https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2022/11/omni-us-war-watch-wednesdays-nos-1-99.html

SEE OMNI RADIO KPSQ Doc for Radio Talk Index

TITLES & Links IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER OF PUBLICATION

1. 12-23-20.  2 new books on US wars: Vine and Sorensen

This announcement of 2 new books on US aggressive warmaking and empire marks the inauguration of OMNI’s US War Watch Wednesdays (WWW) . 

CHRISTIAN SORENSEN.  UNDERSTANDING THE WAR INDUSTRY. 

DAVID VINE.  The United States of War:  A Global History of America’s Endless Conflicts, from Columbus to the Islamic State. http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2020/12/us-war-watch-wednesdays.html

2. 12-30-20.  Two Books v. US Nuclear Weapons.  Scott Ritter.  SCORPION KING: America’s Suicidal Embrace of Nuclear Weapons.  FROM MAD TO MADNESS: Inside Pentagon Nuclear War Planning by Diana Johnstone, Paul H. Johnstone

http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2020/12/war-watch-wednesdays-www.html

3.  1-6-21.  DANIEL SJURSEN.  Patriotic Dissent: America in the Age of Endless War. 

http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2021/01/war-watch-wednesdays-www-3.html

4.  1-13-21 “The Pentagon’s Massive Accounting Fraud Exposed.  How US military spending keeps rising even as the Pentagon flunks its audit.” 

http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2021/01/war-watch-wednesdays-january-13-2021.html

5. 1-20-21 CELEBRATE THE UNITED NATIONS’ NUCLEAR BOMB BAN TREATY.  SIGN PETITION DEMANDING UAF END BOMB BUILDING

http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2021/01/war-watch-wednesdays-5.html

6. 1-27-21.  NUCLEAR ZERO: Let’s make the next four years count.

http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2021/01/war-watch-wednesdays-6.html

7. 2-3-21.  1) Two Books on US Empire: BURBACH & TARBELL, IMPERIAL OVERSTRETCH: George W. Bush and the Hubris of Empire.  . Daniel Immerwahr. How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States.  2) Call to Congress to Reject Biden’s nomination of Victoria Nuland as Under-secretary of State.

http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2021/02/war-watch-wednesdays-7.html

8.  2-10-21.  Medea Benjamin. “The U.S. War Machine [remains unchanged] Now Under New Management” & “How Does Washington Rob the Entire World?”

http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2021/02/8-war-watch-wednesdays.html

9.  2-17-21.  Book Review: David Swanson, Leaving World War II Behind.

https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2021/02/war-watch-wednesdays-9.html

10. 2-24-21.  Two Books on Korean War.  Bruce Cumings’ The Korean War: A History, and A.B. Abrams’ Immovable Object: North Korea’s 70 Years at War with American Power.  

https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2021/02/war-watch-wednesdays-10.html

11. 3-3-21.   Anti-war Poetry

http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2021/03/war-watch-wednesdays-11.html

12.  3-12-2. Global Zero video on authority to launch nuclear war

https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2021/03/war-watch-wednesdays-12.html

13.  3-17-21.  Nuclear Bombs Factory at Rocky Flats, Nukes Outlawed Jan. 22, 2021, President Biden & Pentagon Budget

http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2021/05/war-watch-wednesdays-13.html

14.  3-24-21.  Climate Change and Nuclear War/Winter.  Michael Mann, The New Climate War.

http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2021/03/war-watch-wednesday-14.html

15. 3-31-21.  Extinctions, Climate Catastrophe, Militarism, Endless Wars: Making the Connections.

http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2021/03/war-watch-wednesdays-15.html

16. 4-7-21.  Climate and Militarism, Biden’s Nuclear Missiles.

http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2021/04/war-watch-wednesdays-16.html

17. 4-14-21.  MLK Jr. v. Poverty, Racism, and WAR, Biden Continues Warfare State

http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2021/04/war-watch-wednesdays-17.html

18.  4-21-21.  Refuting Missile Defense & Refuting Market Defense. 

http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2021/04/war-watch-wednesdays-18.html         

19. 4-28-21. Norway’s WWII Nonviolence, US Schools, Nonviolence and Climate Denial.

http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2021/04/war-watch-wednesdays-19.html

20. 5-5-21.  Patrick Cockburn. War in the Age of Trump & Abolish Nuclear Weapons

http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2021/05/war-watch-wednesdays-20.html

21. 5-12-21.  Tom Englehardt. Slaughter Central: The U.S. as a Mass-Killing Machine

http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2021/05/21-war-watch-wednesdays-5-12-21.html

22. 5-19-21.  John Horgan.  The End of War  & the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.  http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2021/05/22.html

23.  5-26-21.  Conn Hallinan.  “Are You Serious Awards 2021.”  Dispatches From The Edge.”

https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2021/05/war-watch-wednesdays-may-26-2021.html

24.  6-2-21. David Vine.  The United States of War: A Global History of America’s Endless Conflicts, from Columbus to the Islamic State.  2020. 

https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2021/06/24.html

25.  6-9-21.  CHALMERS JOHNSON. FOUR BOOKS ON THE US EMPIRE
“BLOWBACK” TRILOGY AND DISMANTLING THE EMPIRE review by Paul Leonard, 

http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2021/06/war-watch-wednesdays-25.html

26.  6-16-21. Justin Podur and Joe Emersberger.  Extraordinary Threat: The U.S. Empire, the Media, and Twenty Years of Coup Attempts in Venezuela. Monthly Review, 2021.

http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2021/06/26-war-watch-wednesdays-june-16-2021.html

27.  6-23-21.  Paul Farmer.  Fevers, Feuds, and Diamonds: Ebola and the Ravages of History (2020)

http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2021/06/war-watch-wednesdays-27.html

28.  6-30-21.  HR 256 Passed and U.S. Govt Shutting Down Opponents Media (Democracy Now). 

http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2021/06/28.html

29.   7-7-21.  Andrew Bacevich.  After the Apocalypse:  America’s Role in a World Transformed.  And Raoul Peck.  Exterminate All the Brutes.

http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2021/07/omni-war-watch-wednesdays-july-7-2021.html

30.  7-14-21.  Tom Engelhardt.  A Nation Unmade by War.  Haymarket, May 2018.

https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2021/07/war-watch-wednesdays-july-14-2021.html

31.  7-21-21.  CHRISTOPHER KELLY, STUART LAYCOCK.         HOW WE’VE INVADED OR BEEN MILITARILY INVOLVED WITH ALMOST EVERY COUNTRY ON EARTH.  2014.  and Kathy Kelly.  Bending the Arc: Striving for Peace and Justice in the Age of Endless War.

https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2021/07/war-watch-wednesdays-july-21-2021.html

32.  7-28-21. Linus Pauling’s Nobel Peace Lecture 1963 and other news on Biden and Nuclear Spending.

https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2021/07/war-watch-wednesdays-32-july-28-2021.html

33. 8-4-21. OMNI’S ANNUAL REMEMBRANCE OF HIROSHIMA AND NAGASAKI 2021 and other antiwar news.

https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2021/08/war-watch-wednesdays-august-4-2021.html

34.  8-11-21. Stephen Vittoria and Mumia Abu Jamal. Murder Incorporated: Three books on US imperialism. 2018 to 2020.

http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2021/08/war-watch-wednesdays-34.html

35. 8-18-21.  Kate Kizer, Win Without War, Et al.  FROM PENTAGON AND MILITARY CONTRACTORS TO WARS AND  CATASTROPHIC WARMING TO EXTINCTIONS AND REFUGEES.

http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/

36.  Mohammad Ali and Angie Zelter.  Antiwar Film: All Quiet on the Western Front.

https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/2151229136087998997/5877489834829129710

37.  Peacemaking: Film, Sculpture, Magazine, Antiwar film, All Quiet on the Western Front, Kaminsky’s Peace Rock, Catholic Worker.

http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2021/09/war-watch-wednesdays-37.html

38. 9-8-21.  September 21, Film All Quiet on the Western Front; Arkansas Peace Week, September 19-26; Petition v. U.S. Military Air Base Construction in Henoko, Okinawa.  
https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2021/09/omni-climate-memo-mondays-september-6.html  

39. 9-8-21. Susan Sontag.  Families for Peaceful Tomorrows.

http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2015/09/september-11-families-for-peaceful.html

40.  9-22-21. Robert Weissman. In Memory of the Lives Lost for Peace. Dennis Kucinich and Department of Peace Act of 2021. Hank Kaminsky Peace Rock.

http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2021/09/war-watch-wednesdays-40.html

41. 11-29-21. US War of Terror. Afghanistan War is a Racket. AFSC: Convert War Profiteering Money to Human Needs

https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2021/09/omni-war-watch-wednesdays-september-29.html

42. 10-6-21  WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS
Dick: J. K. Galbraith and US Autonomous Militarism and Empire.
Alfred McCoy, In the Shadows of the American Empire. https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2021/10/omni-war-watch-wednesdays-october-6-2021.html

43. 10-13-21. US Wars: Indian Wars to War of Terror. War of Extermination of Native Americans: Indigenous People’s Day. Brown University’s Cost of War Project (War of Terror). War Profiteers War of Terror.

https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2021/10/omni-war-watch-wednesdays-43-october-13.html

44.  10-20-21. Anti-War & Pro-Peace Resources Database: We’ve compiled this database of useful resources of our own and links to those found elsewhere. World Beyond War, 10-18-21

http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2021/10/war-watch-wednesdays-44.html

45. 10-27-21. ANTICIPATING ARMISTICE DAY. Two Anti-War Books by Kathy Beckwith. US Glamorizing Warriors: Gallagher and Powell

http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2021/10/omni-war-watch-wednesdays-october-27.html

46.  11-2-21. Armistice Remembrance Day.  US Threatening and Preparing for War. US History: Murder Incorporated Forum. UN Charter, Chapter 1, Article 2.4: No Use or Threat

https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2021/11/omni-war-watch-wednesdays-46-november-3.html

47.  11-10-21. Anti-Nuclear Weapons Petition. Armistice Day History and Remembrance. 

http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2021/11/war-watch-wednesdays-47.html

48.  11-17-21. ICAN Pledge on Schools of Mass Destruction (Includes University of Arkansas). Arms Control Association Events.

https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2021/11/omni-war-watch-wednesdays-48-november.html

49.  11-24-21. Tom Engelhardt, The World We Made, The Enemy We Need. And Welcome to the American Century: Even If It Is a Hell on Earth

https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2021/11/omni-war-watch-wednesdays-49-november.html

50.  12-1-21.  Pearl Harbor Day Newsletters: Clash of Empires to Control Pacific Ocean and East Asia.

http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2021/12/war-watch-wednesdays-50.html

Celebrate 50,  Nos. 1-50

The First 50 War Watch Wednesdays

http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2021/12/first-fifty-war-watch-wednesdays.html

51.  12-8-21. Nuclear Weapons Dangers and Action.

http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2021/12/war-watch-wednesdays-51.html

52.  12-15-21. Who is Destroying Peace?

https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2021/12/omni-war-watch-wednesdays-52-december.html

53.  12-22-21.  Kathy Beckwith. A Mighty Case Against War. (2015).

http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2021/12/war-watch-wednesdays-53.html

54.  12-29-21. Syria, War of Aggression, New Cold War and NATO Russophobia.

http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2021/12/war-watch-wednesdays-54_29.html

55. 1-5-22. Nuclear Weapons Abolition.

https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2022/01/omni-war-watch-wednesdays-55-january-5.html

56. 1-12-22. William Astore. Pentagon as PentaGod. Farrow on Climate Change Displacement and border Militarization.

