Originally published at TomDispatch. No kid is under a desk anymore — and isn’t that strange when you think about it? After all, when I “ducked and covered” like Bert the Turtle at school in the 1950s by huddling under my desk as sirens howled outside the classroom...
I Love America – Now It’s Bombing My Family in Iran
Originally published at TomDispatch. In a world where so much else is happening including, only recently, savage American and Israeli strikes against Iran, Gaza has become little more than background noise. Yes, that 25-mile strip of land and its towns and cities have...
Illness and Endless Wars
Reprinted from TomDispatch. Hey, you remember that guy, right? You know, the candidate who, in his third campaign for president in 2024 insisted that he was the one who would remove this country’s “warmongers and America-last globalists” and that returning him to the...
The Military-Industrial Complex Is Riding High
Originally published at TomDispatch. The Senate is on the verge of passing the distinctly misnamed “big beautiful bill.” It is, in fact, one of the ugliest pieces of legislation to come out of Congress in living memory. The version that passed the House recently would...
Resistance Works: How Small Groups Took on Great Powers
Originally published at TomDispatch. At a time when many may feel that good news has gone the way of the dodo, look no further than the homeland of that long-extinct bird – Mauritius – for a dose of encouragement. There, among the islands of the Indian Ocean, news can...
Ending Militarism in America
Originally appeared at TomDispatch. In September 2007, retired Air Force lieutenant colonel and historian William Astore emailed me out of the blue. He’d been reading articles at TomDispatch, the website I set up soon after the 9/11 attacks to deal with this country’s...
A New Military-Industrial Complex Arises
Reprinted from TomDispatch. Last April, in a move generating scant media attention, the Air Force announced that it had chosen two little-known drone manufacturers – Anduril Industries of Costa Mesa, California, and General Atomics of San Diego – to build prototype...
The True Cost of Guantánamo
Originally published at TomDispatch. On January 10th, one day before the 23rd anniversary of its opening, a much-anticipated hearing was set to take place at the Guantánamo Bay Detention Facility on the island of Cuba. After nearly 17 years of pretrial litigation, the...
When Israeli Warplanes Rain Death on Gaza, the Co-Pilot Is Uncle Sam
Originally published on TomDispatch: In recent weeks, political soothsayers have speculated about a wide variety of odious new policies the incoming Trump administration and its allies in Congress may or may not pursue. No one can predict with certainty which of those...
Angling Toward Armageddon: The Return of Senator Strangelove
Originally published at TomDispatch. Almost 80 years later, it’s sadly all too easy to forget that two nuclear weapons were once used with devastating effect on this planet. Here’s just a small description by one survivor of the atomic destruction of the Japanese city...


