Lethality Beyond the Pale
by Nick Turse
via Tom Dispatch
In those first minutes, they’ll be stunned. Eyes fixed in a thousand-yard stare, nerve endings numbed. They’ll just stand there. Soon, you’ll notice that they are holding their arms out at a 45-degree angle. Your eyes will be drawn to their hands and [...]
From Walking Libraries and a God Named “Word” to What Sherlock Holmes Never Said
via Tom Dispatch
[The following passages are excerpted from Eduardo Galeano’s new book, Children of the Days: A Calendar of Human History (Nation Books).]
Memory on Legs
(January 3)
On the third day of the [...]
Jeremy Scahill, Blowback Reporter
by Tom Engelhardt
via Tom Dispatch
Chalmers Johnson’s book Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire was published in March 2000 — and just about no one noticed. Until then, blowback had been an obscure term of CIA tradecraft, which Johnson defined as “the unintended consequences of policies [...]
Iraq, 10 Years Later
by Dahr Jamail
via Tom Dispatch
Back then, everybody was writing about Iraq, but it’s surprising how few Americans, including reporters, paid much attention to the suffering of Iraqis. Today, Iraq is in the news again. The words, the memorials, the retrospectives are pouring out, and again [...]
The Ever-Destructive Dreams of Air Power Enthusiasts
by William Astore
via Tom Dispatch
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. Those drones, so the (very old) [...]
The Trillion-Dollar Concept That No One Can Define
by Mattea Kramer and Chris Hellman
via Tom Dispatch
Imagine a labyrinthine government department so bloated that few have any clear idea of just what its countless pieces do. Imagine that tens of billions of tax dollars are disappearing into it annually, black hole-style, since it can’t pass a [...]
Waterboarding Americans and the Redefinition of Torture
by Nick Turse
via Tom Dispatch
Try to remain calm — even as you begin to feel your chest tighten and your heart race. Try not to panic as water starts flowing into your nose and mouth, while you attempt [...]
A New Book Transforms Our Understanding of What the Vietnam War Actually Was
via Tom Dispatch
For half a century we have been arguing about “the Vietnam War.” Is it possible that we didn’t know what we were talking about? After all that has been written (some 30,000 [...]
On January 11th, 11 years to the day after the Bush administration opened itsnotorious prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Zero Dark Thirty, Kathryn Bigelow’s deeply flawed movie about the hunt for Osama bin Laden, opens nationwide. The filmmakers and distributors are evidently ignorant of [...]
Posted by Ira Chernus at 9:24am, December 20, 2012.
via Tom Dispatch
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[Note for TomDispatch Readers: Once again, many thanks to all of you who contributed to our year-end funding drive. In the last couple of weeks, amazingly enough, contributions have come in from 39 states and 11 other [...]
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- Cartoons Lead the Way From Humour to Dialogue
- Wave of Protests Against Malaysian Election Results
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