http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2022/01/war-watch-wednesdays-56.html

57.  1-19-22. Celebrate Treaty to Prohibit Nuclear Weapons, Helen Keller against war, Nonviolence and Permanent War.

http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2022/01/war-watch-wednesdays-57.html

58. 1-26-22. Hank Kaminsky’s Peace Rock.

https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2021/09/hank-kaminskys-peace-rock.html

59. 2-2-22. Nuclear Weapons Abolition, Media Complex for War and Norman Solomon: War Made Easy.

http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2022/02/59-war-watch-wednesdays.html

60. Conversion Movement from War Spending to Peace, Stopping Encirclement of China and Russia.

http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2022/02/omni-war-watch-wednesdays-60-february-9.html

61. Nonviolence versus War.

http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2022/02/war-watch-wednesdays-61.html

62. Russophobia and NATO Expansion

https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2022/02/omni-war-watch-wednesdays-62-february.html

63. Glenn Peterson, War and the Arc of Human Experience. Todd Miller, Build Bridges Not Walls

https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2022/03/omni-war-watch-wednesdays-63-march-2.html

64.  Fayetteville/OMNI Russia War Demonstration. Ukraine/NATO Conflict and Russophobia.

http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2022/03/war-watch-wednesdays-64.html

65. Costs of War and Imperialism.

http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2022/03/65-war-watch-wednesdays-65.html

66. Military Complex, Antiwar Movement and Nuclear War

http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2022/03/66-war-watch-wednesdays.html

67. Lies of Empire and Forever War

http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2022/03/war-watch-wednesdays-67.html

68. Global Security System and Study of US Empire

http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2022/04/war-watch-wednesdays68.html

69. NATO War Against Russia and Confronting Global Catastrophe

http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2022/04/war-watch-wednesdays-69.html

70. Massive Military Spending and Climate Change & Nuclear War

http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2022/04/70-war-watch-wednesdays.html

71. NATO-Ukraine War and War Propaganda

http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2022/05/war-watch-wednesdays-71.html

72. War Propaganda and Ukraine War Provocation

http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2022/05/war-watch-wednesdays-72.html

73. Top Scholars Challenge US Narrative on Ukraine and Stephen Cohen’s Book War With Russia?

https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2022/05/omni-war-watch-wednesdays-723-may-11.html

74. Nuclear Winter and Climate Catastrophes, Scott Ritter Antiwar Work and Pentagon Simulation for War with China

http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2022/05/war-watch-wednesdays-74.html

75. U.S. Plans to Destroy Russian Navy, Hedges on War Intractability & Russiaphobia

http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2022/05/75-war-watch-wednesdays-75.html

76. Harms of U.S. Wars and North Korea insider perspective

http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2022/06/war-watch-wednesdays-76.html

77. Global US Violence, Hope & Justice, and Antiwar Poets

http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2022/06/77-war-watch-wednesdays.html

78. Iran Nuclear Scaremongering, US atrocities against insurgencies, and US Global & Domestic Violence

http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2022/06/78-war-watch-wednesdays.html

79. Fascism & Travel, US Participation in WWII Unjustifiable, US Imperialism post-WWII, and Nuclear War Triggers

http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2022/06/79-war-watch-wednesdays.html

80. Link Between US Violence Abroad & Domestically, and VFP on US War games, Nuclear Pollution & Nuclear Arms Race

http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2022/06/war-watch-wednesdays-80.html

81. Antiwar Book Club, Weapons in Space, Biden’s Bloated War Budget, and UN Warning of Global Collapse

http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2022/07/war-watch-wednesdays-81.html

82. Hedges on Permanent War, Peace & Islam, Peacebuilding, and Nuclear Disarmament

http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2022/07/82-war-watch-wednesdays.html

83. Hedges on Pimps of War, Cutting the Pentagon Budget, US Mayors Peace Resolution, and Understanding War Resources

http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2022/07/82-war-watch-wednesdays.html

84. Trillions for war, Cable News Pro-War Bias, Provoking China & Nuclear Weapons Ban Treaty

http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2022/11/war-watch-wednesdays-84.html

85. The Warfare State, Imperial Propaganda & Incarceration and Narrative Control

http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2022/08/war-watch-wednesdays-85.html

86. Book: The Green Zone by Barry Sanders

https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2022/08/omni-war-watch-wednesdays-86-august-10.html

87. Pacifism and Veterans for Peace

https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2022/08/war-watch-wednesdays-87-august-17-2022.html

88. Book: The Plot to Scapegoat Russia by Dan Kovalik and War and Climate Endgame

https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2022/08/omni-war-watch-wednesdays-august-24-2022.html

89. Ukraine and Permanent War, War Abolishers Awards & Finding Hope

https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2022/08/omni-war-watch-wednesdays-89-august-31.html

90. The Art of Un-War and the Collapse of Civilizations

https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2022/09/omni-war-watch-wednesdays-90-september.html

91. Veterans for Truth on Ukraine War & US Culture of War

https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2022/09/omni-war-watch-wednesdays-91-september.html

92. Ukraine and Permanent War, CIA Proxy War in Ukraine, and Tolstoy on Patriotism & Chrisitianity

http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2022/09/war-watch-wednesdays-92.html

93. Superweapons & Imperialism and US-NATO-Ukraine-Russia Anthology #13

http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2022/09/war-watch-wednesdays-92.html

94. Book: The Greatest Evil is War by Chris Hedges

http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2022/10/omni-war-watch-wednesdays-94-october-5.html

95. Book: The Pentagon, Climate Change & War by Neta Crawford, NAPF and Petition to Stop Endless Wars

http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2022/10/war-watch-wednesdays-95.html

96. Stopping Ukraine War: 26 OMNI Anthologies for Peace

https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2022/10/omni-war-watch-wednesdays-96-october-19.html

97. Assisted Suicide poem by Gerald Sloan, Nuclear Dangers Discussion and from Holocene to Anthropocene

http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2022/10/war-watch-wednesdays-97.html

98. Kucinich Calls for Diplomacy, Nukewatch Quarterly, Warmongers & Dr. Strangeloves and No Place to Hide

https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2022/11/omni-war-watch-wednesdays-98-november-2.html

99. Armistice Day, Senseless Ukraine War, Lessons of Cuban Missile Crisis & Marshall Islands

https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2022/11/omni-war-watch-wednesdays-99-november-9.html

ABEL HOW JUMP FROM HERE TO LATEST ENTRY?  (Hit Ctrl + F keys = Search document)

WWW Categories

I. Nuclear Weapons Abolition

#2, #5, #6, #12, #13, #14, #20, #22, #32, #33, #47, #48

II. Anti-Militarism & Anti-War

#3, #8, #11, #18, #21, #29, #30, #42, #44

III. Anti-Imperialism

#1, #7, #25, #26, #29, #31, #34, #42

IV. Military Industrial Complex

#1, #4, #23, #35

V. War History

#1, #7, #9, #10, #19, #24, #25, #26, #27, #46

VI. War & The Environment

#14, #15, #16, #19, #35

VII. War & Racism & Poverty

#17

VIII. War & Refugees

#35

IX. War & Media

#28

X. Antiwar Art & Film

#36, #37, #38, #40

XI. Antiwar Peacemakers, Events & Activism

#36, #37, #38, #39, #45, #46, #47

XII.  Antiwar Organizations & Journals

#37, #40, #44

XII.  Antiwar Books

#45

XIV. War of Terror

#39, #40, #41, #43

XV.  War Spending & Conversion

#41, #43

XV. War Propaganda

#45

XVI. War Preparation & Threatening

#46

US WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS

ANNOTATED ENTRIES BY CATEGORIES

US MILITARISM, WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS

#1.  WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS (WWW), December 23, 2020.
CHRISTIAN SORENSEN.  Understanding the War Industry.  Clarity P, 2020.
DAVID VINE.  The United States of War:  A Global History of America’s Endless Conflicts, from Columbus to the Islamic State.   U of California P, 2020.  Pages: 464.

Link:

US IMPERIALISM, WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS

#1.  WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS (WWW), December 23, 2020.
CHRISTIAN SORENSEN.  Understanding the War Industry.  Clarity P, 2020.
DAVID VINE.  The United States of War:  A Global History of America’s Endless Conflicts, from Columbus to the Islamic State.   U of California P, 2020.  Pages: 464.

Link:

#3.  WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS (WWW), January 6, 2021

DANIEL SJURSEN.  Patriotic Dissent: America in the Age of Endless War.  Heyday Books, 2020.    160 pp.
Steve Early and Suzanne Gordon.  “Patriotic Dissent: How a Soldier Turned Against ‘Forever Wars.’”  The Peace Sentinel (Fall 2020).  
Patriotic Dissent: How a Working-Class Soldier Turned Against

www.counterpunch.org › 2020/07/24 › patriotic-dissent…Jul 24, 2020

US NUCLEAR WEAPONS ABOLITION, WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS

#2.  December 30, 2020

Scott Ritter.  SCORPION KING: America’s Suicidal Embrace of Nuclear Weapons from FDR to Trump.  Clarity P, 2020.

FROM MAD TO MADNESS: Inside Pentagon Nuclear War Planning BY Diana Johnstone, Paul H. Johnstone 

Link:

51 Nuclear Weapons, Gerson, Tomlinson, Klare

51.  WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS, December 8, 2021

http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2021/12/war-watch-wednesdays-51.html
Contents: Nuclear Weapons ACTION
Joseph Gerson, Reducing Danger of Nuclear War
Abel Tomlinson, Ending Nuclear Weapons Research
    at UAF
Michael Klare, Quit Provoking China with our
    Nuclear Navy

TEXTS

Joseph Gerson.  The threat of nuclear war is now higher than it was during the Cold War.      12-1-21

 The threat of nuclear war is now higher than it was during the Cold War

That’s according to the former Former Secretary of Defense William Perry — who is no peacenik.

That’s why it’s more urgent than ever that our Representatives institute a policy of No First Use and No Sole Authority in order to reduce the grave peril posed by nuclear weapons. Ask your Senators and Representative and Congressional leadership to support legislation to institute a United States policy of No First Use of nuclear weapons.

It’s important that we act now. President Joe Biden’s Nuclear Posture Review is underway, and it will determine his administration’s approach to nuclear policy. If we want to avoid a devastating nuclear war, we need to demonstrate broad public support for a policy of No First Use. Call and Email Congress to tell them to support a No First Use policy for nuclear weapons!

There are two bills in Congress, the Markey-Lieu Bill (S.1148, HR.669) and the Warren-Smith Bill (S.1219, HR.2603), that would institute a No First Use Policy. These bills should be uncontroversial for anyone who wants to avoid a potentially disastrous nuclear war. Yet, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer haven’t used their leadership to make sure these bills get a vote. Call on your Representatives to institute a policy of No First Use and demand that Pelosi and Schumer bring the bills to a vote!

We know that establishing a policy of No First Use is just the first step towards our ultimate goal of abolishing nuclear weapons. For the sake of people and our planet, we must do everything we can to make the world safer from the impending threat of nuclear war. Contact your representative today.

Because it’s 100 seconds to midnight, Elaine Scarry.

Mass Peace Action Nuclear Disarmament Working Group

Campaign for Peace, Disarmament & Common Security

P.S. Don’t forget to take action right now

If you are unable to join us, you can still support our peace building work by donating here:

Campaign for Peace, Disarmament and Common

 Website

 End Nuclear Weapons Design

at the University of Arkansas!

Join the campaign Facebook group for Omni partner Arkansas Nonviolence Alliance to learn more and see how you can help.

