Any truthful way to say it will sound worse than ghastly: We live in a world where one person could decide to begin a nuclear war – quickly killing several hundred million people and condemning vast numbers of others to slower painful deaths.Given the macabre insanity...
Is ‘Russiagate’ Collapsing as a Political Strategy?
The plan for Democrats to run against Russia may be falling apart.After squandering much of the last six months on faulting Russians for the horrific presidency of Donald Trump…After blaming America’s dire shortfalls of democracy on plutocrats in Russia more than on...
Dangerous Discourse: When Progressives Sound Like Demagogues
The Trump administration has already done enormous harm to the United States and the planet. Along the way, Trump has also caused many prominent progressives to degrade their own political discourse. It’s up to us to challenge the corrosive effects of routine...
Killer Drones in the Empire State: Norman Solomon
At dusk I stood on a residential street with trim lawns and watched planes approach a runaway along the other side of a chain-link fence. Just a few dozen yards away, a JetBlue airliner landed. Then a United plane followed. But the next aircraft looked different. It...
The Democratic Party’s Anti-Bernie Elites Have a Huge Stake in Blaming Russia
After Hillary Clinton’s devastating loss nearly six months ago, her most powerful Democratic allies feared losing control of the party. Efforts to lip-synch economic populism while remaining closely tied to Wall Street had led to a catastrophic defeat. In the...
Russia-Baiting Pushed Trump To Attack Syria – and Increases the Risks of Nuclear Annihilation
Vast efforts to portray Donald Trump as Vladimir Putin’s flunky have given Trump huge incentives to prove otherwise. Last Thursday, he began the process in a big way by ordering a missile attack on Russia’s close ally Syria. In the aftermath of the attack, the...
Is Rachel Maddow Becoming a Liberal Glenn Beck?
When Rachel Maddow finished a 26-minute monologue that spanned two segments on her MSNBC program last Thursday night, her grave tones indicated that she thought she’d just delivered a whale of a story. But actually it was more like minnow – and a specious one at...
Obama’s Speech, Translated Into Candor
Here is a condensed version of President Obama's speech from the Oval Office on Sunday night, unofficially translated into plain English: I kind of realize we can’t kill our way out of this conflict with ISIL, but in the short term hopefully we can kill our way out of...
The Digital Dog Ate Our Civil-Liberties Homework: ‘It’s Just the Way It Is’
Of all the excuses ladled out for the Obama administration's shredding of the Fourth Amendment while assaulting press freedom and prosecuting “national security” whistleblowers, none is more pernicious than the claim that technology is responsible. At first glance,...
America’s Post-9/11 Cassandras Are Still Ignored
Fourteen years later, the horrors of 9/11 continue with deadly ripple effects. American militarism has become the dominant position of U.S. foreign policy, while other options remain banished to the sidelines. Yet from the outset of the “war on terrorism,” some...