Already it's begun – the endless non-departure from Iraq. The Obama plan, restated many times during the presidential campaign, involved a 16-month schedule for withdrawing not all U.S. forces, but only U.S. "combat troops." Now, his (and, of course,...
Recently, reviewing lobbying disclosure reports, the Washington Times discovered "that 18 of the top 20 recipients of federal bailout money spent a combined $12.2 million lobbying the White House, the Treasury Department, Congress, and federal agencies during the last...
In the latest issue of the Nation magazine, Jonathan Schell has written a piece, "Obama and the Return of the Real," that should stand as a manifesto for sanity in our times. In it, he considers just how self-inflicted our present catastrophic situation, from economic...
Yes, we now know the ever grimmer statistics: more than 1,400 dead Gazans (and rising as bodies are dug out of the rubble); 5,500 wounded; hundreds of children killed; 4,000 to 5,000 homes destroyed and 20,000 damaged – 14% of all buildings in Gaza; 50,000 or...
The Pentagon pours vast sums of money into many things – and it isn't only what you imagine. It's not just weapons and equipment, nor even technological and scientific research. Don't forget, for instance, the military money that goes into conferences to talk...
It may finally be 2009, but in some ways, given these last years, it might as well be 800 BCE. From the ninth to the seventh centuries BCE, the palace walls of the kings who ruled the Assyrian Empire were decorated with vast stone friezes, filled with enough dead...
Once upon a time, Detroit was known as "the arsenal of Democracy" because the city's big three automakers converted so quickly from turning out civilian vehicles to producing the tanks and trucks that "helped win World War II"(and then "lent their technology to...
The single omnipresent historical reference in the American media immediately in the wake of September 11, 2001, was, of course, "Pearl Harbor" – and those code words for it, "infamy" and "day of infamy," splashed in mile-high letters across the front pages of...
Did you know that the IBM Center for the Business of Government hosts a "Presidential Transition" blog; that the Council on Foreign Relations has its own "Transition Blog: The New Administration"; and that the American University School of Communication has a...
[Note for Readers: To listen to a TomDispatch audio interview with journalist Anand Gopal about the difficulties involved in reporting from Afghanistan, click here.] Just when the Obama presidency-to-be was revving up to introduce its new national security "team" and...