This is a Campaign Celebrating the Nuclear Weapons Ban Treaty (TPNW), and Calling for the University of Arkansas to Terminate its Nuclear Weapons Program with the Honeywell Corporation, and for Global Nuclear Weapons Abolition.

It also highlights the complicity of the University of Arkansas Dept of Engineering in designing components for nuclear weapons in collaboration with Honeywell International. It’s also interning UA students with Honeywell. Do those students know they are designing weapons of mass destruction?

Nuclear Weapons of Mass Destruction Gravely Endanger Everyone in the World and Are a Massive Waste of Financial Resources, with U.S.A. Currently Set to Spend $1.7 trillion on New Nuclear Bombs.

As a Progressive City,

Fayetteville Must Say No, Not Here!

Tomgram: Michael Klare, War With China in 2027?

Michael Klare, War With China in 2027?  December 2, 2021

Yep, it happened again for the 11th time this year. (In 2020, the number was 13.) An American warship, in this case the guided-missile destroyer Milius, sailed through the Taiwan Strait between mainland China and the disputed island of Taiwan to, as a Navy spokesperson put it, “demonstrate the U.S. commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific.” >From the Navy point of view, the Milius’s recent voyage is nothing but a vivid demonstration that “the United States military flies, sails, and operates anywhere international law allows.” Who cares how upset Chinese officials might get?

And honestly, who can deny it? Anywhere is anywhere, no matter how loaded (if you’ll excuse that all-too-loaded word) the situation there might be. If Chinese officials are disturbed, how unreasonable of them!  TomDispatch regular Michael Klare, in fact, keeps a tally of such close encounters of the naval kind at his Committee for a Sane U.S.-China Policy website. So far this year, he’s already counted 56 of them in the region, no small number when you think about it and any one of which could lead, all too literally, to an explosive situation.

Yes, the spokesmen for the Chinese government, which claims the island of Taiwan as its own, complain bitterly about such constant provocations (as those officials see it). As openness, but rather deliberate disruption and sabotage of regional peace and stability” — but who really cares?

Now, admittedly, I have yet to see American officials invite Chinese naval vessels to sail up and down the California coast, but no one in Washington would mind that, would they? Of course not! In fact, I’m sure, that, in the name of upholding international law, there’s an open invitation to some Chinese guided-missile destroyer to visit soon and often!  In the meantime, as Klare suggests today, such maneuvers might be the least of our future problems — with a potential World War III looming on the horizon. Tom

Countdown to World War III?

It May Arrive Sooner Than You Think

By Michael Klare

When the Department of Defense released its annual report on Chinese military strength in early November, one claim generated headlines around the world. By 2030, it suggested, China would probably have 1,000 nuclear warheads — three times more than at present and enough to pose a substantial threat to the United States. As a Washington Post headline put it, typically enough: “China accelerates nuclear weapons expansion, seeks 1,000 warheads or more, Pentagon says.”

The media, however, largely ignored a far more significant claim in that same report: that China would be ready to conduct “intelligentized” warfare by 2027, enabling the Chinese to effectively resist any U.S. military response should it decide to invade the island of Taiwan, which they view as a renegade province. To the newsmakers of this moment, that might have seemed like far less of a headline-grabber than those future warheads, but the implications couldn’t be more consequential. Let me, then, offer you a basic translation of that finding: as the Pentagon sees things, be prepared for World War III to break out any time after January 1, 2027.

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2021/12/02/war-world-iii-may-arrive-sooner-you-think

52.  WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS, #52, December 15, 2021  
https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2021/12/omni-war-watch-wednesdays-52-december.html
Who Is Destroying Peace?

Declining USA Bullies China/Russia, Earth, Outer Space, Itself: Eye-opener Readings about Ukraine, Russia, Iran, Taiwan, China

Jan Oberg, Ph.D. | The Transnational – TRANSCEND Media Service
2 Dec 2021 – As I write, serious tension is building–again–around Ukraine, Iran and Taiwan while we could live in a much more peaceful and thriving world. Who and what are the constant peace destroyers? You are the object of a psychological operation to make you have only negative views about China.     Read more…

Goading China to Go to War

Dr. Chandra Muzaffar | JUST – TRANSCEND Media Service
28 Nov 2021- A number of defence analysts are convinced that the United States of America, supported by Britain and Australia, is goading China to go to war over Taiwan. They point to constant statements by officials from the three countries pledging to come to Taiwan’s defence.     Read more…

IN CONTRAST, PEACEMAKERS:  GALTUNG, PRI, TRANSCEND
Background of TRANSCEND Media Service
Prof Johan Galtung on Peace Journalism, Capitalism, Positive Peace, Structural Violence, Feminism, and Much More

Josef Mühlbauer | Varna Peace Institute – TRANSCEND Media Service
3 Dec 2021 – Johan Galtung was at the core of the group of intellectuals who established the Peace Research Institute Oslo in 1959. Without his enormous effort and personality, PRIO would never have come true. He left it in 1969 to become Professor of Conflict and Peace Studies at the University of Oslo and was the founding editor of the Journal of Peace Research in 1964. In 1993 Galtung, Dietrich Fischer, Poka Laenui and wife Fumiko Nishimura founded TRANSCEND-A Peace Development Environment Network in Honolulu, Hawai’i, a Conflict Mediation Organization that thrives to this day with about 400 members worldwide. In 2008 he co-founded TRANSCEND Media Service-TMS with editor Antonio C.S. Rosa.       Read more…

BRINGING PEACE: CONVERSION MOVEMENT

Convert Money for PENTAGON War Department to Human Needs Campaign

What would *you* do with $25 billion?

Public Citizen via uark.onmicrosoft.com 12-3-21

$25 billion.

That’s the cost — as Public Citizen has calculated — of producing enough coronavirus vaccine to end the pandemic *worldwide*.

And with the emerging Omicron variant, ending the pandemic remains humanity’s most immediate need.

As it happens, $25 billion is also how much Congress could allocate for the military next year *over and above* the $753 billion the Biden administration asked for.

•         By the way, the U.S. spends more on its military than the next 11 countries combined — including China and Russia.

•         And we’ve ended our incredibly expensive military operations in Afghanistan.

•         A strong case can be made that our nation’s military spending should be slashed by tens or even hundreds of billions.

Surely the Pentagon can get by without an extra $25 billion the White House didn’t even want!

Senator Bernie Sanders has proposed an amendment to the bill setting the military budget for next year that would at least claw back that not-even-requested $25 billion.

Tell the Senate:

Support the Sanders amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act *not* to allocate $25 billion more to the Pentagon than the Biden Administration requested.

Add your name.

Thanks for taking action.

For progress,

– Robert Weissman, President of Public Citizen

Galbraith, John Kenneth. The Culture of Contentment. 2017 (182).

ROLE OF LANGUAGE IN THE CONVERSION MOVEMENT
Join me in replacing the false label “Department of Defense” with the actual “Department of WAR.”  Put the sticker on your bumper, and “Go’in Broke Pay’in for War”!   Switch money for war to money to mitigate and adapt to the climate emergency.

53.  WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS, December 22, 2021

http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2021/12/war-watch-wednesdays-53.html

Kathy Beckwith.   A Mighty Case Against War:  What America Missed in U.S. History Class and What We (All) Can Do Now.  2015.  300.

.

About the book

Beckwith relates a history of America’s wars that includes “What America Missed in U.S. History Class.” She details why war sells, the fallacies of common justifications for war, true costs of war, and sensible alternatives. A Mighty Case Against War proposes that this culturally supported, deeply entrenched system of governmental violence is simply too costly, destructive, counterproductive, and inhumane to leave unchallenged. An easily readable book, this is a resource for youth and adult education, peacebuilding activists, and all who have wondered if a world beyond war is possible.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 : Two Young Men and a Question:
“More than an end to war, we want …?”     1
Chapter 2: A Gallop Through America’s Wars    7
2.1 The Revolutionary War    9
2.2 The War of 1812    17
2.3 The Indian Wars    24
2.4 The Mexican-American War    36
2.5 The Civil War    41
2.6 The Spanish-American War    49
2.7    The Philippine-American War    58
2.8 The Tampico/Veracruz, México, Military Action    64
2.9 World War I    67
2.10    World War II    75
2.11    The Korean War    101
2.12    The Vietnam War    106
2.13    The Gulf War    117
2.14    Acts of Military Violence Outside of War     139
2.15    Recent US Wars    141
   Evaluation of War Template    144
2.16    The “Secret” Wars    145
2.17    Reflecting on Our Patterns of War    150
Chapter 3: Opening Our Eyes and Our Hearts    155
Chapter 4: Sales Pitches and Rah-Rah Cheers for War    165
Chapter 5: “War Is Inevitable. Why Fight It?” Plus Other Common Non-Sense and Un-Common Sense    185
Chapter 6: Extra! Extra! Hear All About It! Nonviolence Raging Success!    207
Chapter 7: If Not War, Then What?    225

Endnotes    251

Suggested Reading/Viewing    283

Book Club – Reading Group Discussion Questions      291

How to buy the print version

You may order this book by clicking on the button below. Payment choices are PayPal or major credit cards. If you prefer another payment option, please use the contact form in the ‘About’ menu item.

Price: 15.00 USD, free worldwide shipping:

How to buy as an ebook

An Amazon Kindle edition is available from Amazon’s book page.

An ePub version is available e.g. from Smashwords or Apple Books.

Please see Kathy Beckwith’s TEDx Talk!

It’s time to abandon war. There are alternatives. | Kathy Beckwith | TEDxMcMinnville

TEDx Talks Published on February 26, 2019

Is using war as a means of resolving conflict an outdated premise? Is it time for us to move on from the battlefield? And if so, are there alternatives that actually work? Mediator Kathy Beckwith shares her big idea – there are plenty of alternatives to war, if only we choose to use em. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community.

 What others say

A Mighty Case Against War is exceptionally well researched and covers an astounding amount of history. Kathy Beckwith has produced an extremely good survey and analysis of America’s wars. I am very impressed with her scholarship. Kathy offers hope in her conclusion that the habit of war can be broken. I taught American history in college for more than 25 years. After it was published I used Ronald Wells “The Wars of America, Christian Views.”  Now I would either add, or replace it with A Mighty Case Against War.  – Dr. Ralph Beebe, Professor of History Emeritus, George Fox University, Newberg, Oregon.

 “Kathy Beckwith’s book lives up to its title. I probably can’t imagine exactly how wonderful a world we’d have if everyone learned this book in history class, but I’d sure love to find out. I write about this same topic and nonetheless learned a great deal of new information here and found it to be brilliantly presented. The author’s goal is clearly not to get us to believe something but to prod us into thinking.  She provides multiple points of view on wars. Understanding what each side saw helps us grasp what Beckwith points out next: the alternative paths not taken that could have avoided each particular war.  If we learn to anticipate war propaganda to come, if we are ready to reject it in real time, this book will have served its purpose, and more books like it will not be needed; war will have gone from ‘inevitable’ to archaic, humanity from endangered to resilient.”  –David Swanson, author of War Is A Lie

 “With clear, thoughtful prose and careful research, this book offers a systematic investigation into American wars and various nonviolent alternatives. The author shows U.S. military actions with new perspectives. The heart of the book is “a gallop” through America’s 15 wars, not counting the “secret” wars. It is here that the author’s training as a mediator shows, for she carefully considers the views of both sides before considering possible alternatives to war. Particularly interesting are her discussions of nonviolent alternatives to World War II and the American Revolution. The book concludes with a series of chapters that address various justifications for war that are commonly invoked. The author writes in an accessible way about these complex issues, making this book ideal for high school students interested in a view of U.S. history not presented in the textbooks, as well as any reader concerned about the role of the U.S. military in conflicts around the world.”  – Daemion Lee, review for Skipping Stones magazine

About the author

Kathy Beckwith is a mediation trainer from Dayton, Oregon, working with schools (K-12) and community mediation programs. She is a mediator in parent/teen, victim/offender, and neighborhood mediation, and volunteers as a school mediation coach. Kathy became concerned about America’s strong reliance on war as a means of resolving international conflict. That concern led to research and study, and finally to this book. She discovered that she had, indeed, missed some things in U.S. History class.

