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...
Can Trump Trump China (or Vice Versa)?
Gaza, Haiti, Iran, Israel, Lebanon, Russia, Syria, Ukraine, and Venezuela: President-elect Donald Trump will face no shortage of foreign-policy challenges when he assumes office in January. None, however, comes close to China in scope, scale, or complexity. No other...
The Global War on Children
Originally appeared on TomDispatch. It hardly matters what day you check out which news report when it comes to Gaza or now Lebanon. Amid the accounts of chaos and further destruction, there are always the children, even if often hidden away in the odd paragraph...
The Pentagon Goes to School
The divestment campaigns launched last spring by students protesting Israel’s mass slaughter in Gaza brought the issue of the militarization of American higher education back into the spotlight. Of course, financial ties between the Pentagon and American universities...
War Doesn’t End When It ‘Ends’
Originally appeared at TomDispatch. We normally think of wartime and peacetime as two distinct and separate realities. When wars end, they end. Period. Unfortunately, when it comes to modern wars, that’s been anything but the case, as TomDispatch regular Andrea...