for Nuclear Weapons
Last week I tweeted this: “The U.S. military wants to fly small nuclear power plants into wars in order to power the wars’ weaponry. Because there was some chance we might not all die fast enough if nothing this stupid was tried.” I linked to a report on this insane idea. Someone replied: “The Navy already does this.”
True enough. Submarines and aircraft carriers engage in this lunacy, and we take it for granted. Submarines also haul nuclear weapons around the world’s seas, ready to
The Resistance Takes a Stand for Keeping Trump in Office
I’m old enough to remember when Nancy Pelosi was telling us that Trump would impeach himself.
Now, Trump’s “not worth it,” as if impeachment is a favor you bestow on those most worthy.
Jerrold Nadler is proposing to fine Trump for refusing to comply with subpoenas.
Do you grasp the full meaning of that last one? Trump has, in an unprecedented manner, blatantly violated the U.S. Constitution’s two — count em — emoluments
Savagery and Its Promoters and Profiteers
Max Blumenthal’s new book, “The Management of Savagery: How America’s National Security State Fueled the Rise of Al Qaeda, ISIS, and Donald Trump,” is over 300 pages and wastes not a word. It also does far more than it claims.
“This book,” Blumenthal writes, “makes the case that Trump’s election would not have been possible without 9/11 and the subsequent military interventions conceived by the national security state. Further, I argue that if the CIA had not spent over a billion
Talk Nation Radio: Greg Grandin on the End of the Myth
Greg Grandin is the author of a number of prize-winning books, including The Empire of Necessity: Slavery, Freedom, and Deception in the New World, which won the Bancroft Prize in American History, and Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford’s Forgotten Jungle City. Grandin is a professor of history at NYU and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. We discuss his new book, The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America.
Total run time: 29:00