TomDispatch - Blog

Tomgram: Mattea Kramer and Jo Comerford, Congress Tweeted While America Burned

Mattea Kramer, Jo Comerford — Tue, 21 May 2013 10:11:01 EDT

The streets are so much darker now, since money for streetlights is rarely available to municipal governments...

Tomgram: Rebecca Solnit, What Comes After Hope

Rebecca Solnit — Sun, 19 May 2013 16:30:01 EDT

Ten years ago, my part of the world was full of valiant opposition to the new wars being launched far away and at home -- and of despair...

Tomgram: Andy Kroll, A Democracy of the Wealthy

Andy Kroll — Thu, 16 May 2013 07:29:01 EDT

Billionaires with an axe to grind, now is your time...

Tomgram: David Vine, Baseworld Profiteering

David Vine — Tue, 14 May 2013 08:10:01 EDT

Outside the United States, the Pentagon controls a collection of military bases unprecedented in history...

Tomgram: Nick Turse, Israel, Iran, and the Nuclear Freight Train

Nick Turse — Sun, 12 May 2013 19:05:01 EDT

In those first minutes, they’ll be stunned. Eyes fixed in a thousand-yard stare, nerve endings numbed...

Tomgram: Peter Van Buren, If the Government Does It, It's "Legal"

Peter Van Buren — Thu, 09 May 2013 08:22:01 EDT

What do words mean in a post-9/11 world? Apart from the now clichéd Orwellian twists that turn brutal torture into mere enhanced interrogation, the devil is in the details...

Tomgram: Engelhardt, The Last Empire?

Tom Engelhardt — Tue, 07 May 2013 08:15:01 EDT

It stretched from the Caspian to the Baltic Sea, from the middle of Europe to the Kurile Islands in the Pacific, from Siberia to Central Asia...

Tomgram: Ellen Cantarow, Big Energy Means Big Pollution

Ellen Cantarow — Thu, 02 May 2013 08:20:01 EDT

More than 70 years ago, a chemical attack was launched against Washington State and Nevada...

Tomgram: Eduardo Galeano, Not So Elementary, My Dear Watson

Eduardo Galeano — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 08:14:01 EDT

On the third day of the year 47 BC, the most renowned library of antiquity burned to the ground...

Tomgram: Rosner and Markowitz, Your Body Is a Corporate Test Tube

Gerald Markowitz, David Rosner — Sun, 28 Apr 2013 16:25:01 EDT

Today, we are all unwitting subjects in the largest set of drug trials ever. Without our knowledge or consent, we are testing thousands of suspected toxic chemicals and compounds, as well as new substances whose safety is largely unproven and whose effects on human beings are all but unknown...

Tomgram: Todd Gitlin, The Tinsel Age of Journalism

Todd Gitlin — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 07:17:01 EDT

Everyone knows this story, though fewer and fewer read it on paper...

Tomgram: Engelhardt, Field of Nightmares

Tom Engelhardt — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 08:04:01 EDT

Chalmers Johnson was, you might say, our first blowback scholar. Now, more than a decade later, we have a book from our first blowback reporter. His name is Jeremy Scahill...

Tomgram: Michael Klare, The Coming Global Explosion

Michael Klare — Sun, 21 Apr 2013 16:33:01 EDT

Brace yourself. You may not be able to tell yet, but according to global experts and the U.S. intelligence community, the earth is already shifting under you. Whether you know it or not, you’re on a new planet, a resource-shock world of a sort humanity has never before experienced...

Tomgram: Erika Eichelberger, Your Home Is Your Abattoir

Erika Eichelberger — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 08:13:01 EDT

The danger out there is both more mundane and more terrible than you'd expect: you're more likely to be hurt or killed by someone you know or love. And you'll probably be at home when it happens.

Tomgram: Jeremiah Goulka, Shell Shock Lite

Jeremiah Goulka — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 08:13:01 EDT

The thing is: It doesn't take much to develop the symptoms of PTSD. Our idea of what used to be called "shell shock" tends to be limited to terrible battles, not just the daily stress of living in a war zone or surviving a couple of close calls. This is a story of how little it can take...

Tomgram: Engelhardt, The Cathedral of the Enemy

Tom Engelhardt — Sun, 14 Apr 2013 17:01:01 EDT

We constantly hear about “threats” to us and to the “homeland.” And yet, when you knock on the door marked “Enemy,” there’s seldom anyone home...

Tomgram: Mattea Kramer, A People's Budget for Tax Day

Mattea Kramer — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 08:09:01 EDT

Despite near-constant news about how polarized our nation is, a careful look at opinion polls indicates that a strong majority of Americans actually have a coherent to-do list for Washington: we want more jobs, smaller deficits, more education funding, reduced reliance on fossil fuels, higher taxes on the wealthiest, plus -- the kicker -- Medicare and Social Security benefits preserved...

Tomgram: Barbara Garson, Going Underwater in the Long Recession

Barbara Garson — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 08:33:01 EDT

If you had to date the Great Recession, you might say it started in September 2008 when Lehman Brothers vaporized over a weekend and a massive mortgage-based Ponzi scheme began to go down. By 2008, however, the majority of American workers had already endured a 40-year decline in wages, security, and hope -- a Long Recession of their own...

Tomgram: Bill McKibben, How Do You Solve a Problem Like the Democrats?

Bill McKibben — Sun, 07 Apr 2013 16:33:01 EDT

A few weeks ago, Time magazine called the fight over the Keystone XL pipeline that will bring some of the dirtiest energy on the planet from Alberta, Canada, to the U.S. Gulf Coast the “Selma and Stonewall” of the climate movement...

Tomgram: Steve Fraser, A Disaster for All Seasons

Steve Fraser — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 07:40:01 EDT

Neither the notion of a man-made nor natural disaster quite captures how the power of a few and the vulnerability of the many determine what is really going on at ground level...

Tomgram: Dilip Hiro, How the Pentagon Corrupted Afghanistan

Dilip Hiro — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 08:14:01 EDT

Washington has vociferously denounced Afghan corruption as a major obstacle to the U.S. mission in Afghanistan. But here's the single most important fact when it comes to Afghan corruption: that it’s Washington-based.

Tomgram: Ira Chernus, Obama's Risky Middle East Fantasy

Ira Chernus — Sun, 31 Mar 2013 17:13:01 EDT

Barack Obama came to Israel and Palestine, saw what he wanted to see, and conquered the mainstream media with his eloquent words...

Tomgram: Engelhardt, The 12th Anniversary of American Cowardice

Tom Engelhardt — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 08:11:01 EDT

It’s true that, last week, few in Congress cared to discuss, no less memorialize, the 10th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq...

Tomgram: Dahr Jamail, "My Children Have No Future"

Dahr Jamail — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 08:07:01 EDT

Back then, everybody was writing about Iraq, but it’s surprising how few Americans, including reporters, paid much attention to the suffering of Iraqis...

Tomgram: William Astore, Predatory Dreams

William Astore — Sun, 24 Mar 2013 16:26:01 EDT

Today’s unmanned aerial vehicles, most famously Predator and Reaper drones, have been celebrated as the culmination of the longtime dreams of airpower enthusiasts, offering the possibility of victory through quick, clean, and selective destruction...