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[l] at 3/28/24 7:34am
With his perfect tan and slicked-back hair, California Governor Gavin Newsom stood at a podium at Sacramento’s Cal Expo in late September 2020 and announced an executive order requiring all new passenger vehicles sold in the state to be zero-emissions by 2035. With the global Covid pandemic then at its height, Newsom was struggling to inject a bit of hope into the future, emphasizing that his order would prove a crucial step in the fight against climate change while serving as a major boon to the states economy. Later approved by the California Air Resources Board, his order is now being reviewed by the Environmental Protection Agency. For his part, President Biden has moved to tighten regulations on tailpipe exhaust,... Read more Source: Of Life and Lithium appeared first on TomDispatch.com.

[Category: Tomgram]

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[l] at 3/26/24 7:36am
The White House released its budget proposal for Fiscal Year 2025 on March 11th, and the news was depressingly familiar: $895 billion for the Pentagon and work on nuclear weapons at the Department of Energy. After adjusting for inflation, thats only slightly less than last year’s proposal, but far higher than the levels reached during either the Korean or Vietnam wars or at the height of the Cold War. And that figure doesn’t even include related spending on veterans, the Department of Homeland Security, or the additional tens of billions of dollars in emergency military spending likely to come later this year.One thing is all too obvious: a trillion-dollar budget for the Pentagon alone is right around the corner, at... Read more Source: Spending Unlimited appeared first on TomDispatch.com.

[Category: Tomgram]

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[l] at 3/24/24 3:28pm
Ive been describing this world of ours, such as it is, for almost 23 years at TomDispatch. Ive written my way through three-and-a-half presidencies god save us, it could be four in November! Ive viewed from a grave (and I mean that word!) distance Americas endlessly disastrous wars of this century. Ive watched the latest military budget hit almost $900 billion, undoubtedly on its way toward a cool trillion in the years to come, while years ago the whole national security budget (though insecurity would be a better word) soared to well over the trillion-dollar mark. Ive lived my whole life in an imperial power. Once, in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, it... Read more Source: A Slow-Motion World War III? appeared first on TomDispatch.com.

[Category: Tomgram]

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[l] at 3/21/24 7:32am
We should already be talking about what it would be like, if Donald Trump wins the 2024 election, to live under a developing autocracy. Beyond the publicized plans of those around him to gut the federal civil service system and consolidate power in the hands of You Know Who, under Trump 2.0, so much else would change for the worse. All too many of us who now argue about the Ukraine and Gaza wars and their ensuing humanitarian crises, about police violence and extremism in the military here at home, about all sorts of things, would no longer share a common language. Basics that once might have meant the same thing to you and me, like claiming someone won an... Read more Source: If America Were a Trumpian Autocracy appeared first on TomDispatch.com.

[Category: Tomgram]

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[l] at 3/19/24 7:30am
It’s been almost two months since the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to stop killing Gazans and destroying their means of subsistence. So let’s look back and ask (1) how Israel has responded to its orders, and (2) how hard the Biden administration has pushed Israel to abide by those orders. Spoiler alert: the short answers are (1) not well and (2) not very. The American government has provided most of the armaments and targeting technologies being used to kill Gazans by the thousands while turning many of the rest of them into refugees by destroying their homes, offices, schools, and hospitals. Nor did the Biden administration threaten to withdraw that support when Israel blocked shipments of crucial food... Read more Source: Armed by Washington, Israel Trashes the Genocide Convention appeared first on TomDispatch.com.

[Category: Tomgram]

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[l] at 3/17/24 3:59pm
In an age when American presidents routinely boast of having the world’s finest military, where nearly trillion-dollar war budgets are now a new version of routine, let me bring up one vitally important but seldom mentioned fact: making major cuts to military spending would increase U.S. national security. Why?Because real national security can neither be measured nor safeguarded solely by military power (especially the might of a military that hasnt won a major war since 1945).Economic vitality matters so much more, as does the availability and affordability of health care, education, housing, and other crucial aspects of life unrelated to weaponry and war.Add to that the importance of a Congress responsive to the needs of the working poor, the hungry... Read more Source: Daring to Look a Sacred Cow in the Teeth appeared first on TomDispatch.com.

[Category: Tomgram]

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[l] at 3/14/24 7:30am
Recently my partner and I had brunch with some old comrades, folks I first met in the 1996 fight to stop the state of California from outlawing affirmative action. Sadly, we lost that one and, almost three decades later, we continue to lose affirmative action programs thanks to a Supreme Court rearranged or, more accurately, deranged by one Donald J. Trump. It was pure joy to hang out with them and remember that political struggle during which, as my partner and I like to say, we taught a generation of young people to ask, “Can you kick in a dollar to help with the campaign?” For a couple of old white lesbians who, in the words of a beloved Catherine... Read more Source: Trump Showed Us Who He Is the First Time Around appeared first on TomDispatch.com.

