From TomDispatch: Once in the previous century, I actually visited the city of Hiroshima. I was an editor at Pantheon Books and had published a translation of a Japanese volume, Unforgettable Fire: Pictures Drawn by Atomic Bomb Survivors. In it, years later, a few...
An Unexpected Con To End Free Speech
Rooting out terrorism and antisemitism was the supposed reason that plainclothed ICE agents arrested doctoral student Rümeysa Öztürk on a street in Somerville, Massachusetts, after she coauthored an op-ed calling on Tufts University to divest from companies with ties...
A New Gold(en) Mine for Arms Contractors
Reprinted from TomDispatch: Donald Trump remains a mystery man of some eerie sort. After all, just ask yourself, why in the world did he only recently announce that this country was going to “immediately” resume nuclear testing, not having tested a nuclear weapon —...
Escalating the Escalation: A Murder Incorporated Tale of the Drug Wars
Reprinted from TomDispatch: There’s one rule in the age of Donald Trump. When it comes to him, you simply can’t rule anything out. It’s true that, only recently, when asked about the possibility that he would order military strikes not just on ships off the coast of...
The Trump Administration’s Military Occupation of America
Reprinted from TomDispatch: Earlier this month, President Donald Trump threatened to unleash the armed forces on more American cities during a rambling address to top military brass. He told the hundreds of generals and admirals gathered to hear him that some of them...
What’s In a Name? The ‘Defense’ Department Has Always Been About War
The renaming of the Defense Department should have surprised no one. Donald Trump is an incipient fascist doing what such figures do. Surrounded by a coterie of illiberal ideologues and careerist sycophants, he and his top aides have dispensed with pretense and...
The Department of War Is Back!
Originally appeared at TomDispatch. My fellow Americans, my critical voice has finally been heard inside the Oval Office. No, not my voice against the $1.7 trillion this country is planning to spend on new nuclear weapons. No, not my call to cut the Pentagon budget in...
Gaza’s Looming Cancer Epidemic
Originally appeared at TomDispatch. Honestly, can you believe it? Only a couple of weeks after Israeli forces targeted and killed four Al Jazeera journalists in a tent outside al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, it happened again. This time, at least five journalists,...
Researching the Roots of War
I have spent the bulk of my career — on and off since the late Carter Administration — following the money that drives war and repression. What I have finally learned after so many decades of doing research on the war machine is that while research is critical, it...
The Detached Cruelty of Air Power
The one thing you can say about Donald Trump in his second term in office is that, whatever he may be doing at home, he’s not fighting any wars abroad, right? Well, actually, wrong! Yes, American ground troops are no longer actively fighting wars around the world, but...


