On “Speaking Truth to Empire” at KFCF 88.1 FM independently owned and locally operated in Fresno since 1975, Dan Yaseen interviews William J. Astore, a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF) and professor of history. He has written extensively for TomDispatch.com, Antiwar.com, Truthout, History News Network, AlterNet, Salon, and Huffington Post among other sites. He is the author or co-author of three books, his latest book is, American Militarism on Steroids: The Military-Industrial Complex,
Close Military Bases, Not Embassies
The Trump clowns are planning to close U.S. embassies in Africa.
Good riddance, right?
Wrong.
They still plan to work on “coordinated counterterrorism operations” and “strategic extraction and trade of critical natural resources.”
They also still plan to maintain U.S. military bases across the continent. They’re shutting down all kinds of offices, but not Africom.
In U.S. culture and media, where it’s one’s duty to pretend that the military budget and everything that goes with it does
The Terrorists Are Running the U.S. Government
The Alien and Sedition Acts were laws created in 1798 to carve out exceptions to the 1791 Bill of Rights, by banning statements against the government, making it harder to become a citizen, allowing the imprisonment and deportation of non-citizens, and — the bit that is still on the books (albeit, I think, pretty clearly unconstitutionally) — allowing the imprisonment of non-citizens during wars or “invasions” or “predatory incursions.” Be prepared for the rest of it to be brought
Plutocracy or Democracy?
Despite much lofty rhetoric portraying the United States as a democracy (in which the people rule), this nation, in fact, has often resembled a plutocracy (in which the wealthy rule).
The confusion owes a great deal to the fact that the United States, at its founding, was somewhat more democratic than its contemporaries. In the eighteenth century, European nations, governed by kings, princes, and other wealthy hereditary elites, usually provided a contrast to the more unruly, less hidebound new
Tomgram: Douglas H. White, Past is Prologue in the Trump Era
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I recently went to the protest in New York City — one of more than 1,400 demonstrations in all 50 states across this country and elsewhere in the world — against what increasingly should be known as
Talk World Radio: Can U.S. Military Bases Be Kept Out of Ecuador?
AUDIO:
Talk World Radio is recorded on Zoom.
Here is this week’s video and all the videos on Youtube.
Unthinking, Apathy, and Genocide
Late last century I figured out that I needed to work on a job dedicated to making the world a better place. I know not everyone can find such a job if they try. I appreciate all the other useful jobs that millions of people do — if not the useless and destructive ones that millions of other people do. But I do want people to use some of their spare time to help out with the cratering world. In every moment of the past quarter century there have been people diligently creating catastrophes —
Tomgram: Liz Theoharis and Noam Sandweiss-Back, Trump’s War on the Poor in a New Gilded Age
This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To receive TomDispatch in your inbox three times a week, click here.
Hey, in case you didn’t know it, there’s no such thing as homelessness in America. And I have a distinctive authority to cite on the subject: Elon Musk. Yes, Elon, the man (except, of course, for The Man, aka Donald J. Trump). I mean, who should know better than Elon, the richest man on planet Earth (even though his Tesla brand is now
Tomgram: Alfred McCoy, Is 2025 the New 1984?
This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To receive TomDispatch in your inbox three times a week, click here.
Elon Musk aside (and even when it comes to him, who knows for how long), Donald Trump really has no friends. For him, everything and everyone is just so much property. You’re
Vietnam, Truth, and Reconciliation 50 Years Later
Approaching 50 years since the end of the American War, as the Vietnamese call it, and something over 70 years since the start of it, depending when you start the clock, truth and reconciliation remain incomplete. I don’t mean for the people of Vietnam, who seem, from what little I know, in general to have a better grasp of both truth and reconciliation than the U.S. government or corporate media. I also don’t mean truth and reconciliation between governments, which really don’t traffic