Military/Militarism

This week on “It’s the end of the World as We know it and I feel fine” we bring you a round up of news from the muthafrackin resistance. Starting with the shooting of three cops from the Canadian Mounted po-po and a look at its colonial history. Followed up by the FIFA world cup riots, the successful defense of Can Vies, an anarchist social space in Barcelona. And wrapping it up with the resignation of Subcomandante Marcos from the Zapatista Army of National Liberation.

On May 2014 President Obama delivered the commencement address to the graduates of United States Military Academy at West Point. Beyond the easy banter and eulogy to past and present war heroes, Obama outlined a vision of past military successes and present policies, based on a profoundly misleading diagnosis of the current global position of the United States.

One day while Alice is winding up a ball of wool that Kitty persists in undoing, she gets it into her head that there must be a world behind the looking glass (mirror) where everything is backward. Suddenly, she finds herself up on the mantelpiece staring into the looking glass. Then she walks through to the reality on the other side to find a world that is set up like a chessboard and chess pieces are animated human-like creatures. The reflected reality is the opposite of real reality. Time goes backwards.

Well, this will be quick and, of course not, painless. I’ve been contending with this sort of deluded idea about America, or the States United, or whatever the hell you want to call this country of collective mass amnesia and mollification of facts, history.
I’m not trying to be snarky here, as the mainstream press seems to call anyone and his brother who might be questioning the values (sic) of our foreign and domestic policies. Snarky as in Glenn Greenwald, James Howard Kunstler, Rachel Carson, what have you.

Next time you hear federal officials say that there is no money to repair or build necessary public facilities in your community, ask them why there always seems to be money to greatly overpay for government projects that are routinely outsourced to corporate contractors.

Irrespective of how one feels about the direction taken by various Arab revolutions in the last three years, a few facts remain incontestable. Arab revolts began in the streets of poor, despairing Arab cities, and Arabs had every right to rebel considering the dismal state of affairs in which they live.

The Left Forum’s tenth annual conference was held this year at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, part of the City University of New York. Left Forum describes itself as “convening “the largest annual conference of a broad spectrum of left and progressive intellectuals, activists, academics, organizations and the interested public.”

The Howard P. “Buck” McKeon National Defense Authorization Act for FY 2015 (Defense Authorization Act) should be renamed the Howard P. “Buck” McKeon Global Manifest Destiny Act of FY2015. The Defense Authorization Act reads like something that the Biffer-Baum Birds in Dr. Seuss’ Sleep Book might have written. And the image that most accurately depicts the collective efforts of President Obama, the Pentagon and the US Congress in the design of American national security strategy is Dr.

In a speech by the President of the United States of America – read by millions in all corners of our world in minutes – rest assured that every single word has been weighed with utmost care.
With this in mind, Obama’s speech can be analysed as both offending to the rest of us and – exceptionally – weak.
It caused no enthusiasm among the future army officers he spoke to and no enthusiasm among leading Western media.
I will argue that:
• Intellectually and morally the speech doesn’t have the basics – full of contradictions and imbued with unbearable self-praise.

Mark Landler’s “US Troops to Leave Afghanistan by End of 2016” was the lead story in the New York Times on Wednesday, May 28. Landler reports President Obama’s decision to reduce troop levels from the present 32,000 to 9,800 by the end of 2014 to half that by the end of 2015 to “a vestigial force” by the end of 2016.