Kathy is also the author of the picture book Playing War; a young adult novel.

54.  WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS, December 29, 2021

http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2021/12/war-watch-wednesdays-54_29.html

More Evil Enemies
Contents
Syria v. US War of Aggression
Tomgram, David Vine, New Cold War against China: Reject AUKUS Alliance
Gagnon, Global Network v. NATO’s Russophobia

The Syria Deception: The Public Has Been Hoodwinked Yet Again into Supporting a Criminal War of Aggression—and One That Has Been Effectively Lost

By Jeremy Kuzmarov on Jul 08, 2021
 United States warmakers have become so skilled at propaganda that not only can they wage a war of aggression without arousing protest; they can also compel liberals to denounce peace activists using language reminiscent of the McCarthy era.

Take the case of Syria. The people and groups one would normally count on to oppose wars […]

The post The Syria Deception: The Public Has Been Hoodwinked Yet Again into Supporting a Criminal War of Aggression—and One That Has Been Effectively Lost appeared first on CovertAction Magazine.

ENDING WAR WITH PASHTUN AFGHANISTAN MEANS REDUCING WAR?   NO!   STOP THE NEW COLD WAR WITH CHINA AND RUSSIA

STOP THE NEW COLD WAR WITH CHINA

Tomgram: David Vine, Biden Builds Back Worse (When It Comes to China)  10-21-21

Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space via sendinblue.com  Oct 24, 2021         

 NATO ‘Master Plan’ aimed at Russia

Washington always looking for another war

 By Bruce Gagnon

 It didn’t take long for the US to up the ante with China and Russia. So soon after the crushing defeat from 20 years of death and destruction in Afghanistan we find Washington stirring the fire pit and looking for more trouble.

 It’s really no surprise. Just take a close look at US history – one filthy war after the other.

 Just this past week we’ve seen ‘F the EU’ Victoria Nuland go to Moscow hoping for an audience with Putin. She only got to meet with lower level, but competent Russian diplomats, and came away with nothing other than furthering the divide between our two nations. Actually, that might have been the US strategy.

 The word is that Nuland went in with a list of Washington’s demands. Russia said ‘nyet’ and handed Nuland a list of their own. Of course Nuland said ‘No’ and was then sent packing back to the US.

 Secretary of War Lloyd Austin (former Raytheon board member) just stopped in Georgia, Ukraine, and Romania before heading to Brussels for hand-wringing with the NATO clowns.

 Austin stated during a news conference in Bucharest that the purpose of these visits was to highlight “the importance of deepening cooperation among our Black Sea allies and partners to deter and defend against Russian malign activities in the region.”

 That’s the political hype. His real purpose in Georgia, Ukraine, and Romania? Spur them to make trouble for Moscow in any way and every way they possibly can. And I’m sure Austin said the magic words, ‘Of course the US will back you if you get into a fight with Russia. First, we’ll supply you with more weapons and plant more of our troops in your nation to protect you from the Russian bear.’

  At the Brussels meeting NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said the following:

 •         Allies will kick off a $1.16 billion NATO Innovation Fund to develop dual-use emerging and disruptive technologies. NATO will also establish its first artificial intelligence strategy to incorporate data analysis, imagery, and cyber defense.

•          The allies are spending more on defense and they agreed to increase the readiness of forces.

•          Significant improvements are being made to alliance air and missile defenses. NATO calls for strengthening conventional capabilities with fifth-generation jets, adapting exercises and intelligence, and improving the readiness and effectiveness of the nuclear deterrent.

•          We exchanged views on how to preserve the gains and ensure Afghanistan never again becomes a safe haven for terrorists.

•          NATO’s new strategy ensures that the alliance will have “the right forces in the right place at the right time.”

They also characteristically took at shot at China from behind the safe walls of NATO HQ in Brussels with a stream of rhetoric.

 Austin’s remarks followed the completion of a two-day NATO ministerial where he said officials offered “unique perspectives” on China, which he noted remains the Pentagon’s “primary pacing challenge.”

“Indeed, I applaud NATO’s work on China and I made it clear that the United States is committed to defending the international rules-based order which China has consistently undermined for its own interests,” Austin told reporters.

 At an October 21 CNN town hall, Joe Biden was asked about China.

 “I just want to make China understand that we are not going to step back, we are not going to change any of our views.” Biden said. Asked whether the US would come to Taiwan’s defense if it were attacked, he replied: “Yes, we have a commitment to do that.”

 Now let’s analyze this NATO meeting and the comments on China just a bit.

 First, who has Russia invaded? Since the US orchestrated coup in Ukraine in 2014 (when the Russian-ethnic people in Crimea voted to ask Russia to take them back into the federation) there has been no invasion of anyone near its borders. At the same time US-NATO has been holding war games repeatedly all along Russian borders. When Moscow has responded by holding counter-war games inside its own country Washington and Brussels have howled in condemnation. Talk about a double-standard!

 And please note the words above by Austin – “I applaud NATO’s work on China” – just what does that mean?

 NATO has gone global. The North Atlantic Treaty Alliance has now decided that it should be ‘defending democracy in the Pacific’. Who is the aggressor in this case? What right does NATO have to decide it is the new global cop?

 Can’t lick Afghanistan so let’s take on China & Russia

 NATO has no legitimate reason to exist today – the Soviet Union and their Warsaw Pact Alliance are long gone. Russia just built an undersea natural gas pipeline called Nord Stream 2 to furnish fuel to Europe in order to help alleviate their current energy crisis. It’s a big business deal for Moscow. Why would Russia want war with Europe?

 The insanity of US-NATO is exposed for anyone willing to see the obvious. Washington and Brussels got their high-tech asses kicked by a ill-armed rag-tag but determined Taliban in Afghanistan. Now they somehow dream that they can take on both China and Russia who have formed a military alliance as they watch the NATO endless war machine heading their way.

 I understand that all these moves by US-NATO absolutely benefit the military industrial complex which has installed one of their agents (Lloyd Austin) as secretary of war. But do these psychopaths actually believe they can start a war with China and Russia and possibly win? Don’t they know that such a war would go nuclear in a hot flash?

 It’s obvious that the US-NATO war cabal are blinded by power and greed. There can be no other explanation that comes close to making sense.

 It’s a dangerous and dirty game these fat cats are playing – at the same time that climate crisis rages in our faces, legions of people face evictions from their homes, and the basic cost of living goes sky high.

 Are we heading for a collapse in the US and around the globe? How could that not be happening under these present conditions?

 And the US-NATO response?

 How about another war?

 Which party in Washington is leading this descent into hell? 

55.  WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS, #55. JANUARY 5, 2022  https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2022/01/omni-war-watch-wednesdays-55-january-5.html

End Nuclear War Preparation, Abolish Nuclear Weapons
Contents
Abolish Nuclear Weapons, UN Nuclear Treaty Ban
Back from the Brink:  The Call to Prevent Nuclear War 
US and Iran

Need for Leakers and Whistleblowers

THIS THURSDAY! Jan 6 Nuclear Ban Treaty Planning Zoom — REGISTER NOW!

BACK FROM THE BRINK

We’re bringing communities together to prevent the growing threat that nuclear weapons pose to our health, environment, and all we hold dear.

JOIN US

THE CALL

The threat of nuclear war is real and growing. Global tensions are on the rise. The United States is spending billions of dollars to rebuild its entire nuclear arsenal, accelerating a new arms race and diverting funds urgently needed for social, economic, and environmental programs. It is high time we change our priorities and reimagine national security to better address the challenges of the 21st century.

Back from the Brink: The Call to Prevent Nuclear War is a national grassroots campaign seeking the abolition of nuclear weapons and fundamental change in U.S. nuclear weapons policy. We’re calling upon the U.S. to enter into negotiations now with the other nuclear-armed states for a verifiable, enforceable, timebound agreement to eliminate their weapons. We also call on the U.S. to unilaterally adopt several key policies to reduce the danger of nuclear war while these negotiations proceed.

A safer, healthier, and more just world is possible. We celebrate the entry into force of the U.N. Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), an historic treaty signed by 122 nations that bans nuclear weapons under international law in the same manner as biological and chemical weapons. The TPNW is the international mechanism for the elimination of nuclear weapons. Back from the Brink provides a U.S. roadmap to accomplish this goal.

We call on the United States to lead a global effort to prevent nuclear war by:

Actively pursuing a verifiable agreement among nuclear-armed states to eliminate their nuclear arsenals

N

Renouncing the option of using nuclear weapons first

N

Ending the sole, unchecked authority of any U.S. President to launch a nuclear attack

N

Taking U.S. nuclear weapons off hair-trigger alert

N

Cancelling the plan to replace the entire U.S. nuclear arsenal with enhanced weapons

US AND IRAN

Nasser Karimi.  “Iran Approves Bill on U.S. Terror Tag.”  ADG (4-29-19).  The US designated as terrorist Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.  Iran labeled US troops in the ME as terrorists.  The US announced that no country would be exempt from US sanctions if it continues to buy Iranian oil. “Iranian lawmakers … overwhelmingly approved a bill that labels all U.S. military forces as terrorists.”

OMNI WHISTLEBLOWERS AND LEAKERS NEWSLETTER, Series 2, #6, October 7, 2021.   https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2021/10/omni-whistleblowers-and-leakers.html

Our country’s increasing militarism and climate crises will make whistleblowers and leakers increasingly crucial to preserving our democracy.

    O

56.  WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS, #56, January 12, 2022

http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2022/01/war-watch-wednesdays-56.html

Deification of US Militarism: the Pentagon as God
Tomgram: William Astore, Prefabricated War 11-16-21

Farrow, climate change, the displacement of people, and border militarization

William Astore, Prefabricated War

November 16, 2021

Back in 2007, in his first piece for TomDispatch, retired Air Force lieutenant colonel and historian William Astore focused on the proliferation of self-congratulatory ribbons and medals on the chests of America’s generals. Here, for instance, was General David Petraeus at that time — and keep in mind that, before he commanded the 101st Airborne Division during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, he had never even been to war. As Astore put it then, “I counted nine rows [of ribbons] on Petraeus’ left breast during his Congressional hearings. If they were a valid metric across time, he would be roughly thrice as capable and valorous as George C. Marshall, perhaps America’s greatest soldier-statesman, who somehow ran and won a world war while wearing only three rows of ribbons.” And, by the way, those nine rows weren’t even the sum total of the decorations on that uniform.

In other words, only six years into Washington’s disastrous post-9/11 wars, our losing generals were already treating themselves like minor deities from Olympus. In the ensuing years, much was written about evangelical Christianity and its role in supporting a twice-divorced, pussy-grabbing, religion-dismissing, profane salesman and bankruptee in the Oval Office, but remarkably little about the fervor of those who might be considered the truest evangelicals of our moment: America’s military high command and the Pentagon officials who were part and parcel of their world.

