Why do we build monuments to war rather than to its absence?
I wondered about this when reading about a recent tussle in the nation’s capital over the location for yet another celebration of people killing each other.
After the 1999 school massacre in Columbine, Colorado – an exurbia community – by two disaffected teenage boys (who also killed themselves), I came to the conclusion that the killers’ “motive” was not at all a purposeful urge, goal, revenge or obsession, but instead a complete self-abandonment into nihilism – a giving up – and the horrible eruption of that destructive nihilism was a symptom of those boys’ lack of culture – an abysmal lack of culture. I see the same about Stephen Paddock, the shooter in Las Vegas; his fury to kill emerged out of a profound lack of culture.
Throughout the world, on any given day, a man, woman or child is likely to be displaced, tortured, killed or ‘disappeared’ … More often than not, the United States shares the blame.
— Amnesty International, 1996.
As the Tories plot to get rid of Prime Minister Theresa May, John Pilger analyses the alternative Labour Party, specifically its foreign policy, which may not be what it seems.
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Delegates to the recent Labour Party conference in the English seaside town of Brighton seemed not to notice a video playing in the main entrance. The world’s third biggest arms manufacturer, BAe Systems, supplier to Saudi Arabia, was promoting its guns, bombs, missiles, naval ships and fighter aircraft.
Recently, mass media is actively emerging new evidence of cooperation between the U.S. and ISIS terrorists.
This time, Warfare Worldwide organization tweeted a video, where an ISIS fighter from Deir Ezzor had told some shocking details about U.S.-ISIS collusion.
While war is perceived by many as an inherent institution of the nation state, few people fail to recognize and regret the horror, death, destruction, suffering, and misery it inflicts. Another consequence of war, however, is less often considered, though it is in the long run even more damaging to the cause of human well-being. That is the waste of resources in preparing for, and waging, war that could otherwise be used to help meet the physical, economic, social, and cultural needs of ordinary people.
A house built on an imaginary foundation may be a “dream home” but it can never be lived in. The same holds true in politics.
One need not mythologize Canadian foreign policy history to oppose the Trudeau government’s egregious position on nuclear arms. In fact, ‘benevolent Canada’ dogma weakens the critical consciousness needed to reject the policies of our foreign policy establishment.
Residents of the South Korean province of Gyeongsangbuk-do have taken to the streets objecting to the local installation of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system. Hundreds of protesters confronted police, the Yonhap news agency reports.
