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Tomgram: Danny Sjursen, Buttering Up the Pentagon
Tomgram: Danny Sjursen, Buttering Up the Pentagon Recently, the Pentagon’s top Asia official, Randall Schriver, told senators that the Afghan war would cost this country’s taxpayers $45 billion in 2018, including $5 billion for the Afghan security forces, $13 billion for U.S. forces in that country, and $780 million in economic aid. How the other […]
The Strategy of Maximal Extraction
The Strategy of Maximal Extraction How Donald Trump Plans to Enlist Fossil Fuels in the Struggle for Global Dominance The new U.S. energy policy of the Trump era is, in some ways, the oldest energy policy on Earth. Every great power has sought to mobilize the energy resources at its command, whether those be slaves, […]
Tomgram: Nomi Prins, How to Set the Economy on Fire
Tomgram: Nomi Prins, How to Set the Economy on Fire There’s no way to measure just how cheery this period really is — not if you’re the CEO of a major company. Just as the World Economic Summit was opening in Davos, Switzerland, and President Donald Trump was flying in to put his mark on […]
Tomgram: Michael Klare, The Coming World of “Peak Oil Demand,” Not “Peak Oil”
Tomgram: Michael Klare, The Coming World of “Peak Oil Demand,” Not “Peak Oil” In a Greater Middle East in which one country after another has been plunged into chaos and possible failed statehood, two rival nations, Iran and Saudi Arabia, have been bedrock exceptions to the rule. Iran, at the moment, remains so, but the […]
Tomgram: William Hartung, What a Waste, the U.S. Military
Tomgram: William Hartung, What a Waste, the U.S. Military Late last year, I spent some time digging into the Pentagon’s “reconstruction” efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, countries it invaded in 2001 and 2003 in tandem with a chosen crew of warrior corporations. As a story of fabled American can-do in distant lands, both proved genuinely dismal no-can-do tales, […]
Tomgram: Dilip Hiro, Flashpoint for the Planet
Tomgram: Dilip Hiro, Flashpoint for the Planet Once upon a time, if a war was going to destroy your world, it had to take place in your world. The soldiers had to land, the planes had to fly overhead, the ships had to be off the coast. No longer. Nuclear war changed that equation forever and not […]
Tomgram: Gregory Foster, A Case for Demilitarizing the Military
Tomgram: Gregory Foster, A Case for Demilitarizing the Military General Lloyd Austin, the outgoing head of U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), recently testified before Congress, suggesting that Washington needed to up its troop levels in Iraq and Syria. Meanwhile, in his own congressional testimony, still-to-be-confirmed incoming CENTCOM chief General Joseph Votel, formerly head of U.S. Special Operations Command, […]
Energy Wars of Attrition: The Irony of Oil Abundance
Energy Wars of Attrition: The Irony of Oil Abundance Three and a half years ago, the International Energy Agency (IEA) triggered headlines around the world by predicting that the United States would overtake Saudi Arabia to become the world’s leading oil producer by 2020 and, together with Canada, would become a net exporter of oil around 2030. Overnight, […]
Tomgram: Engelhardt, The Disappointments of War in a World of Unintended Consequences
Tomgram: Engelhardt, The Disappointments of War in a World of Unintended Consequences War, What Is It Good For? Absolutely Nothing. And No Kidding, That’s the Literal Truth When It Comes to War, American-Style It may be hard to believe now, but in 1970 the protest song “War,” sung by Edwin Starr, hit number one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. […]
Tomgram: Bill McKibben, The Real Zombie Apocalypse
Tomgram: Bill McKibben, The Real Zombie Apocalypse Here we are just a couple of weeks into 2016 and we already know that last year was the second-warmest on record in the continental United States (the winner so far being 2012); the month of December was a U.S. record-breaker for heat and also precipitation; and it’s assumed that, when the […]
Tomgram: Rebecca Gordon, Corruption U.S.A.
Tomgram: Rebecca Gordon, Corruption U.S.A. I recently took a little trip into the past and deep into America’s distant war zones to write a piece I called “It’s a $cam.” It was, for me, an eye-opening journey into those long-gone years of American “nation-building” and “reconstruction” in Afghanistan and Iraq. Mind you, I still remembered […]
What’s Really At Stake At The Paris Climate Conference
What’s Really At Stake At The Paris Climate Conference At the end of November, delegations from nearly 200 countries will convene in Paris for what is billed as the most important climate meeting ever held. Officially known as the 21st Conference of the Parties (COP-21) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (the 1992 treaty that […]
Tomgram: William deBuys, Entering the Mega-Drought Era in America
Tomgram: William deBuys, Entering the Mega-Drought Era in America The other day here in New England it was chilly, rainy, and stormy and I complained. Where was the sun? The warmth? The summer? I happened to be with someone I know from California and he shook his head and said, “It’s fine with me. I […]
Big Oil in Retreat
Big Oil in Retreat On July 14, 2011, at TomDispatch, Bill McKibben wrote that he and a few other “veteran environmentalists” had issued a call for activists to descend on the White House and “risk arrest to demand something simple and concrete from President Obama: that he refuse to grant a license for Keystone XL, a new pipeline […]
Dirty Energy vs. Clean Power
Dirty Energy vs. Clean Power The Past Battles the Future at Seneca Lake Let’s amend the famous line from Joni Mitchell’s “Yellow Taxi” to fit this moment in the Finger Lakes region of New York State. There, Big Energy seems determined to turn paradise, if not into a parking lot, then into a massive storage […]