They were, of course, evangelists for a religion that Congress has subscribed to as well with remarkable unanimity, not to say staggering fervor. No matter that its god (about whom Astore will tell you momentarily) continues to suck up trillions of dollars in tithes from the American people as if there were no end to such funds. And mind you, despite all that dough and all those medals on all those chests, the Pentagon couldn’t keep a single promise it made globally when it came to its supposedly singular “skill”: making war. Think of those bemedaled generals then as evangelicals for a faith that couldn’t deliver, big-time — evangelists, in short, for an empire going down, down, down. Now, check out TomDispatch regular Astore, who also runs the Bracing Views blog, on this country’s true god. Tom

The Pentagon as Pentagod: America’s Abyss of Weapons and
Warmaking By William Astore.

Who is America’s god? The Christian god of the beatitudes, the one who healed the sick, helped the poor, and preached love of neighbor? Not in these (dis)United States. In the Pledge of Allegiance, we speak proudly of One Nation under God, but in the aggregate, this country doesn’t serve or worship Jesus Christ, or Allah, or any other god of justice and mercy. In truth, the deity America believes in is the five-sided one headquartered in Arlington, Virginia.

In God We Trust is on all our coins. But, again, which god? The one of “turn the other cheek”? The one who found his disciples among society’s outcasts? The one who wanted nothing to do with moneychangers or swords? As Joe Biden might say, give me a break.

Click here to read more of this dispatch.

Ronan Farrow .  War on Peace: The End of Diplomacy and the Decline of American Influence.   April 24, 2018.

A harrowing exploration of the collapse of American diplomacy and the abdication of global leadership, by the winner of the 2018 Pulitzer Prize in Public Service.

“…what I set out to explore in the pages ahead: an increasingly authoritarian world in which climate change, the displacement of people, and border militarization define the experiences of untold millions in the 21^st century.”

US foreign policy is undergoing a dire transformation, forever changing America’s place in the world. Institutions of diplomacy and development are bleeding out after deep budget cuts; the diplomats who make America’s deals and protect its citizens around the world are walking out in droves. Offices across the State Department sit empty, while abroad the military-industrial complex has assumed the work once undertaken by peacemakers. We’re becoming a nation that shoots first and asks questions later.

In an astonishing journey from the corridors of power in Washington, DC, to some of the most remote and dangerous places on earth―Afghanistan, Somalia, and North Korea among them―acclaimed investigative journalist Ronan Farrow illuminates one of the most consequential and poorly understood changes in American history. His firsthand experience as a former State Department official affords a personal look at some of the last standard bearers of traditional statecraft, including Richard Holbrooke, who made peace in Bosnia and died while trying to do so in Afghanistan.

Drawing on newly unearthed documents, and richly informed by rare interviews with warlords, whistle-blowers, and policymakers―including every living former secretary of state from Henry Kissinger to Hillary Clinton to Rex Tillerson―War on Peace makes a powerful case for an endangered profession. Diplomacy, Farrow argues, has declined after decades of political cowardice, shortsightedness, and outright malice―but it may just offer America a way out of a world at war. (from Amazon)

57.   WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS, #57, January 19, 2022 

http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2022/01/war-watch-wednesdays-57.html

Peacemaking

January 22, Celebrate! The First Anniversary of the Entry Into Force of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW)
Helen Keller v. War; Strike Against War
Nonviolence International
US Peace Prize
About Face v. Permanent War
Struggle against AUMF and Iraq War Power continues

It’s the WAR Department!

OMNI’S WWW IS DEDICATED TO ENDING THE US ENDLESS WARFARE STATE

January 22, Celebrate! The First Anniversary of the Entry into Force of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW).  Link globally around the world at orepa.org.
Also Bring the Treaty and the Struggle to End Nuclear Weapons to Arkansas: by subscribing to The Nuclear Resister.   Some of the articles in the Dec. 15, 2021 number:  “Digging for Peace: Resisting Nuclear Weapons; “Resisting the International Arms Trade Across England”; “Surprise Arrests in Two States for Drone War Foe”; “Day of Mourning Statement” by Leonard Peltier;

HELEN KELLER AGAINST WAR

Strike Against War, delivered before the Women’s Peace Party …

https://www.afb.org › helen-keller › books-essays-speeches

Strike against war, for without you no battles can be fought. Strike against manufacturing shrapnel and gas bombs and all other tools of murder. Strike against …
Transcription for Helen Keller’s speech “A Protest Against …

https://www.afb.org › HelenKellerArchive › p=helenkeller…

It is doubtful if the workers themselves can stop war: but they can do much to defend themselves against attacks upon their rights by by their fellow-workers in …

NONVIOLENCE

Past, Present, and Future  11-19-21

Dear Dick,
I’ve been reflecting on the power of learning from the past, the challenges of the present, and deep fear of the future. This weekend I had the joyous opportunity to celebrate with founders of the Movement for a New Society (MNS) as they gathered for their 50th Anniversary and later to join the War Resisters League (WRL) for their 100th. Both groups had enormous influence on my personal and political development and helped sustain me for the long and difficult work of social change. 

This time looking at our proud past came at the end of a week when the current team of interns welcomed back previous interns for a conversation (led by the great Sarah Nahar). We gathered to reflect on: Despair and Personal Power in a Time of Crisis: Strengthening ourselves for the work ahead.  . . .

At Nonviolence International, I am lucky to get to work with exceptional young leaders and I want you to meet them, learn from them, and have the opportunity to support them. 

We’ve just posted a new page on our website where you can get a sense of each of our interns and the work they are doing. For this email let me tell you this… they are amazing! Each one of the four are diving in to take on significant leadership on core projects. Click here to learn about their background, education, and plans for the future. 

NVI is committed to celebrating and learning from our proud history, grappling with the challenges of this moment, and rising to our obligation to help shape a better future. That commitment is made real in many ways including our Spotlight on Nonviolence video series at YouTube.com/Nonviolence . In that series you will find inspirational conversations conducted by our young interns with NV leaders of all ages. You can meet our three wonderful Spotlight cohosts here. Recent videos include conversations with George Lakey of MNS and Joanne Sheehan of WRL. Both of these exceptional leaders shaped my life through their powerful examples and deep intellects. Seeing them in conversation with NVI interns is a joy for me. Hope it will be for you too. 

I’ll close with a few inspirational quotations from Civil Rights Legend, Rev. James Lawson, who recently led a workshop I attended. He said, “In the 21st century, we must have bold NV movements that make all we did in the 20th century look anemic. If we don’t create these sustained creative campaigns humanity may not be able to sustain itself.” 

Jim said, “I am neither hopeless about this or helpless. I marvel at the awakening that has been going on for the last 60 years. It is astonishing to me. Having grown up in the 30s and 40s, the awakening that I see is the consequence of intense struggle that has been largely the impact of a NV awakening.”

He told us, “Somewhere in the US today there is a group that is planning NV campaigns that will eclipse all we’ve done in the past.”

Someone asked an important question, “Can we build an intergenerational NV movement for peace and justice?” This wise elder answered… clearly and without hesitation… “YES, YES YES, of course we can. We are already doing so.”

Please help us make that vision a reality by:

1.    Watching the new Spotlight on Nonviolence videos they have created and sharing them with friends, family, and your larger networks. The almighty algorithm requires me to say, “please like and subscribe.” 

2.    Following us on all social media – YouTube, Twitter and Facebook and ask others to do so. 

Be Well, 

David Hart, Co-Director

PS Our wonderful new partner Solidary 2020 and Beyond organized recent impressive webinars we were proud to co-sponsor. Please check them out.

Nonviolence International
http://www.nonviolenceinternational.net/
Nonviolence International
PO Box 39127, Friendship Station NW, Washington, DC 20016, United States
This email was sent to j.dick.bennett@gmail.com.

A “peacetime” military  10-26-21

Effort to Repeal AUMF removed from National Defense Authorization Act, Push to repeal Iraq war powers snags in overloaded Senate
As the NDAA goes down to the wire, the congressional attempt to reclaim AUMFs is a casualty of war.
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/12/07/congress-aumf-war-powers-repeal-scrapped-523888

What can I do?  Your car is a mobile, miniature billboard: Two good ads: I’m Goin’ Broke Payin’ for War.    It’s the WAR Department.

58.   WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS, #58, January 26, 2022  https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2021/09/hank-kaminskys-peace-rock.html

The following thirty US Peacemakers are named on the sculpture “Peace Rock” by Hank Kaminsky.  The sculpture is located near the entrance to the OMNI Center for Peace, Justice, and Ecology, and is described in WWW 40, September 22, 2021. 

Jane Addams (1860-1935) co-founded the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, opposed   U.S. entering WWI, “one of the great leaders in the American tradition of nonviolence.”

Joan Baez (194I-), human rights activist, jailed twice for demonstrating against the Vietnam War and U.S. interventions in Southeast Asia, supported war tax resistance and political prisoners.

Adin Ballou (l803- 1890) founded the Hopedale Community utopian experiment, significant adherent of Christian non-resistance and nonviolence, influenced Tolstoy and Gandhi.

Daniel (1921) and Philip (1923-) Berrigan, leaders of the Catholic non-violent anti-war and anti-nuclear   movement, both often imprisoned. Philip and his wife, Elizabeth McAlister, founded the resistance center, Jonah House, and the publication, Year One, and have been active in Plowshares actions.   Daniel has won many literary prizes for his poetry and play, The Trial of the Catonsville Nine.

Elise (1920-) and Kenneth (1910- 1993) Boulding, founders of the International PEACE Research Association (PRA) and its North American Affiliate, the Consortium on Peace Research, Education, and
Development (COPRED).  Among their many books, he authored Stable Peace, she Building a Global Civil Culture.

Randolph Bourne (I886-1918), socialist, fervent opponent of U.S. intervention in WWI and the war-making state.

Elihu Burritt (I8I0-I879), founded the first International Peace Society (1854), edited the Advocate of Peace and Universal Brotherhood for the American Peace Society which anticipated the League of  Nations and the World Court.

Cesar Chavez (1917-I923), with Dolores Huerta co-founded the United Farm Workers, both committed to nonviolence.

Noam Chomsky (1928-), anarchist and socialist opponent of U.S. imperialism and the

military/industrial/congressional/media/university complex of war-making.

Sr. Maura Clarke (1931 -1980), member of the Maryknoll order, friend to victims of repressive governments, murdered by the El Salvadoran military.

Frances Crowe (1919-), Quaker, anti-war (Vietnam) and anti-nuclear activist, anti-draft counselor, prisoner, recipient of awards from Catholic, Protestant, and other groups.

Dorothy Day (1897-1980), Catholic, war-resister, defender of the poor. civil-disobedient. writer, founder (1933) of The Catholic Worker, “the most remarkable person in the history of American Catholicism

Eugene Debs (1855-1926), five times the Socialist Party’s nominee for president of the U.S.. imprisoned for opposing W.W.I.. defender of the poor, co-founder of the I WW.

David Dellinger (1915 –2004), imprisoned for conscientious objection during WWII, edited Liberation after the war, a journal of radical pacifism, co-chair of the New Mobilization committee to end the war in Vietnam, one of the Chicago 8.

Elizabeth Gurley Flynn (1890- 1964), communist, chair of International Labor Defense, co-founder of the   ACLU, victim of Red Scares of 1919 and McCarthyism, imprisoned 1955-57: she was the “rebel girl” of Joe Hill’s song.

Allen Ginsberg (l925-l 997), poet, opposed the Vietnam War (the only person on the sculpture not in either of True’s books; a favorite peacemaker of the sculptor).

Martin Luther King, Jr. (I 929-1968), Baptist minister, advocate of non-violence, writer, orator; leader of Civil Rights Movement I950s- 1960s, opponent of Vietnam War, prisoner.

