Category: Analysis

What Will It Take…

KATHY KELLY – After the onset of COVID-19, Secretary General of the UN, Antonio Guterres, had this message for the world: “The fury of the virus illustrates the folly of war. It is time to put armed conflict on lockdown….. Put aside mistrust and animosity. Silence the guns; stop the artillery; end the airstrikes. End the sickness of war and fight the disease that is ravaging our world. That is what our human family needs, now more than ever.”

The Four Horsemen of the Modern Apocalypse

ANDREW MOSS – Albrecht Durer’s woodcut, “The Four Horsemen” (1498), which represents scripture’s Four Horsemen — conquest, war and violence, famine, and death, continues to startle, displaying the horsemen’s combined energies, and inspires thought about the collective energies of our own apocalyptic horsemen: economic oppression, racism, militarism, and environmental injustice.

Can We Achieve Nuclear Adulthood?

ROBERT kOEHLER – In the linear world of geopolitics, militarism and mysteriously determined “national interest” rule and security means — though it is never put this way — playing games with Armageddon. This is called realism. And those who claim to be realists never — ever, ever — allow a word like “disarmament” into the conversation, much less into the realm of political choice.

Coronavirus Makes Clear Why Bioweapons Must Be Renounced

KARY LOVE – It is curious that today the USA has engaged in a great deal of research and development of germ warfare weapons. As reported in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists the USA has an unknown number of bioweapons capable labs, run in an apparently haphazard fashion, with a history of error, and is building more. We must put an end to this practice.

After this Pandemic Passes, America Needs a Reckoning with its National Security

KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL – After this pandemic passes, there must be a profound reckoning. I’m not referring to President Trump’s abysmal performance in the crisis; the election in November will render citizens’ judgment on that. No, there must be a reckoning with the profound failure of the United States’ domestic and foreign policies and priorities, a failure that was apparent even before covid-19 revealed the catastrophic bankruptcy of our national security strategy.

A Tale of Two Stockpiles

BRIAN TERRELL – “I am convinced that if we are to get on to the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values,” said Dr. King. 52 years later, our very existence as a species is at risk and the radical revolution of values that he preached is our best hope.

Prophetic Voice Urges World to Change Its Ways

MIKE FERNER – We are constantly told to thank “the troops” for their service, no matter how problematic their actions. But what about all the people who serve but who don’t put on fatigues and carry guns — nurses, doctors, teachers, bus drivers, postal workers and grocery stockers among others? During this pandemic, they are the ones keeping us alive and helping make sure society functions while the rest of us shelter in place. If we emerge from this pandemic with a very different idea of whom we should be grateful to for their service, we will be the better for it.

Power in a Time of Coronavirus

NORMAN SOLOMON – Every day now we’re waking up into an extreme real-life nightmare, while responses are still routinely lagging far behind what’s at stake. Urgency is reality. The horrific momentum of the coronavirus is personal, social and political. In those realms, a baseline formula is “passivity = death.” The imperative is to do vastly better.

Sanctions Against Iran Worsen a Bad Situation, Threaten Everyone

KATHY KELLY – U.S. sanctions against Iran, cruelly strengthened in March of 2018, continue a collective punishment of extremely vulnerable people. Presently, the U.S. “maximum pressure” policy severely undermines Iranian efforts to cope with the ravages of COVID-19, causing hardship and tragedy while contributing to the global spread of the pandemic. On March 12, 2020, Iran’s Foreign Minister Jawad Zarif urged member states of the UN to end the United States’ unconscionable and lethal economic warfare.

An American Living in Russia Comments on Putin’s Recent Speech

HAL FREEMAN – On January 15, 2020 Vladimir Putin delivered a speech to the Federal Assembly that attracted quite a bit of attention. I was reluctant to write a blog on it. There were many articles that appeared in English which focused on the speech. Yet, the vast majority misrepresented what Putin actually said while missing the speech’s very important main topics.

Real Conservatives Don’t Try to Dictate Their Religion

BOB TOPPER – The religious right has changed what it means to be a conservative. And the religious right seems hell-bent on dictating “their moral convictions to all Americans in the name of ‘conservatism,’” as they try to rewrite American history, and change the meaning of the Constitution. Should they succeed, it will be sad day for everyone,…Christians included.

What if the Media Stopped Giving War a Moral Pass?

ROBERT C. KOEHLER – When the mainstream media writes about war, even critically, the image that often comes to mind for me is an infant wrapped in plastic. That infant is naked reality, a.k.a., the present moment, suffocating and screaming for its life; the plastics smothering it are the journalistic euphemisms by which murder and terrorism turn into abstract acts of national necessity.

Fouling Our Own Nest & Draining Our Wallets: It’s Time to Divest from Endless Wars

GRETA ZARRO – Just one month into a new decade, we face an ever-increasing risk of nuclear apocalypse. The U.S. government’s assassination of Iranian General Soleimani on January 3 intensified the very real threat of another all-out war in the Middle East. On January 23, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists accordingly reset the Doomsday Clock to just 100 short seconds to midnight, apocalypse. Where do we go from here?

Trump’s Latest Depredation: Increase Environmental Poisoning

LESLIE GREGORY and DR. TOM H. HASTINGS – Did Trump say out loud, “I’m going to gut the original environmental law of the US and it will affect everyone’s health negatively but the health of black and brown people the most?” Of course not. But that is exactly what is afoot with his intention to roll back major portions of the 1969 germinal environmental law—the National Environmental Protection Act—the original law upon which all such important protections are built.

U.S. Killing of Iranian Leader Threatens Devastating War

MATTHEW HOH – The United States killed Iranian Quds Forces Commander General Qassam Soleimani. There is no hyperbole or exaggeration too great to encapsulate what may befall tens of millions of families. The equivalent of the killing of General Soleimani would be as if the Iranians assassinated General Richard Clarke, the US four-star general in charge of all US special operations, but only if General Clarke had the name recognition of Colin Powell and the competency of Dwight Eisenhower.

The Great American Shakedown

CHRIS HEDGES – There is zero chance Trump will be removed from office in a trial in the Senate. The Democratic Party elites have admitted as much. They carried out, they argue, their civic and constitutional duty. But here again they lie. They picked out what was convenient to impeach Trump and left untouched the rotten system they helped create. The divisions among Americans will only widen. The hatreds will only grow. And tyranny will wrap its deadly tentacles around our throats.

Another Trump Crime: Zealots in High Office

JAMES A. HAUGHT – Back in 2003, in a top-secret international phone call, President George W. Bush urged French President Jacques Chirac to join America in invading Iraq on grounds that Christian nations must thwart the Satanic forces of Gog and Magog. Chirac was baffled by such crackpottery. A few French newspapers wrote derisive sneers about the born-again U.S. leader. Today, it’s déjà vu all over again. Religious kooks in high office are an absurd facet of the Republican Trump administration.

American Exceptionalism Is Killing The Planet

WILLIAM J. ASTORE – Ever since 2007, when I first started writing for TomDispatch, I’ve been arguing against America’s forever wars, whether in Afghanistan, Iraq, or elsewhere. Unfortunately, it’s no surprise that, despite my more than 60 articles, American blood is still being spilled in war after war across the Greater Middle East and Africa, even as foreign peoples pay a far higher price in lives lost and cities ruined. And I keep asking myself: Why, in this century, is the distinctive feature of America’s wars that they never end? Why do our leaders persist in such repetitive folly and the seemingly eternal disasters that go with it?