[Category: Tomgram]

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[l] at 3/12/24 7:32am
Empires don’t just fall like toppled trees. Instead, they weaken slowly as a succession of crises drain their strength and confidence until they suddenly begin to disintegrate. So it was with the British, French, and Soviet empires; so it now is with imperial America. Great Britain confronted serious colonial crises in India, Iran, and Palestine before plunging headlong into the Suez Canal and imperial collapse in 1956. In the later years of the Cold War, the Soviet Union faced its own challenges in Czechoslovakia, Egypt, and Ethiopia before crashing into a brick wall in its war in Afghanistan. America’s post-Cold War victory lap suffered its own crisis early in this century with disastrous invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Now, looming... Read more Source: The American Empire in (Ultimate?) Crisis appeared first on TomDispatch.com.

[Category: Tomgram]

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[l] at 3/10/24 3:32pm
The slang definition of “unwinding” means to chill. Other definitions include: to relax, disentangle, undo all words that, on the surface, appear both passive and peaceful. And yet in Google searches involving such seemingly harmless definitions of decompressing and resting, news articles abound about the end of pandemic-era Medicaid expansion programs a topic that, for the millions of people now without healthcare insurance, is anything but relaxing. Imagine this: since March 2023, 16 million Americans yes, thats right, 16 million have lost healthcare coverage, including four million children, as states redefine eligibility for Medicaid for the first time in three years. Worse yet, the nation is only halfway through the largest purge ever of Medicaid as... Read more Source: The Great Unwinding appeared first on TomDispatch.com.

[Category: Tomgram]

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[l] at 3/7/24 7:30am
War, what is it good for?Well, the media for starters. Shortly after the Biden administration responded to the killing of three American soldiers in a drone attack on a base in Jordan by bombing 85 Iran-connected targets in Iraq and Syria, the Columbia Journalism Review (CJR) asked in a headline: “Is the press dragging America to war again?” Again? I thought. Shouldn’t that be still? That headline was on a recent Media Today newsletter by Jon Allsop who regularly covers what could be considered the favorite topic of journalists: themselves. He was mulling over media criticism of how the government had (or hadnt) disclosed information about that just-launched bombing campaign, as well as its goals, while considering the accusation that... Read more Source: Is There a Journalism That Doesn’t Love a War? appeared first on TomDispatch.com.

[Category: Tomgram]

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[l] at 3/5/24 7:37am
On this planet of ours, it almost doesnt matter whos right and whos wrong when it comes to our wars. Actually, let me correct that thought slightly: it certainly does matter, but what matters so much more is that we humans simply cant stop fighting them. That is (or at least should be) a stunning and deeply saddening reality. What obvious lessons we seem congenitally incapable of learning! In the previous century, after all, there were two truly global wars, World War I and World War II, that were estimated to have left significantly more than 100 million military personnel and civilians dead, while decimating parts of the planet. The second of those conflicts ended with the obliteration of the... Read more Source: Living on the Wrong World appeared first on TomDispatch.com.

[Category: Tomgram]

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[l] at 3/3/24 3:01pm
In the midst of Israels ongoing devastation of Gaza, one major piece of Middle Eastern news has yet to hit the headlines. In a face-off that, in a sense, has lasted since the pro-American Shah of Iran was overthrown by theocratic clerics in 1979, Iran finally seems to be besting the United States in a significant fashion across the region. Its a story that needs to be told. “Hit Iran now. Hit them hard” was typical advice offered by Republican Senator Lindsey Graham after a drone flown by an Iran-aligned Iraqi Shiite militia killed three American servicemen in northern Jordan on January 28th. The well-heeled Iran War Lobby in Washington has, in fact, been stridently calling for nothing short of... Read more Source: Is Tehran Winning the Middle East? appeared first on TomDispatch.com.

[Category: Tomgram]

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[l] at 2/29/24 7:30am
In 1868, British Prime Minister William Gladstone famously said, “Justice delayed is justice denied.” The phrase has often been repeated here in the United States, most famously by the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., who echoed it in his 1963 Letter from a Birmingham Jail”: “Justice too long delayed is justice denied.” Sadly enough, justice delayed (and possibly denied) is once again front and center in America as we face the specter of Donald Trump and his insistence on eternally evading the reach of the law. Whats at stake isnt just the fate of the former president, but an essential aspect of democracy. The Georgia Case Recently, the country was privy to attempts by Donald Trump’s lawyers to delay, if... Read more Source: Trumps Justice appeared first on TomDispatch.com.

[Category: Tomgram]

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[l] at 2/27/24 7:26am
We Americans have been at war now since October 7th, 2001. That was when our military first launched air strikes against the Taliban in Afghanistan in response to al-Qaedas September 11th terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, D.C. Thats 22 years and counting. The war on terror that began then would forever change what it meant to be an Arab-American here at home, while ending the lives of more than 400,000 civilians and still counting! in South Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. In the days after those September 11th attacks, the U.S. would enjoy the goodwill and support of countries around the world. Only in March 2003, with our invasion of Saddam Husseins Iraq, would much... Read more Source: The October 7th America Has Forgotten appeared first on TomDispatch.com.