Kathy Knight (1938-), a leader of Catholic non-violent peace movement against the Vietnam War.

Meridel LeSueur ( 1900- 1997), writer, socialist, blacklisted during McCarthy era, opponent of nuclear  weapons, feminist.

Denise Levertov (1923- 1997) opposed the Vietnam War and wrote numerous poems on war and violence.

Mennonites, one of the three historic peace churches (with Quakers and Brethren), oppose war and killing as contrary to the gospel.

Thomas Merton (1915-1968), Trappist monk, urged nonviolent social change among Catholics, edited  Breakthrough to Peace and Thomas Merton on Peace.

Quakers, the Society of Friends, one of the three historic peace churches, helped develop principle of conscientious objection, committed to nonviolence.

Muriel Rukeyser (l9l3-1980), prize-winning poet, imprisoned for opposing Vietnam War draft and nuclear arms, as president of PEN (international organization of poets, essays, and novelists) traveled the world to protect imprisoned writers.

Mulford Sibley (1912-1989), teacher, writer (The Ouiet Battle, 1968, The Obligation to Disobey. 1970), war resister, pacifist.

William Stafford (1914- 1993), imprisoned in Arkansas for conscientious objection to WWII, became an award-winning writer and lifetime war resister.

Lucy Stone (l818-1893), abolitionist and women’s rights activist.

Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), jailed for “civil disobedient” tax resistance against the U.S. invasion of Mexico ( I846), author of “Civil I Disobedience,” one of the most influential critics of unjust state violence.

Annabel WoIfson (1915-I983) opposed war, conscription, imperialism.

Howard Zinn (1902-), historian:  SNCC: The New Abolitionists (1964), A People`s History of the United States (198O), war protester.

True discusses many other peacemakers in his two books. For example, he says of Ammon Hennacy (I893-1970): “the one man revolution,” draft resister who served many years in prison during WWI, arrested 32 times for civil disobedience against nuclear weapons, war, and capital punishment.  That is, choosing my thirty peacemakers was very difficult, so great are they all, and became sometimes a toss of a coin.  

Recommended reading:

Ackerman, Peter, and Jack Duvall.  A Force More Powerful: A Century of Nonviolent Conflict.   St. Martin’s, 2000.

Adolf, Antony.  Peace: A World History.  Polity, 2009.

Commoner, Barry. Making Peace with the Planet. New York: Pantheon, 1990.

Gay, Peter. The Cultivation of Hatred. Vol. III of The Bourgeois Experience: Victoria to Freud. New

  York: Norton, 1993.

Grossman, Dave, Lt. Col. On Killing The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society.

  Boston. Little, Brown, 1997.

Hanh, Thich Nhat. Peace Is Every Step, the Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life. New York: Bantam.

McKean, John. Places for Peace, London: Architects for Peace, 1989.

McSorley, Richard.  New Testament Basis of Peacemaking. Herald, 1985.

Mosse, George, Fallen Soldiers. Reshaping the Memory of the World Wars, New York: Oxford UP. 1990.

Polner, Murray and Thomas Woods, Jr., eds.  We Who Dared to Say No to War: American Antiwar Writing from 1812 to Now.  Basic Books, 2008.

Sharp, Gene.  The Politics of Nonviolent Action.  Porter Sargent, 1973.

Smith-Christopher, Daniel, ed.  Subverting Hatred: The Challenge of Nonviolence in Religious Traditions.      Boston Research Center, 1998.

Winter, Jay. Sites of memory, sites of mourning: The Great War in European Cultural History. Cambridge:  Cambridge UP, 1995.

https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2021/09/hank-kaminskys-peace-rock.html

                                                  Dick Bennett

59.   WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS, February 2, 2022 

http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2022/02/59-war-watch-wednesdays.html

Abolish Nuclear Weapons
Ground Zero Center For Nonviolent Action
US Presidential/Media Complex for War. 
Norman Solomon, War Made Easy

Abolish Nuclear Weapons: Ground Zero Center For Nonviolent Action.   Its publication:  Ground Zero.  Volume 27.1 (January 2022) exemplifies Catholic anti-war dedication.

Denny Duffell.  “The Root of War Is Fear.”

Excellent essay giving a sketch of nuclear weapons protest in Seattle area, presentation of two main explanations for continuing to build and threaten use of nuclear weapons (insanity and profit/MIC), critique of Catholic anti-nuclear opposition, condemnation of US threats to use nuclear weapons (“at least 30 times from 1946 through 2006”), plans to devote $1.7 trillion to update (Obama), and more.   (Duffell is an ordained Catholic deacon of the Seattle Archdiocese and a regional coordinator for Pax Christi.)

Dave Hall.  “Biden Can Deescalate the Threat of Nuclear War.”  An equally outstanding denunciation of Biden (and Obama and both Parties) and Putin for having enshrined nuclear weapons as necessary evils in the service of deterrence.  Biden’s upcoming Nuclear Posture Review could set a new goal of  “real reductions” in “weapons of mass murder.”  (Hall is a member of Ground Zero and past president of Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility.)

Cathy Kelly, who I hope will be recognized as a saint by the Catholic Church, is interviewed, entitled “Deploying Love in a Permanent Warfare State.”  And more.

Oppose US Presidential/Media Complex for War. 
Norman Solomon, War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death (2005).  

Challenging US Pro-War Myths

      The US is a nation of war.  It began by war; it conquered continental USA–some 500 Indian nations–by war; it grabbed a third of Mexico by war; it subdued the Philippines by war; in WWI it joined one side in a colonial war of massive slaughter; since WWII its wars—some 40 interventions and invasions– have been virtually ceaseless.  As one historian wrote, the US has killed thousands of “enemy” soldiers and millions of civilians by war.

      How was that possible?    When a warrior hawk president and his advisors, whether liberal or conservative, want war, the president begins by besieging the public.  From the outset, warrior leaders, all of whom represent themselves as the commander in chief, seek the impression of consensus behind the president.

     His main weapon is media spin.  A media campaign for hearts and minds at home, means going all out to persuade us that the next war is as good as a war can be—necessary, justified, righteous, and worth any number killed.

     US leaders follow 2 steps to war: The first is this battle over public opinion, and support  for  war  is  the  first  victory.  Conquest is the second—since WWII, to name a few of the invaded countries:  Haiti, Guatemala, Dominican Republic, Chile, Grenada, Nicaragua, Panama, Afghanistan, Iraq, War on Terror!  The people of the US have been sold a succession of wars, in their names and with their tax dollars, time after time. 

    Among all the methods of propaganda, one of the most obvious is fear-mongering.  The president’s interventionists, his congressional supporters,  and mainstream media enablers   insist that military action is necessary to prevent a whirlwind of calamities.

     Less obvious is the deployment of unexamined myths repeated so often for so many years, for so many generations, most citizens take them for granted.  The march to war has been a 24-7 advertising campaign inseparable from the constant US self-aggrandizement and cultural reinforcement for war.  Here are a dozen of the many MYTHS that keep us ready for war:

The US is a Fair and Noble Superpower

Our Leaders Will Do Everything they Can to Avoid War

Our Leaders Would Never Lie to Us

The Enemy Is a Modern-Day Hitler

The US Stands for Human Rights

The War Is Not about Oil or Corporate Profits

We Had to Invade to Protect US Citizens

The Enemy Is the Aggressor, Not Us

Opposing the War Means Siding with the Enemy

Even if the War is Wrong We Must Support Our Troops

The Pentagon Fights Its Wars as Humanely as Possible

Our Soldiers Are Heroes, Theirs Are Inhuman

Withdrawal Would Cripple US Credibility

     These have been features of US bragging,  self-branding as a good nation and people, and therefore as good war-makers.  But they have not always been successful, especially if the war is lengthy.  The US was defeated in Vietnam after over fifty thousand US troops and some 3 million Vietnamese were killed.   The US invasion of Cuba was stopped at its shores, which intensified the US economic invasion. 

     Hermann Goering offers a partial explanation of public war acquiescence:   “…of course, the people don’t want war. . . .But it is a simple matter to drag the people along. . . .the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders [for war].  That is easy.  All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce [opponents] for lack of patriotism.”

     But Goering was generalizing from a nation lacking robust democratic institutions.  The US has had those institutions, and Goering unintentionally suggested how we might strengthen them to prevent or stop wars, at least to make it less easy for our leaders to be sheepherders. 

     Challenging fear-mongering wherever and whenever by vigorous application of knowledge through the First Amendment can be a safeguard against falsehoods and manipulations by war demagogues.   Sturdy critical thinking in the public schools, questioning all the leaders and myths that grease the wheels of war, can be another bulwark against the Democratic/Republican War Party. 

Norman Solomon, War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death (2005).  

Film based on the book  directed by Loretta Alper and Jeremy Earp.

War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death. Written and directed by Loretta Alper and Jeremy Earp. Produced by Loretta Alper. Based on the book by Norman Solomon. Narrated by Sean Penn. 

The Military-Industrial-Media Complex | FAIR  https://fair.org/extra/the-military-industrial-media-complex/

But on the large TV networks, such voices were so dominant that they amounted to a virtual monopoly in the “marketplace of ideas.” This article is excerpted from Norman Solomon’s book, War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death (John Wiley & Sons, 2005). The first chapter of the book can …

60.   WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS, February 9, 2022  http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2022/02/omni-war-watch-wednesdays-60-february-9.html
Conversion Movement from war spending to peace:
Mandy Smithberger, Shifting tax dollars from fear and militarization to hope and human needs.
Michael Klare, Stopping the encirclement of China and Russia.

jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2022/02/omni-war-watch-wednesdays-60-february-9.html   

“US should shift military spending to pandemic and climate change.”  Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (11-26-21).

The COVID-19 pandemic vividly illuminated the many ways in which the American approach to national security has been fundamentally focused on the wrong threats, writes Mandy Smithberger, director of the Center for Defense Information at the Project On Government Oversight. Read more.

TOMGRAM

Michael Klare, Welcome to the New Cold War in Asia.   JANUARY 13, 2022    https://tomdispatch.com/none-dare-call-it-encirclement/ 

For a moment, imagine an upside-down military world. Instead of U.S. guided-missile destroyers and other ships regularly carrying out “freedom of navigation operations” near Chinese-claimed islands in the South China Sea and such destroyers no less regularly passing through the Strait of Taiwan between that disputed island and the People’s Republic of China, consider how any administration would react if Chinese naval vessels were ever more provocatively patrolling off the coast of California. You know that official Washington would quite literally go nuts and we’d find ourselves at the edge of war almost instantly.

Or, in a similar fashion, imagine that Russia had moved nuclear weapons close to the southern Mexican border, was selling advanced weaponry and offering other military aid to Mexico, and acting as we’ve been doing in relation to Ukraine. Washington would be up in arms, again all too literally. Don’t misunderstand me: I hold no torch for either Chinese President Xi Jinping or Russian President Vladimir Putin. (And I suspect, by the way, that if Putin were foolish enough to invade Ukraine he might find himself involved in an updated version of the Soviet Union’s disastrous Afghan War of the 1980s in a far more explosive part of the world.) I’m merely pointing out that the American urge to be militarily anywhere it wants to be on this planet in any fashion it chooses might not be quite what’s needed these days. A new Cold War on an ever hotter and more pandemic planet?  Just what we really (don’t) need.

