War Is A Crime

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

I felt discouraged recently when it hit home: I’ll never be a Supreme Court justice. Reviewing my life, I came to the realization that I was in no way qualified — and no, I’m not talking about my utter lack of legal experience (except as a juror). I was thinking instead of the qualifications that — as TomDispatch read more

By Dave Lindorff

The brutal murder of sometime Washington Post visiting columnist Jamal Khashoogi, apparently on orders from Saudi Arabia’s de facto leader Prince  Mohammed bin Salman, has many American journalists and columnists in high dudgeon. How, they ask, can the US be allied to a country run by such a blood-thirsty leader? How can the US ally itself to, and sell $100 billion worth of arms to, a country so medieval in its behavior?

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Nicolas J. S. Davies writes about U.S. foreign policy, war and militarism for Consortium News and other outlets. He has been working as a researcher with CODEPINK, and co-authored its report on “War Profiteers: the U.S. War Machine and the Arming of Repressive Regimes.” He is also the author of the excellent book, Blood On Our Hands: the American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq.

Total run time: 29:00
Host: David Swanson.
Producer: David Swanson.
Music by Duke Ellington.

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

(Un)Happy Anniversary!
17 Years of War (and More to Come)
By Tom Engelhardt

We’re already two years past the crystal anniversary and eight years short of the silver one, or at least we would be, had it been a wedding — and, after a fashion, perhaps it was. On October 7, 2001, George read more

According to the analysis of police-murder-instigator Dave Grossman, the reason that only a minority of soldiers attempted to kill in World War II and earlier wars was a general aversion to committing murder. And the reason that the vast majority of U.S. soldiers (marines, sailors, etc.) have attempted to kill in recent decades is “classical conditioning.” A fireman rushes into a fire without thinking, if he or she has been conditioned through drill read more

When I say there is nobody to vote for, I don’t just mean the familiar complaint that the candidates may be different shades of evil but are all too evil to support, that the earth’s climate does not recover one iota because some even worse policy has been averted, that sadistic bombings and humanitarian bombings actually look identical. I do mean all of that. But I also mean that candidates are campaigning as and being presented as nothing, as empty figures with no positions on anything.

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

I missed the Salem witch trials, but I well remember Anita Hill at the Clarence Thomas hearings. How could I forget the fire read more

Mark Dworkin is, together with Melissa Young, an award-winning documentary film director, and the director of an important new film called Plane Truths. You can find Mark and Melissa at movingimages.org and this movie at planetruths.org. Plane Truths looks at the increased activity at the U.S. Navy base on Whidbey Island in Washington state — activity that is making life unbearable for locals and wildlife — collateral damage in the ever increasing militarization of society.

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

Here’s a strange reality of the last 17 years of the American way of war: in the spring of 2003, before the Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq, millions of people took to the streets, hundreds read more