Tomgram: Michael Klare, Normalizing Nukes
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Speaking of the situation on the Korean peninsula, he predicted that there would be “the greatest slaughter.” He later requested 34 nuclear weapons for possible use in connection with the Korean situation. He would later claim
Against Thanksgiving
What the hell do I mean I’m against Thanksgiving? Can’t I find something worse to be against? How about famine, cholera, war, slavery, rape, murder, torture, environmental collapse, refugee crises, evil heartless lying scheming governments, oil spills, slick propaganda, mass incarceration, entrenched apathy, bigotry, greed, or sadism? Indeed, I’m certainly against all of those things and thousands of others, and more so than I am against Thanksgiving.
But the world’s problems are relevant
Skywriting Dicks: Pentagon Climate Crimes Are No Joke
| U.S. warplanes have been menacing the people of Afghanistan for more than 16 years now. |
As a thought experiment, I decided to imagine that I lived under the threat of bombs raining down on my family from U.S. airplanes. Say, in Somalia.
I could live in any one of dozens of countries for this to be my reality. Not Canada, though, which borders Washington State and was treated to this expensive, polluting display of sophomoric scrawl by a U.S. Navy warplane earlier this week:
https://twitter.com/anahi_torres_/status/931266469869977600
Focus: The GOP Senate Tax Bill and Obamacare
POLL: Tax reform & Obamacare: Poll finds voters want them dealt with separately – National Review
POLL: 60 percent to blame Trump, GOP for ObamaCare problems – TheHill
House Republicans are divided over Obamacare individual mandate push in tax plan – The Washington Post
Republican U.S. senators to watch in the debate on the tax bill, two of them have qualms about including repeal of the Obamacare individual mandate in the tax bill – Reuters
Pro-Obamacare group ads target swing Republicans on taxes – POLITICO
Senate Committee clears GOP tax bill to set post-Thanksgiving table – US News
Tomgram: Robert Lipsyte, Beating Back the Bad Boys
This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To receive TomDispatch in your inbox three times a week, click here.
Starting with Fox News anchor Bill O’Reilly and film producer Harvey Weinstein, they’ve fallen like so many dominoes in the glare of publicity and grim public testimony from the women (and, in a few
Trump and the nuclear ‘football’: No President Should Have the Authority to Launch Nuclear Weapons
By Dave Lindorff
Maybe having a president in the White House who acts like an impulsive child is a good thing — at least if it convinces the Senate, a body that has for decades surrendered its vital Constitutional power over war and peace to the Executive Branch, to wrest it back.
This is particularly important in the case of nuclear weapons. As things stand, going back all the way to Harry Truman, the only
Top 10 Ways to Stop Trump Nuking Anybody
On Tuesday the Senate Foreign Relations Committee held a hearing on whether Trump can just up and nuke people or not. The hand-picked witnesses, all former military, all said there was some chance that if Trump ordered a nuking, somebody might refuse to carry out the order. On what grounds? No witness or Senator ever mentioned the illegality of war under the UN Charter or the Kellogg-Briand Pact. But one witness brought up “necessity” and “proportionality” as grounds for deeming a particular apocalypse-creating act illegal and another legal. But these “just war” concepts are not empirical. There’s no standard for determining whether an action is “necessary” or “proportional.” It comes down to the mood the commander of Strategic Command is in that day, or the partisan identity of some official, or the courage and integrity of rank-and-filers ordered to begin the earth’s destruction. If, like me, you’re not convinced that’s good enough, here are some other possible approaches:
1) Pass a new law for North Korea and one for each other country on earth pointing out that a stronger law already exists called the U.S. Constitution which forbids presidents from launching wars that have not been declared by Congress, and include a ban on using any funds to violate the law.
2) As long as we’re passing laws to acknowledge the existence of laws, pass one to point out the absolute ban on war in the Kellogg-Briand Pact, as well as
Tomgram: William Hartung, How to Wield Influence and Sell Weaponry in Washington
This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To receive TomDispatch in your inbox three times a week, click here.
When it comes to the art of the deal, at least where arms sales are concerned, American presidents, their administrations, and the Pentagon have long been Trumpian in nature. Their role has been to beat the drums (of war) for the major American weapons makers and it’s been a highly profitable and successful activity. In 2015, for instance, the U.S. once again took the
Talk Nation Radio: War Stories
The late Eduardo Galeano’s forthcoming book, Hunter of Stories, has five or ten sentences on each page — each page a tiny story, their combination engaging and powerful. Galeano includes the story of a war resister who chose to die rather than kill, and that of an Iraqi who foretold and pre-grieved the 2003 looting of the National Museum, also the story of former drone pilot Brandon Bryant who quit after killing a child and being lied to that the child had been a dog, not to mention