Photo credit: Medea Benjamin During the weekend of June 10-11 in Vienna, Austria, over 300 people representing peace organizations from 32 countries came together for the first time since the Russian invasion of Ukraine to demand an end to the fighting. In a formal conference declaration, participants declared, “We are a broad and politically diverse […]
The United States is about militarism. Its economy is largely based on the military-industrial complex. It has hundreds upon hundreds of military bases in lands around the planet. Yet, despite a bloated military budget, the US fails to care for all its citizens, certainly not the millions of homeless, poor, and those unable to afford […]
Another atrocity. Yesterday, the dam holding back the waters for the Kakhovskaya hydroelectric power station was destroyed releasing a massive flood surge, imperilling people and places below the dam on the Dnieper River. Both sides blamed each other. From the Russian standpoint, it makes no sense to blow up the dam. According to Russian Defense […]
The technical achievement of advanced industrial society, and the effective manipulation of mental and material productivity have brought about a shift in the locus of mystification. . . . the rational rather than the irrational becomes the most effective vehicle of mystification. – Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man General, man is very uselful. He can fly […]
June 6, 2023 marks 79 years since the fabled Allied invasion known as “D-Day.” Lost amid the annual self-congratulatory orgy is the minor detail that by the time of the D-Day invasion, the Soviets were engaging 80 percent of the German Army on the Eastern Front. Author Alexander Cockburn explained that WWII had already been […]
Citizen activism to bring about changes in how brutal wars are conducted is extremely difficult, but not impossible. Citizens have successfully pushed through the United Nations General Assembly treaties to abolish nuclear weapons and to ban the use of landmines and cluster munitions. Of course, countries that want to continue to use these weapons will […]
I could go on for pages about the myriad myths of both U.S. military spending and U.S. military “glory.” In fact, I’ve written two books about it — plus hundreds of articles. For the sake of this post, I’ll share just one example of our [sic] beloved and expensive armed forces in action: During the […]
The Military Budget, which devours over half of the entire federal government’s operational expenditures, has been exempted by Biden and the Congressional Republicans from any reductions in the debt limit deal just reached. Also exempted are hundreds of billions of dollars in yearly diverse corporate subsidies to big business freeloaders. Most of the cuts will […]
Yayoi Kusama (Japan), Infinity Mirrored Room – The Souls of Millions of Light Years Away, 2013. At the close of the May 2023 Group of Seven (G7) summit in Hiroshima (Japan), the foreign ministers of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States and the High Representative of the European Union […]
It was an ugly case lasting five years with a host of ugly revelations. But what could be surprising about the murderous antics of a special arm of the military, in this case, the Australian Special Air Service Regiment, which was repeatedly deployed on missions in an open-ended war which eventually led to defeat and […]
