War Is A Crime

By Dave Lindorff

Days after the release of the so-called Nunes memo the Democrats are insisting on the release of their memo, which might be considered a minority rebuttal, but it’s time to take a look at the big picture. What does this whole incident say about the FBI, its power, its capacity for abuse and misconduct, and the long history of an organization that has played such a decisive and often repressive and even unconstitutional role in American politics over many, many decades. read more

 People have a wide range of reasons for opposing a military Trumparade through Washington. Here are nearly 20,000 people who say:

“We demand that the United States hold no militarism-glorifying parade displaying weaponry of war. Should such a thing be staged, we will visibly support peace on that day.”

But thousands of those petition signers have added further comments, and many others in my email box and social media have put their own twists on it. So, here’s my own personal angle:

The read more

A video has shown up on Senator Bernie Sanders’ Facebook page, with his name on it and his face in it making all the familiar (to a small number of people) points about U.S. military spending (how much it is, how it compares to the rest of the world, how it does not produce jobs, what wonders could be achieved with a small fraction of it, etc.).

I wish there were mention of the fact that it kills huge numbers of people, or that it risks apocalypse, or that it damages the earth’s environment. read more

Fred Warmbier, whose son Otto Warmbier, a student here at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, died shortly after returning from North Korea, is reportedly traveling to the Winter Olympics with U.S. Vice President Mike Pence.

It’s hard to imagine the incredible grief of losing a son and of having seen a son suffer. I would not risk being perceived as advising a father how to grieve were it not for the risk I perceive of creating tens of millions more such grieving parents.

It’s hard, read more

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

He took a remarkable star turn at Davos — and, no, I don’t mean President Trump.  I was thinking about Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2017, when he claimed the title of globalist-in-chief in a highly praised speech to the world’s assembled CEOs and plutocrats.  He was then promoting read more

In Trump’s State of the Union he proposed building more nuclear weapons to counter “rivals” who “challenge” U.S. “values.” The Pentagon’s new Nuclear Posture Review proposes nuclear weapons to counter even “cyber warfare” and of course for “deterrence,” but also for “achievement of U.S. objectives if deterrence fails.”

How do we back Washington away from madness? This might help:

This past summer, former U.S. Senator read more

By Dave Lindorff

            I’m a white American, but like a majority of us, that’s only small part of the story.

read more

            In a country where the federal government is currently in the hands of so-called “nativists” like Trump and his white mostly male Republican Party backers only celebrate white roots, I like many of us have various genetic strands that include a little of read more

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

The groundwork is already laid for America’s next war(s) in the Middle East and, in the process, one of the last relatively undamaged areas of Syria (at least before the Turkish military began to pound read more