War Is A Crime

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 read more

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 read more

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

He hosted 14 seasons of The Apprentice and its successor, The Celebrity Apprentice, and in all those years I probably spent seven minutes watching the show, or flipping past it as I looked for something else — and, as far as I was concerned, that was seven minutes too many. I don’t want you to think that I didn’t watch my share of junk on TV. I did. read more

“But what of the price of peace?” asked Jesuit priest and war resister Daniel Berrigan, writing from federal prison in 1969, doing time for his part in the destruction of draft records. “I think of the good, decent, peace-loving people I have known by the thousands, and I wonder. How many of them are so afflicted with the wasting disease of normalcy that, even as they declare for the peace, their hands reach out with an instinctive spasm in the direction of their loved ones, in the direction read more

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

At maybe age 13, I can remember reading H.G. Wells’s War of the Worlds, his Martian invasion classic in which aliens tear up London, under the covers by flashlight while I was supposed to be asleep — and I’ve read science fiction ever since. Ditto dystopian fiction from the time I stumbled read more

What’s the matter with science? By that, do I mean, why don’t we turn away from corrupt politics and religion and follow the way of science? Or do I mean, why have we allowed science to so corrupt our politics and our culture? I mean, of course, both.

We don’t need an uneducated jackass telling people how to control a viral pandemic because he’s a president. At the same time, we don’t need corporate, for-profit, and ignorant media outlets using the arrogant science of computer models read more

This week on Talk Nation Radio, we’ll talk about how the coronavirus crisis is impacting or failing to impact militarism and sanctions. Sarah Lazare is web editor at In These Times. She comes from a background in independent journalism for publications including The Nation, Tom Dispatch, YES! Magazine, and Al Jazeera America. A former staff writer for AlterNet and Common Dreams, Sarah co-edited the book “About Face: Military Resisters Turn Against War.” Sarah got read more

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

History Is More or Less Bunk
The Light at the End of the Tunnel?
By Tom Engelhardt

Let me quote a Trumpian figure from long ago, Henry Ford. That’s right, the bigot who created the Ford Motor Company (and once even ran for president). Back in 1916, in an interview with a Chicago Tribune reporter, he offered this bit of wisdom on the subject of history:

“Say, what do I read more