And by the way, as TomDispatch regular Michael Klare, author most recently of All Hell Breaking Loose: The Pentagon’s Perspective on Climate Change, points out, one of the other wonders of our moment is that, in a country where Republicans and Democrats can essentially agree on nothing — certainly not on spending money on the American people — the subject never in question is what’s still called “defense” policy. Unfortunately, globally speaking, such spending of your tax dollars couldn’t be more offensive in every sense of the word. In this, fierce as the Biden administration has proved in Cold War terms, Klare makes it clear today that Congress is proving even fiercer.  . . .  Tom

 MICHAEL KLARE.    None Dare Call It “Encirclement”:Washington Tightens the Noose around China. 
The word “encirclement” does not appear in the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), signed into law by President Joe Biden on December 27th, or in other recent administration statements about its foreign and military policies. Nor does that classic Cold War era term “containment” ever come up. Still, America’s top leaders have reached a consensus on a strategy to encircle and contain the latest great power, China, with hostile military alliances, thereby thwarting its rise to full superpower status.

The gigantic 2022 defense bill — passed with overwhelming support from both parties — provides a detailed blueprint for surrounding China with a potentially suffocating network of U.S. bases, military forces, and increasingly militarized partner states.  MORE   https://tomdispatch.com/none-dare-call-it-encirclement/

61.  WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS, February 16, 2022
Veterans for Peace:  Diplomacy, Not War
Ackerman and Merriman, Civil Resistance, Nonviolence v. Tyranny
The Nation Magazine against Violence, War

VETERANS FOR PEACE, 2-9-21

Diplomacy, Not War! End the U.S. Role in Escalating the Ukraine Crisis
With the escalating crisis on the border of Ukraine, many chapters gathered in impromptu demonstrations to call on the U.S. government to use diplomacy, not war, and to back down from any military engagements with Russia. You can see the full list of chapters that took action in our Photo Album!

Tune in!
Feb 11 – VFP Nuclear Abolition Working Group meeting with guest Ray McGovern speaking on “Why Is Putin So Feisty on Ukraine?” at 6 pm Eastern, 3 pm Pacific.  Zoom link

Take Action!
Call your House Member on the Capitol Hill Switchboard (202) 224-3121
For sample language, check out this letter from VFP Chapter 102 in Milwaukee to Members of Congress! 

·       Or use this script: ” Please vote NO on S.3488 or H.R. 6470 to send $500 million more in weapons to Ukraine. We want negotiations, not escalation of the conflict with Russia. There is no military solution, only a diplomatic one. Thank you.”

The Checklist to End Tyranny: How Dissidents Will Win 21st Century Civil Resistance Campaigns by Peter Ackerman and Hardy Merriman.   International Center on Nonviolent Conflict, 2021.  150pp.

Publisher’s Overview – 

Today the deadliest conflicts are not between states but rather within them, pitting tyrants against the populations they oppress. Over a century of data shows that civil resistance campaigns-employing strikes, boycotts, mass protests, and many other nonviolent tactics-are the most powerful means for societies to confront authoritarians. The Checklist to End Tyranny is dedicated to enabling dissidents to become more strategic in their thinking and therefore more skillful in their quest to achieve democracy and human rights. This volume is also a unique resource in helping professionals in the foreign policy and democracy promotion communities to understand at a granular level what it takes for pro-democracy activists to end the dictatorships they are living under. The stakes could not be higher. If the world is to have a Fourth Democratic Wave expanding freedom over oppression, then civil resistance campaigns will lead the way.

  Customer Reviews

The Nation Magazine’s major force as an anti-war magazine was in high gear in its Sept. 20/27, 2021 number.   Dick.
Cover: On a large bloodstain, in large letters: “20 Years of Bloodshed and Delusion,” the motif of the number repeated throughout.  Followed by: “Six wars, millions killed, trillions wasted, and a plague of suffering inflicted on Muslims around the world.”

p. 4, Editorial, “Repeal the AUMF Now.” A history lesson and appeal to end the open-ended 2002 War Powers Resolution.
5, “Letter from Kabul.”  A journalist’s account of the last few days of the occupation which embodied the “failures of the past 20 years of foreign intervention.”
7,  Jeet Heer, “Cheerleaders of the Forever Wars,” a scathing denunciation of the journalists who supported the War OF Terror.
11, Aida Chavez, “Barbara Lee Has to Vote, “ on her lone vote in House and Senate in 2001 against the resolution to give President George W. Bush sweeping authorization to use military force in Afghanistan.
13, Photo, David Bacon, “No War in Our Name,” the tens of thousands of US citizens who protested the invasion of Afghanistan and the harassment of Muslims in the US.
13, Jarod Facundo, “By the Numbers,” statistics on the US “War on Terror. “
14-17, Tariq Ali, “The Foreign Master’s Rage,” illustration repeating Cover, Ali excoriates “war criminal Donald Rumsfeld,” President Bush, and all his top administration including Condoleeza.  In one way she is the worst of the lot for turning her major criminality into a lucrative lecture circuit, charging the UAF $170,000.   The Iraq War “has been a huge political and military and [and moral] catastrophe for the US and its NATO camp followers.”  Ali is the author of many books, including The Forty Year War in Afghanistan.
18-19,  Neta Crawford, ‘The Numbers”:  the costs, the death toll, the price of war, the war chest, the peaks of war spending.
20-23, 27, Mustafa Bayoumi, “The Making of the ‘Muslim American.’” “After 9-11, Muslims in America stopped being a religious group and became a targeted, racialized minority.”
24-27, Andrew Cockburn, “Why America Goes to War.”  “Mondey drives the US military machine.”   Adapted from The Spoils of War by Cockburn, Verso, 2021.
28-31, Clair McDougall, “Gitmo’s Forgotten Ex-Detaineees.”
32-36, Samuel Moyn, “The Terror of War,” rev. of 2 books: Reign of Terror: How the 9-11 Era Destabilized America and Produced Trump by Spencer Ackerman, and Subtle Tools: The Dismantling of American Democracy from the War on Terror to Donald Trump  These two books trace “what US excesses and ravages have done to America itself .”  .  Moyn is the author of Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War.

62.  WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS, #62, February 23, 2022  https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2022/02/omni-war-watch-wednesdays-62-february.html

 WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS, #63, March 2, 2022

Glenn Petersen.  War and the Arc of Human Experience
Todd Miller, Build Bridges, Not Walls

https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2022/03/omni-war-watch-wednesdays-63-march-2.html

GLENN PETERSEN. War and the Arc of Human Experience. Rowman and Littlefield, 2021.

Glenn Petersen flew seventy combat missions in Vietnam when he was nineteen, launching from an aircraft carrier in the Tonkin Gulf. He’d sought out the weighty responsibilities and hazardous work. But why? What did the cultural architecture of the society he grew up in have to do with the way he went to war? In this book he looks at the war from an anthropological perspective because that’s how he’s made his living in all the subsequent years: it’s how he sees the world. While anthropologists write about the military and war these days, they do so from the perspective of researchers. What makes this a fully original contribution is that Petersen brings to the page the classic methodology of ethnographers, participant observation—a kind of total immersion. He writes from the dual perspectives of an insider and a researcher and seeks in the specifics of lived experience some larger conclusions about humans’ social lives in general. Petersen was long oblivious to what had happened to him in Vietnam and he fears that young men and women who’ve been fighting the US military’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq might be similarly unaware of what’s happened to them.    Author  TOC  Reviews  Features

Subjects:Social Science / Violence in Society, Biography & Autobiography / Military, Biography & Autobiography / Personal Memoirs, History / Military / Vietnam War, Psychology / Psychopathology / Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

BUILD BRIDGES, NOT WALLS

Here’s a glimpse of Todd Miller’s beliefs and his narrative method at the end of his latest book, Build Bridges, Not Walls: A Journey to a World Without Borders.  City Lights Books, 2021.  [This book will also be mentioned in a Climate Memo Mondays, for it is about building bridges through the wars and chaos of the climate calamity.]

    He opens in the middle of an anecdote (a little story, 117-18) about Giovanni’s lacerated feet after his long journey to reach the US border from his home in Guatemala, heading to Dallas where his brothers worked.  Fortunately he had found a clinic and emergency medic, Cordelia Finley, to wash and medicate his raw blisters.  Miller locates him in Sasabe, Mexico, one half mile from the border, not only geographically but in relationship to the other stories he has told about people and borders: Juan Carlos from the opening pages and throughout (a main thread), Alfaro in Altar “the man searching for his missing daughter,” and armed Border Patrol Agent Lenihan, in whose rescuing, bloodied arms the refugee Roberto had recently died.  The single paragraph, as in classic novels, connects to walls and bridges in many major directions from beginning, middle, to end and back again.  

   After three paragraphs providing details of Giovanni’s desperate journey and Cordelia’s merciful healing, Cordelia makes a potent connection with the “trench foot” of World War I and, from that sharp physical image, with her view of the US-Mexican border as a “low-intensity war zone.” 

     The entire Story is told this way in rich permutations and diverse sequences of anecdotes, connections/contexts, commentaries. To make a grammatical analogy, it’s like the most common of sentences in the English language, the cumulative, which can chain endlessly.   In this instance, the hugely enlarged world martial context is followed by one even larger—the climate emergency (paragraph 6): Giovanni is from a town in the corredor seco, where “droughts have risen in intensity over the last decade,” encompassing “large parts of Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador.”   A UN report is mentioned.  We realize we have returned to a major recurrent theme: where do all these refugees come from, and why?

64.  WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS, March 9, 2022

http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2022/03/war-watch-wednesdays-64.html
Tomlinson, Media Reporting OMNI Russia/Ukraine demonstration
 US, NATO, Ukraine, Russia

US Dem/Repub War Party vs. Old Soviet/RussoPhobia

Media Reports on Our Peace Protests

Dear Friends,

Below are the  media reports from our protest on Saturday, including more detailed information about the causes of the war, NATO, and the consequences of potential world war, specifically the threat of nuclear winter.  The first three are from our Northwest Arkansas television stations (KNWA, Channel 5 & 40/29 News), and the last is from the University of Arkansas student newspaper. The Democrat Gazette also covered it, but I cant find published links online. Also, here is the speech I wrote for the protest, including hyperlinked references.

Take care,

Abel Tomlinson

KNWA: Peaceful protest on Ukraine War in Fayetteville

https://www.nwahomepage.com/news/peaceful-protest-on-ukraine-war-in-fayetteville/

5 NEWS: War protest takes place in Washington Co.

https://www.5newsonline.com/video/news/local/war-protest-takes-place-in-washington-co/527-da21d894-46e7-4758-9f19-52bfa6ee92b1

40/29 News: Fayetteville, Arkansas protesters demonstrate against war in Europe

https://www.4029tv.com/article/arkansas-anti-war-protest-ukraine-russia/39353007#

Small group of locals protests perceived U.S. escalation of war in Ukraine
https://www.uatrav.com/news/article_baa2cd7c-9d90-11ec-8adf-affe5b40d06b.html

Abel Tomlinson
OMNI Peace Action Committee, Chair
Arkansas Nonviolence Alliance, Founder
AbelTomlinson.com   Facebook | Twitter
(479)283-5762

The West, Ukraine, Putin, NATO OR NEUTRALITY
In 2014, Prof. Mearsheimer wrote “Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the West’s Fault.”    In 2015, Mearsheimer gave a talk on the topic at University of Chicago at which he predicted the events of the past month.  “… the West is leading Ukraine down the Primrose Path, and the end result is that Ukraine is going to get wrecked,” he said. “And I believe that the policy I’m advocating, which his neutralizing Ukraine and then building it up economically, and then getting it out of the competition between Russia on one side and NATO on the other side, is the best thing that could happen to the Ukrainians.”  See the full article (March 5, 2022) about Mearsheimer in OMNI’s Russia Newsletter/Anthology #13. https://chicagocitywire.com/stories/621316813-u-chicago-students-demand-political-science-professor-mearsheimer-change-his-views-on-russia-v-ukraine

The US Dem/Repub War Party Senate
Democratic Minority Leader Senator Schumer speaking: The best thing democratic nations of world can do for the Ukraine is disable Russia’s economy, which the sanctions intend, including stopping Russia’s  oil and gas supply to the West. 
One problem is that the Ukraine is not a democracy..  The democratically elected pro-Russian president of the Ukraine was kicked out of office by a coup that led eventually to the present president.   Ukraine: Country Profile | Freedom House https://freedomhouse.org › country › ukraine  Categorized as a Transitional or Hybrid regime, Ukraine receives a Democracy Percentage of 39 out of 100 in the Nations in Transit 2021 report.
Another is that Putin is desperate and has nuclear weapons.  Perhaps Mearsheimer is right that the US goal is not to rescue Ukraine among democratic nations, but to crush Russia once and for all, after trying for a hundred years.  Dick

65.  WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS, #65, MARCH 16, 2022

Walter Hixson, Imperialism and War: The History Americans Need to Own.  Institute for Research, 2021.

