Tomgram: Rajan Menon, Living on a Pandemic Planet
This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To receive TomDispatch in your inbox three times a week, click here.
Everything worries us in these desperate coronaviral days of ours. If, however, one thing should have set off alarms everywhere (and didn’t), it was the moment in mid-March when, having dismissed the Covid-19 virus as the Democrats’ “new hoax” or the equivalent of
The Economic Benefits of a Global Ceasefire
There doesn’t seem to be any dispute with the findings of various studies, that investing public dollars in most other things (education, green energy, infrastructure, healthcare, etc.), or not taxing the money from working people in the first place, produces more jobs than military spending.
In a generally wonderful new book by Clifford Conner called The Tragedy of American Science, the author claims that if a government produces more jobs through non-military spending, private capital
Now That Charlottesville Can Remove Monuments, Should It?
By David Swanson
News reports proclaim that the Governor of Virginia has signed into law a bill allowing localities in Virginia to remove Confederate statues. In reality, this new law allows Virginia cities and counties to remove, alter, or relocate any war monuments – something Virginia law had forbidden for 15 wars, including the U.S. Civil War.
The law up until now fairly clearly did not apply to several war monuments in the City of Charlottesville and at the University of Virginia in Albemarle
John Prine and Bernie Sanders: Honoring Two Men Just Brought Down by the Coronavirus Pandemic
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
Will the Coronavirus Pandemic Help Curb War and Militarism?
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
Another Sanders betrayal: Sanders Supporter Asks Why Didn’t Sanders Carry on the Fight to the End?
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
Tomgram: Danny Sjursen, Trump’s Own Military Mafia
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 International Criminal Court for Africans and the Dream of Justice
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