War Is A Crime

The United States is threatening sanctions against judges at the International Criminal Court should they continue their years-long investigation into the U.S. war on Afghanistan — a war which, in less than a month, will begin its 18th year.

A long list of prominent U.S. citizens and organizations, and thousands of additional signers, have put their names to a letter asking President Donald Trump to live up to his read more

Despite the soaring costs of attending American colleges and universities, their students are receiving an education that falls far short of the one experienced by earlier generations.

The sharp increase in costs is clear enough.  Between 1978 and 2013, American college tuition rose by 1,120 percent, and became the major source of revenue for higher education.  Traditionally, most public colleges and universities read more

By Dave Lindorff

The politically ambitious mainstream Democratic Senator Cory Booker has been posing as a courageous man ready to put his seat in the Senate at risk by violating Senate rules and releasing “confidential” emails of Supreme Court nominee and current Appeals Court Judge Brett Kavanaugh at Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The truth of course is that some of what Sen. Booker “released” had already been declassified, and that in any event, read more

I went in search of anything the United States was number 1 in that it shouldn’t be ashamed of, and came up empty. But I did find that the United States is number 1 in believing it is number 1. So, that’s something.

In my book, Curing Exceptionalism, I wrote:

“From John Winthrop before the fact to Tocqueville and on through John Kennedy and Ronald Reagan, up to and including Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and most voices on U.S. television news today, as well as that neighbor or friend who’s read more

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

What Will Donald Trump Be Remembered For?
The World According to The Don(ald)
By Tom Engelhardt

I know you won’t believe me. Not now, not when everything Donald Trump does — any tweet, any insult at any rally — is the news of the day, any day.  But he won’t be remembered for any of the things now in our headlines. No human being, it’s true, has ever been covered read more

By Linn Washington, Jr.

Efforts by Tyrone Cook in 2010 to end the wrongful arrest of a nephew plunged this veteran law enforcer into the cesspool of dirty practices among police and prosecutors in Philadelphia.

An investigation conducted by Cook succeeded in having the false charges against his nephew dismissed. Those charges arose from improper investigative techniques by detectives Cook discovered. Such corner-cutting techniques fuel mass incarceration read more

BY DAVE LINDORFF

Most of the uproar, left and right, about the revelation — in both a NY Times anonymous opinion page article by a “high official” in the White House, and a new book by Bob Woodward — that there are top people working for President Trump who are actively trying to keep him from doing dangerous or reckless things out of ignorance or anger, has read more

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

In 2010, H.R. McMaster wasn’t the former national security advisor to you-know-who but a brigadier general and senior adviser to General David Petraeus, then commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan. At that read more

Rajni Lallah is a leading member of LALIT (which means struggle), a political organization in Mauritius in the forefront for the past 42 years of the struggle to decolonize and demilitarize the Chagos Islands. Rajni Lallah was 12 years old when she joined the women’s movement in Mauritius and remains active in Muvman Liberasyon Fam, a national women’s organization in Mauritius. When she was 14, she went to the first solidarity all-night vigil in support of Chagossian women on hunger read more

The University of Virginia’s Miller Center caught flak for appointing Trumpian Marc Short, but has now announced the appointment of John Negroponte, presumably hoping for little resistance since Negroponte’s not a Trumpman.

But shouldn’t morality still matter? Shouldn’t a center that has yet to ever feature an opponent of war but keeps inviting mercenaries and soldiers and warmongers to speak have to have some limits? We’re talking about a man who oversaw death squads in Honduras read more