Military/Militarism

Maybe the empire thought that we would not honor our word when, during days of uncertainty in the past century, we affirmed that even if the USSR were to disappear Cuba would continue struggling. World War II broke out on September 1, 1939 when Nazi-fascist troops invaded Poland and struck like a lightning over the heroic people of the USSR, who contributed 27 million lives to preserve mankind from that brutal massacre that ended the lives of 50 million persons.

It’s the 25th, and I am thinking about my buddy Jacob. He’s 25, riddled with PTSD, Battle of Fallujah, Marines, young spirited, radicalized at boot camp and then in country. It was a big scam, but one that ate at his heart. Scam, lie, bullshit war, and now, another year goes by, and the Gitmo madness of our cognitively sapped politicians, intellectuals, rot-gut CEOs and media moguls.

Following the Vietnam War, US imperial intervention passed through several phases: In the immediate aftermath, the US government faced a humiliating military defeat at the hands of the Vietnamese liberation forces and was under pressure from an American public sick and tired of war.Imperial military interventions, domestic espionage against opponents and usual practice of fomenting coups d’état (regime change) declined.

One thought alone preoccupies the submerged mind of Empire: how not to end, how not to die, how to prolong its era. By day it pursues its enemies. It is cunning and ruthless, it sends its bloodhounds everywhere. By night it feeds on images of disaster: the sack of cities, the rape of populations, pyramids of bones, acres of desolation.
― J.M. Coetzee, Waiting for the Barbarians

On December 17, 2013, the ambassador of Saudi Arabia to Great Britain published an op-ed in the New York Times accusing the West of not having confronted Syria and Iran head-on. An ambassador is traditionally the mouthpiece of his government.

Precaution. Stop shifting the baseline. Stop mucking around because you have no common sense but plenty of computer engineering ADD-ADHD or what have you, on that autism spectrum. What have you, stop enlisting these money changers and game changers to define community.

“…the ones who call the shots (in war) won’t be among the dead and lame
And on each end of the rifle we’re the same”
— John McCutcheon
Ninety-nine years ago this month one of the most unusual aberrations in the bloody history of warfare – never allowed to be repeated again – occurred. Europe was in the fifth month of the 52 month-long World War (the one that was supposed “to end all wars”) that was to end with the armistice four years later on November 11, 1918.

It is now more evident than ever before that Qatar is playing a vital role in stoking up the chaos which is tearing Syria apart.
Informed sources have recently exposed that in the heart of Doha stand centers for training assassins of different nationalities who are dispatched to Syria to fight against the government of Bashar al-Assad. These would-be assassins are subjected to heavy military training as well as Wahhabi teachings.

Thanks to the East Bay Express and editor Jay Youngdahl for supporting Dissident Voice and allowing us to re-post his piece on the Bay Area. In fact, San Francisco is Seattle is Portland is Phoenix is, well, you get the picture, no?
We had it here, at DV — “Collective Stockholm Syndrome . . . “

Thirteen-year-old Andy Lopez was killed by sheriff’s deputy Erick Gelhaus on October 22, as the boy walked home in his Latino neighborhood in Santa Rosa, California. The Iraq War veteran claims he mistook the eighth-grader’s toy rifle for a real one.