Tomgram

I’ve been writing about climate change for so many years now but, in truth, it was always something I read about and took in globally. It was happening out there, often in horrific ways, but not what I felt I was living through myself. (It’s true that, in past winters, Manhattan’s Central Park went 653 days without producing an inch of snow, almost double any previous record, but if you’re not a kid with a sled in the closet, that’s the sort of thing you don’t really feel.) However, that’s begun to change. As it happens, like so many other New Yorkers, I only recently experienced a June heat dome over my city. Here in Manhattan, where I walk many... Read more

Source: The True Catastrophe of Our Times appeared first on TomDispatch.com.

Officials and election experts are now struggling in a big-time way. How, they wonder, can they effectively address mounting threats — of violence, election denialism, foreign influence, and voter discrimination? Do they run the risk of alarming the public to the point of reducing voter turnout? Are there reasons to assuage fears about either election disinformation or possible election interference in 2024? Standing in Pointe du Hoc, France, to mark the anniversary of D-Day, President Biden told the world that those who fought in that pivotal battle are “asking us to do our job: to protect freedom in our time, to defend democracy.” Election security would be a good place to start. Perhaps one way to assess the question of election... Read more

Source: An Election in Danger? appeared first on TomDispatch.com.

Venture capital and military startup firms in Silicon Valley have begun aggressively selling a version of automated warfare that will deeply incorporate artificial intelligence (AI). Those companies and their CEOs are now pressing full speed ahead with that emerging technology, largely dismissing the risk of malfunctions that could lead to the future slaughter of civilians, not to speak of the possibility of dangerous scenarios of escalation between major military powers. The reasons for this headlong rush include a misplaced faith in “miracle weapons,” but above all else, this surge of support for emerging military technologies is driven by the ultimate rationale of the military-industrial complex: vast sums of money to be made. The New Techno-Enthusiasts While some in the military... Read more

Walk through any art museum and you’re likely to see a mix of the classical and contemporary, impressionist and surrealist, refined and raw, beautiful, eerie, and provocative. Looking at art allows me at least a few moments of relief from the “that’s just the way it is” attitude of our hyper-consumerist, hyper-militarized, hyper-nihilist nation. I can step outside my day-to-day life and accept an invitation, however briefly, to boundlessness! I can experience invention, creation, and re-creation just moments apart. I can see everyday objects with new eyes as they’re repurposed and reframed in extraordinary ways. I can celebrate the relentless power of human vision and imagination. In a museum, I often find that I can actually breathe. The Lyman Allyn... Read more

Source: The Art of the Submarine appeared first on TomDispatch.com.

While April and May are usually the hottest months in many countries in Southeast Asia, hundreds of millions of people are now suffering in South Asia from an exceptionally intense heat wave that has killed hundreds. One expert has already called it the most extreme heat event in history. Record-breaking temperatures above 122º F were reported in the Indian capital of New Delhi and temperatures sizzled to an unheard of 127º F  in parts of India and Pakistan. Nor was the blazing heat limited to Asia. Heat waves of exceptional severity and duration are now occurring simultaneously in many areas of the world. Mexico and parts of the United States, notably Miami and Phoenix, have recently been in the grip of... Read more

Source: A National Climate Action Plan appeared first on TomDispatch.com.

Recently, I attended a demonstration called by groups opposing the carnage in Gaza, where eight months of air, ground, and sea attacks by the Israeli Defense Forces have leveled entire quadrants of cities and killed more than 36,000 Palestinians. Many of the participants, justly outraged by the ongoing mass murder triggered by Hamas’s October 7th terrorist massacre, bitterly criticized President Biden over his continuing support for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s war. Asked about the likely choice in November between Biden and Donald Trump, the consensus among the demonstrators was that they wouldn’t vote for “Genocide Joe,” and that there was nothing to choose from between Biden and Trump when it comes to Middle East policy. Some would simply stay home,... Read more

Source: Trump or Biden on Israel? appeared first on TomDispatch.com.

The odds are that the entire continental United States will swelter through a hotter-than-normal summer this year. And no surprise there. It seems as if that’s been the forecast every spring for years now. But this summer promises to eclipse even the summer of 2023, which, in the Northern Hemisphere, was the hottest since at least the year 1 AD, according to tree-ring analysis. You read that correctly: this summer may be hotter than any summer in the last 2,024 years (and undoubtedly many tens of thousands before that, since tree rings can take the data back only so far). The world’s hot future has already arrived in parts of the Global South, thanks largely to past greenhouse gas emissions... Read more

Source: Air Conditioning appeared first on TomDispatch.com.

A few days ago, my partner and I went in search of packing tape. Our sojourn on an idyllic (if tick-infested) Cape Cod island was ending and it was time to ship some stuff home. We stopped at a little odds-and-ends shop and found ourselves in conversation with the woman behind the counter. She was born in Panama, where her father had served as chief engineer operating tugboats in the Panama Canal. As a child, she remembered celebrating her birthday with a trip on a tug from the Atlantic to the Pacific oceans, sailing under an arch of water produced by fireboats on either side. “But that all ended,” she said, “with the invasion. It was terrifying. They were bombing... Read more

Source: What Did We Know appeared first on TomDispatch.com.

On a warm evening almost a decade ago, I sat under the stars with Daniel Ellsberg while he talked about nuclear war with alarming intensity. He was most of the way through writing his last and most important book, The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner. Somehow, he had set aside the denial so many people rely on to cope with a world that could suddenly end in unimaginable horror. Listening, I felt more and more frightened. Dan knew what he was talking about. After working inside this country’s doomsday machinery, even drafting nuclear war plans for the Pentagon during President John F. Kennedy’s administration, Dan Ellsberg had gained intricate perspectives on what greased the bureaucratic wheels, personal... Read more

As a late-stage baby boomer, a child of the 1960s, I grew up dreaming about America’s nuclear triad. You may remember that it consisted of strategic bombers like the B-52 Stratofortress, land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) like the Minuteman, and submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) like the Poseidon, all delivery systems for what we then called “the Bomb.” I took it for granted that we needed all three “legs” — yes, that was also the term of the time — of that triad to ward off the Soviet Union (aka the “evil empire”). It took me some time to realize that the triad was anything but the trinity, that it was instead a product of historical contingency. Certainly, my mind was... Read more

Source: The Triad Is Not the Trinity appeared first on TomDispatch.com.