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Tomgram: Engelhardt, The Last Word?

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

An Obituary for Our World And I’m Not Kidding! By

Oddly enough, I’ve read obituaries with fascination from the time I was quite young. And yet, in all these years, I’ve never really reflected on that fact. I don’t know whether it was out of some indirect fascination with death and the end of it all or curiosity about the wholeness (or half-ness or brokenness) of an individual life in full. But here’s the odd thing: read more

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Conservative Governance Has Undermined U.S. Life Expectancy

Although, in recent decades, American conservatives have embraced what they call the “Right to Life,” they have certainly done a poor job of sustaining life in the United States.  That’s the conclusion that can be drawn from a just-published scientific study, “U.S. state policy contexts and mortality of working-age adults.”

Funded by a grant from the U.S. National Institute on Aging and prepared by a group of U.S. and Canadian researchers, the study found a close relationship, in the read more

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Never Withdraw a Demand for Diplomacy

As in most wars, both sides of the one in Ukraine have predicted total victory month after month — with no evidence that either side has ever been remotely right about that.

The U.S. is establishing a seemingly permanent infrastructure for a forever war, the two most likely eventual endings of which are nuclear apocalypse or negotiated peace.

Is it really going to be unacceptable to have a preference for peace? Must it be forbidden read more

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If We Can Find Just 238 More Congress Members Who Don’t Want Us All to Die . . .

When an election has been very close, many factors can be pointed to as each having been enough to make the difference. One of those in 2016 was very suggestive and very much ignored by, as far as I know, every single major media outlet except this one. I mean the phenomenon of military families voting against Hillary Clinton, believing her more likely than Donald Trump to get their loved ones killed. It seems this factor decided the election.

We’re often told that the U.S. public loves war and read more

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Tomgram: Nick Turse, Keeping an Eye on AFRICOM, Ten Years Later

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

Today’s Nick Turse piece on U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) plunged me into an all-American past that, in light of this planet’s chaotic present, had faded from my mind a bit. After all, TomDispatch began more than 20 years ago in the wake of the al-Qaeda attacks of September 11, 2001. In a sense, this site was my response to the way President George W. Bush and read more

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Audio: Leaving WWII Behind: David Swanson

By Jack Shalom, October 22, 2022

As wars rage all around us, one war, WW II, still stands as the exemplar for the Good War. But is that a useful or accurate designation? And if not, why does that view still have such an outsized influence in the national discourse? I spoke with David Swanson who has written a book called Leaving World War II Behind which challenges the notion of WWII as the Good War.

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