War Is A Crime

The hunt for the political ideology driving each murder that makes the news obscures some key points.

One is that the shooter is almost always a man, even though women are equally capable of shooting, meaning that the ideology is one of masculinism.

Another is that the shooter, more often than not, shoots himself (and it may not make the news, but most often a shooter shoots only himself), which blows a rather large hole in the idea that he is working to advance some subgroup of people or some desired read more

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Once upon a time about 150 years ago, I wrote a book called The End of Victory Culture: Cold War America and the Disillusioning of a Generation on the long, slow collapse of the American sense of triumphalism read more

Every once in a while I come across mention of something that I proceed to forget again, which is that a copy of La Rotonda exists in the West Bank. That is, a near reproduction of a famous Renaissance villa sits on a hill in Palestine. It’s in the bottom right of the image above.

My first thought, when I remember this, is sadness that the U.S.-Israeli war machine will probably blow this building up.

My second thought is that poor Palestine is afflicted, on top of everything else, with billionaires read more

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Defense? Who needs “defense” when “war” is so much easier to spell? As few could have missed by now, the Trump administration has flipped the name of the Department of Defense back read more

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I live in New York City and, yes, you can’t leave your apartment for a walk on its streets (and I walk them miles a day) and not pass homeless, sometimes visibly disturbed (or unnerved) people standing, sitting, or lying on the sidewalks, sometimes even with signs suggesting their desperation and asking for any small sum of money that those passing them might care to give read more

This was what the President of the United States initially lied:

“Earlier this morning, on my Orders, U.S. Military Forces conducted a kinetic strike against positively identified Tren de Aragua Narcoterrorists in the SOUTHCOM area of responsibility. TDA is a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization, operating under the control of Nicolas Maduro, responsible for mass murder, drug trafficking, sex trafficking, and acts of violence and terror across the United States and Western Hemisphere. The read more

The European Commission, far from eager to restore the non-Orwellian name to departments of war — long since rebranded as departments of “defense” — is pushing to get deadly weapons categorized as especially ethical “investments” meeting Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) criteria. Specifically, the tools of war, according to the European Commission, advance the cause of peace.

Those who buy most seriously into the war-makes-peace propaganda have reservations read more

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

Hey, wouldn’t you know it? The Bible, it turns out, is a deal — a big deal, as it happens! Before I get into the details, let me just put down this distinctly biblical figure: $1,306,035. And get this! Donald Trump read more

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

A Potentially World-Ending President (Though Who Even Notices?) By Tom Engelhardt

Imagine for a moment a nuclear weapon exploding over… well, you name it: Pakistan, India or, for that matter, Ukraine, Russia, or the United States.  I guarantee you one thing: the news headlines would be (and I use the word advisedly) explosive for days (weeks, months?) on end, assuming of course that any media was left to cover it.  And yet, here’s the strange thing: read more

According to a September 3, 2025 article in the Guardian, a leading British newspaper, during June and August U.S. immigration authorities deported approximately 80 Russian asylum seekers, shackled and handcuffed, to Egypt.  Upon arrival, they were forced by Egyptian and Russian authorities onto ICE planes heading for Moscow, where they were immediately turned over to the FSB (the dreaded Russian Federal Security Service).

Among these asylum seekers was Andrei Vovchenko, a former Russian soldier read more