Compiled by Dick Bennett https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2025/06/omni-war-watch-wednesdays-232-june-4.html
US Right Wing Militarism Post WWII
Scientists Call for Ban on Nuclear Weapons Testing.
Jacqueline E. Sharkey. Under Fire: U.S. Military Restrictions on the Media from Grenada to the Persian Gulf.
Peace&Planet News. Veterans for Peace. [VfP recognizes three existential threats: wars, warming, fascism.
Laleh Khalili. Silicon Valley knows that war is good for business.
Jimmy Tobias. “The Nuclear Age, Reborn.”
June 3, 1957. Linus Pauling and 2,000 other scientists join call for ban on nuclear weapons testing. Eisenhower rejects plea. Source: Peace Calendar 2025, Syracuse Cultural Workers.
Jacqueline E. Sharkey. Under Fire: U.S.Military Restrictions on the Media from Grenada to the Persian Gulf (1955-1989). Center for Public Integrity, 1991.
This revelatory book has a wider range than the title suggests, for it covers not only the invasion of Grenada (1983) and the war in the Gulf (1990-91), but also the Vietnam War (1955-75), the Falklands/Malvinas War, and the invasion of Panama (1988-89), four intro. chapters on the military and the media, and an excellent final “Conclusions and Recommendations.” The important book contrasts the Pentagon’s Principles of Information that commit the military to policies free of political influence, to White House and Pentagon repeated violations in both “letter and spirit” to maintain public support for unjustifiable wars. This repeated process is ruinous to democratic government because it undercuts the democratic ideal that “in the United States the military is the army of the people, not the President.” (Book available at Mullins Library, UAF.) See OMNI’s six online anthologies on the increasing power of the executive branch, which Pres. Trump seeks to consummate as the “Unitary Executive”: PRESIDENTIAL POWER ANTHOLOGY #6, February 17, 2020, https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2020/02/us-presidential-power.html –Dick
Peace&Planet News. Veterans for Peace (Spring 2025). [Sometimes I’ll report this magazine in CMM, for VfP recognizes three existential threats: wars, warming, fascism. This no. of P&PN reports on wars mainly.]
Authoritarianism
Chris Hedges. “Surrendering to Authoritarianism.”
Vinnie Rotondaro. “Rule by Fiat a Bipartisan Legacy.”
Wars
Doug Rawlings. “Forty Years Ago.” (Features a frequent visitor to OMNI—Duncan Murphy.)
Jack Gilroy. “The Perfidy of the Merchants of Death.”
Col. (Ret) Anne Wright (from Bentonville). “They’re All Going to Hell.” (Israeli and US officials for Gaza genocide and WB occupation ).
W.D. Ehrhart. “If a Tree Falls in the Forest.” (Essay by a US poet about an Israeli poet.)
Col. (Ret) Ann Wright. “Sen. Tom Cotton Tells McCarthyite Lies about Women’s Peace Group.” etc.
“Collective Property, Private Control” [for War}. Portside Snapshot (June 2, 2025). By Laleh Khalili. June 2, 2025. London Review of Books. The U.S. was born in war and has waged a war of some sort in every year of its existence. Silicon Valley knows that war is good for business. Many of its most powerful people want us to stop worrying about ethics or ecology and love the bomb.
NUCLEAR WAR WARNING
Jimmy Tobias. “The Nuclear Age, Reborn.” The Nation (June 2025). “The Post-Cold War status quo has broken down. In its place is a frightening multipolar arms race.” “While most of the world looked away, a new nuclear arms race has broken out between the US, Russia, and China, raising the risk of nuclear confrontation to the highest in decades.” [A significant appeal to us to pay attention against the arms race. You know what to say and do to try to wake up Boozman and Cotton –D]
END OMNI WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS, #232, JUNE 4, 2025.