[Category: Tomgram]

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[l] at 2/25/24 3:36pm
Joe Biden wants you to believe that spending money on weapons is good for the economy. That tired old myth regularly repeated by the political leaders of both parties could help create an even more militarized economy that could threaten our peace and prosperity for decades to come. Any short-term gains from pumping in more arms spending will be more than offset by the long-term damage caused by crowding out new industries and innovations, while vacuuming up funds needed to address other urgent national priorities. The Biden administration’s sales pitch for the purported benefits of military outlays began in earnest last October, when the president gave a rare Oval Office address to promote a $106-billion emergency allocation that... Read more Source: War Is Bad for You And the Economy appeared first on TomDispatch.com.

[Category: Tomgram]

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[l] at 2/22/24 7:33am
Long ago, I came to believe that being a Jew, even a secular one like me, entailed certain responsibilities. A people who had suffered so much yet survived were obligated, if not honored, to serve as witnesses and supporters of other oppressed people and to live in the public interest, to model ethical lives. Albert Einstein, Jonas Salk, and Sandy Koufax all made me proud, while I felt ashamed of Roy Cohn, Alan Dershowitz, and Henry Kissinger. I never reached such lofty, self-righteous, or even chauvinistic heights or depths, but such figures, positive and negative, offered a comforting structure for my casual, shallow life as a Jew. I rarely observed high holy days. My children were neither bar nor bat... Read more Source: I’m Heartbroken by the War in Israel appeared first on TomDispatch.com.

[Category: Tomgram]

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[l] at 2/20/24 7:38am
Yes, its already time to be worried very worried. As the wars in Ukraine and Gaza have shown, the earliest drone equivalents of “killer robots” have made it onto the battlefield and proved to be devastating weapons. But at least they remain largely under human control. Imagine, for a moment, a world of war in which those aerial drones (or their ground and sea equivalents) controlled us, rather than vice-versa. Then we would be on a destructively different planet in a fashion that might seem almost unimaginable today. Sadly, though, its anything but unimaginable, given the work on artificial intelligence (AI) and robot weaponry that the major powers have already begun. Now, let me take you into that arcane... Read more Source: “Emergent” AI Behavior and Human Destiny appeared first on TomDispatch.com.

[Category: Tomgram]

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[l] at 2/18/24 3:28pm
We live in a world of dangerous, deadly extremes. Record-breaking heat waves, intense drought, stronger hurricanes, unprecedented flash flooding. No corner of the planet will be spared the wrath of human-caused climate change and the earths fresh water is already feeling the heat of this new reality. More than half of the world’s lakes and two-thirds of its rivers are drying up, threatening ecosystems, farmland, and drinking water supplies. Such diminishing resources are also likely to lead to conflict and even, potentially, all-out war. “Competition over limited water resources is one of the main concerns for the coming decades,” warned a study published in Global Environmental Change in 2018. “Although water issues alone have not been the sole trigger for... Read more Source: Dam, Dam, Dam! appeared first on TomDispatch.com.

[Category: Tomgram]

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[l] at 2/15/24 7:31am
Like many American boys of the baby-boomer generation, I played “war” with those old, olive-drab, plastic toy soldiers meant to evoke our great victory over the Nazis and “the Japs” during World War II. At age 10, I also kept a scrapbook of the 1973 Yom Kippur War between Israel and its various Arab enemies in the Middle East. It was, I suppose, an early sign that I would make both the military and the study of history into careers. I recall rooting for the Israelis, advertised then as crucial American allies, against Egypt, Syria, and other regional enemies at least ostensibly allied with the Soviet Union in that Cold War era. I bought the prevailing narrative of a David-versus-Goliath... Read more Source: Bombing Muslims for Peace appeared first on TomDispatch.com.

[Category: Tomgram]

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[l] at 2/13/24 7:26am
When the Civil War ended in 1865, the 76-year-old Constitution needed an upgrading and those leading the country did indeed dramatically transform it with the passage of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, known collectively as the Reconstruction Era amendments. The 13th (1865) abolished slavery, while the 15th (1870) gave voting rights to newly freed Black men. However, it was the 14th Amendment, first drafted in 1866 and ratified in 1868, that would prove the most far-reaching and that today sits all too squarely between Donald Trump and his white nationalist and authoritarian dreams. While much attention has been rightfully focused on its “insurrection” clause (Section 3) and whether, thanks to it, Trump should be allowed to hold office, given... Read more Source: Throwing Out the Constitution appeared first on TomDispatch.com.

[Category: Tomgram]

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[l] at 2/11/24 2:48pm
When my mother died in 2000, I inherited all her books. Sadly, after several moves and downsizings over the decades, her collection had shrunk. Still, it remains considerable and impressive in its own way. Her legacy to me included some special volumes like a first edition of Frederick W. Taylor’s The Principles of Scientific Management, a famed codification of time-management practices and an origin point for concepts that helped shape work in the last century and this one, too. Oh, and there’s also a first American edition of E.M. Forster’s novel Howards End. On the flyleaf, she inscribed this note: “Stolen by Suzanne Gordon.” As the bookplate on the cover’s interior indicates, it was indeed stolen from (or at... Read more Source: Banning What Matters appeared first on TomDispatch.com.

[Category: Tomgram]

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