Tomgram: Beverly Gologorsky, Hunger in America

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

During the Covid-19 pandemic, Congress passed legislation that, among other things, allowed all participants in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), known more popularly as the food stamp program, to “receive the maximum monthly benefit, regardless of income.” That put extra food on the tables of so many poor families in this country and, as the New read more

How U.S. Military Spending Works

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, March 10, 2023

Here’s how this works each year.

1) Biden proposes a massive increase in military spending — above and beyond both what he proposed the year before and what the Congress increased that to. If you look at U.S. military spending according to SIPRI in constant 2021 dollars from 1949 to now (all the years they provide, with their calculation adjusting for read more

Things to Learn from Daniel Ellsberg

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, March 8, 2023

I don’t want any new monuments to individuals to replace any ripped down for racism or other offenses. Individuals are deeply flawed — every single one of them, and morality changes with the times. Whistleblowers are by definition less than divinely perfect, as their service is revealing the horrors of some institution they’ve been part of. But when you look around for individuals you’d like people to be learning from, there are some that read more

Tomgram: Priti Gulati Cox and Stan Cox, A Death in the Family

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It was almost 46 years ago, but I’ll never forget the moment I last saw my mother, quite literally white as a sheet, being rolled away from me on a hospital gurney. I would never see her again and, to this day, regret that I couldn’t have been at her side when she died. My father, who had a stroke when my mother was so desperately ill — I was endlessly at his side — read more

How Many Strangers Are At the Gate?

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, March 6, 2023

Spolier Alert: if you want to watch an excellent 30-minute film without knowing what happens, scroll down and watch it before reading any of these words.

We’ve long known that U.S. mass-shooters are disproportionately trained in shooting by the U.S. military. I don’t know whether the same applies to those who kill in the U.S. with bombs. I wouldn’t be surprised if the connection were even greater.

The Oscar-nominated short film Stranger read more

Tomgram: Clarence Lusane, Will Nikki Haley’s Candidacy Flag?

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Imagine this: in the 1830s, the U.S. government spent the equivalent of what today would be a trillion dollars to expel just about every last indigenous person — man, woman, and child — from their homelands in this country’s south and southeast. As historian Claudio Saunt so vividly reminds us in read more

Whose Red Lines?

In the conflict-ridden realm of international relations, certain terms are particularly useful, and one of them is “Red Lines.”  Derived from the concept of a “line in the sand,” first employed in antiquity, the term “Red Lines” appears to have emerged in the 1970s to denote what one nation regards as unacceptable from other nations.  In short, it is an implicit threat.

Vladimir Putin, self-anointed restorer of the Russian empire, has tossed about the term repeatedly in recent years.  read more

U.S. Imperialism as Philanthropy

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, March 2, 2023

When a cartoonist was recently denounced and canceled for racist remarks, Jon Schwarz pointed out that his resentment at black people for not being grateful for what white people do for them echoed similar resentment over the years for the ingratitude of the enslaved, of dispossessed Native Americans, and of the bombed and invaded read more