Publisher’s Synopsis
Transcending the mythology of “American exceptionalism,” the acclaimed historian Walter Hixson unveils a long history of war and imperialism, one that is deeply embedded in the American national DNA. From Columbus to the “forever wars” of the modern Middle East, Americans have sought imperial domination over other peoples, invariably deemed inferior, and have regularly chosen to go to war with them.

The consequences of the nation’s violent aggression have been severe yet not fully analyzed owing to the powerful boundaries erected by patriotic nationalism. Americans have viewed themselves as a “chosen people” and the United States as a “beacon and liberty,” the champion of the “free world,” but this self-serving discourse has served to enable continental and overseas imperialism and war.

Americans typically professed to go to war because they “had to” or to make the world “safe for democracy,” but only rarely were these scenarios in play. Rather, Americans usually chose to go to war, and US foreign policy rarely produced or even sought to produce democratic outcomes. Instead, the United States often engaged in violent repression of other peoples and bolstered dictatorial regimes, including those engaged in mass murder.

US war and imperialism frequently proved ineffectual, as they were often grounded in dramatic misperceptions. Foreign aggression also often sowed the seeds for “blowback” attacks and the continuation or renewal of conflict and warfare. Moreover–and rarely analyzed–continental and overseas aggression also undermined democracy, civil liberties, and progressive reform on the home front.

Rooted in decades of study and delivered in crystal clear and direct language, this book is must-reading for anyone wishing to go beyond the clichés that typically structure discussions of the history and contemporary prospects of American foreign relations. In a bold conclusion Hixson outlines the desperate need for adoption of a new paradigm of “cooperative internationalism” to transcend the nation’s penchant for war and imperialism fueled by national self-worship.  MORE in WWW #102.

66.  WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS, MARCH 23, 2022

TomGram, TomDispatch, February 6, 2022.  Nan Levinson, How (Not) to Stop America’s Wars

US defense to its workforce: Nuclear war can be won 

By Alan Kaptanoglu, Stewart Prager., Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists February 2, 2022.

Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev once said that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought,” and five major nuclear weapon states, including the United States, repeated this statement earlier this year. Yet many in the US defense establishment—the military, government, think tanks, and industry—promote the perception that a nuclear war can be won and fought. Moreover, they do so in a voice that is influential, respected, well-funded, and treated with deference. The US defense leadership’s methodical messaging to its workforce helps shape the views of this massive, multi-sector constituency that includes advocates, future leaders, and decision makers. It advances a view of nuclear weapon policies that intensifies and accelerates the new nuclear arms race forming between the United States, China, and Russia. 

Perhaps these beliefs are unsurprising, coming as they are from the defense leaders of a global superpower. But given humankind’s stake in the information that US service members receive regarding their roles in the nuclear weapons complex, US defense leadership messaging warrants a spotlight. This is especially necessary, given the current crisis in Ukraine. 

The 23-chapter Guide to Nuclear Deterrence in the Age of Great Power Competition  [ https://atloa.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Guide-to-Nuclear-Deterrence-in-the-Age-of-Great-Power-Competition-Lowther.pdf] provides an excellent and representative case study for examining this critical messaging. This guide is published by the Louisiana Tech Research Institute, which provides support for the US Air Force Global Strike Command. . . .The guide’s messaging is comprehensive but dangerously skewed.   MORE
https://thebulletin.org/2022/02/us-defense-to-its-workforce-nuclear-war-can-be-won/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=ThusdayNewsletter02032022&utm_content=NuclearRisk_NuclearWarCanBeWon_02022022 

67.  WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS, #67, MARCH 30, 2022

Webinar on Lies of Empire from CovertAction Magazine
Making the Forever War: Marilyn B. Young on the Culture and Politics of American Militarism. 

Teach-in Webinar – War in Ukraine: How the Lies of Empire Stand in the Way of a Diplomatic Resolution.  Digging deep to unearth the facts behind the war in Ukraine.   THIS FRIDAY – APRIL 1 – AT 7pm EST  [Outstanding panelists. –D]
To register, send an email to: Register@CovertActionMagazine.com.
You will receive a reply with the Zoom Webinar link.

The world has been horrified by recent events in Ukraine.

The mainstream media has not been reporting the facts including a hidden history of nefarious covert activities that fit with the past pattern of U.S. foreign policy.

This Teach-in Webinar will illuminate the backstory the media has not reported, and challenge the dominant narrative about the war. 

We will further raise concerns about the growing threat of nuclear conflagration while provoking discussion about what the peace movement should now be doing.

Speakers include:
Ray McGovern, Former CIA Analyst and Russia expert, founder Veterans Intelligence Professionals for Sanity 
John Kiriakou, CIA whistleblower and Radio Sputnik host
Jeremy Kuzmarov, CAM Managing Editor and author of The Russians Are Coming, Again: The First Cold War as Tragedy, the Second as Farce

Dilyana Gaytandzhieva, journalist, exposed U.S. biolabs in Ukraine

Horace Campbell, international peace & justice scholar, Prof. of African American Studies & Political Science, Syracuse University

Gerald Horne, historian, author, Chair of History and African American Studies at the University of Houston

James Carden, Adviser U.S.-Russia bilateral commission during the Obama administration & Ex. Editor of The American Committee for East-West accord

Chris Kaspar de Ploeg, author Ukraine in the Crossfire

Andrei Martyanov, expert on Russian military affairs, author The Real Revolution in Military Affairs

Ron Ridenour, peace activist, author The Russian Peace Threat 

To register, send an email to: Register@CovertActionMagazine.com.
You will receive a reply with the Zoom Webinar link.

Making the Forever War

Marilyn B. Young on the Culture and Politics of American Militarism.  Edited by Mark Philip Bradley and Mary L. Dudziak  University of Massachusetts Press, 2021.   Culture and Politics in the Cold War and Beyond Series.  232 Pages

The late historian Marilyn B. Young, a preeminent voice on the history of U.S. military conflict, spent her career reassessing the nature of American global power, its influence on domestic culture and politics, and the consequences felt by those on the receiving end of U.S. military force. At the center of her inquiries was a seeming paradox: How can the United States stay continually at war, yet Americans pay so little attention to this militarism?

Making the Forever War brings Young’s articles and essays on American war together for the first time, including never before published works. Moving from the first years of the Cold War to Korea, Vietnam, and more recent “forever” wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Young reveals the ways in which war became ever-present, yet more covert and abstract, particularly as aerial bombings and faceless drone strikes have attained greater strategic value. For Young, U.S. empire persisted because of, not despite, the inattention of most Americans. The collection concludes with an afterword by prominent military historian Andrew Bacevich.

68.  WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS,#68, APRIL 6, 2022
David Swanson, A Global Security System
Joe Hanania,  . . . A Study of the United States Empire

David Swanson.  A Global Security System: An Alternative to War.  5^th Ed.   Imagine if there were a concise, straightforward book that explained key methods for avoiding a crisis like the one in Ukraine, for resolving it now that it’s happening, for resolving similar crises around the world that are not in the media, and for creating structures of government, society, and culture that eliminate war going forward. There is.

Learn more and get the paperback, ebook, PDF, Audiobook, summary version, or online study guide.

Books on US Empire published around the world
Joe Hanania..  Many books and articles have told the history of US wars of aggression.  An earlier, notable chronicler of US imperial aggressions is William Blum.   Another is Joe Hanania.  I learned of Hanania’s two books, self-published in 2011 in Nouic, France, in a review by Irwin Spiegelman, “Two Books from France Inspired by Thomas Paine,” published in the Bulletin of Thomas Paine’s Friends (Spring 2012).  Where the USA Went Wrong—A Study of the United States Empire:  “The bulk of the book catalogs America’s wars as well as its overt and covert interventions….It is a long and shameful list….”    Hanania’s second book is Democracy? Not Yet, Perhaps Never.  Spiegelman: “Hanania is part of the growing chorus of critics warning that democracy, particularly in America, is in serious trouble.”

69.  WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS, #69, APRIL 13, 2022

Jonathan Cook, a NATO war against Russia on the cheap.
Schuller, Humanity’s Last Stand.

Excellent analysis by journalist Johnathan Cook:

Excerpt:

“The goal is not to ease Ukraine’s plight, or bring the two sides to the negotiating table, but to turn it into another quagmire for Russia, draining Moscow of manpower, firepower and treasure, just as the US partially succeeded in doing in Syria – and long before that, in the Soviet era, in Afghanistan.

This approach to rivals on the world stage has a long pedigree in Washington. In 1941, a few years before he became president, Harry Truman described the aim of the US in the Second World War as to bleed both Germany and Russia: “If we see that Germany is winning the war, we ought to help Russia; and if Russia is winning, we ought to help Germany, and in that way let them kill as many as possible.”

What is emerging is a NATO war against Russia on the cheap, with Ukraine serving as the battlefield and Ukrainians paying the price. A further advantage for Washington is that it can weaken Russia militarily in Ukraine while avoiding a direct confrontation with another nuclear power. “

Humanity’s Last Stand. Confronting Global Catastrophe by Mark Schuller. Foreword by Cynthia McKinney. Rutgers UP, 2021.   272 pages,    https://www.rutgersuniversitypress.org/humanitys-last-stand/9781978820876

Are we as a species headed towards extinction? As our economic system renders our planet increasingly inhospitable to human life, powerful individuals fight over limited resources, and racist reaction to migration strains the social fabric of many countries. How can we retain our humanity in the midst of these life-and-death struggles?
 
Humanity’s Last Stand dares to ask these big questions, exploring the interconnections between climate change, global capitalism, xenophobia, and white supremacy. As it unearths how capitalism was born from plantation slavery and the slaughter of Indigenous people, it also invites us to imagine life after capitalism. The book teaches its readers how to cultivate an anthropological imagination, a mindset that remains attentive to local differences even as it identifies global patterns of inequality and racism.
 
Surveying the struggles of disenfranchised peoples around the globe from frontline communities affected by climate change, to #BlackLivesMatter activists, to Indigenous water protectors, to migrant communities facing increasing hostility, anthropologist Mark Schuller argues that we must develop radical empathy in order to move beyond simply identifying as “allies” and start acting as “accomplices.” Bringing together the insights of anthropologists and activists from many cultures, this timely study shows us how to stand together and work toward a more inclusive vision of humanity before it’s too late.
More information and instructor resources (https://humanityslaststand.org)

70.  WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS, APRIL 20, 2022

http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2022/04/70-war-watch-wednesdays.html

BIDEN: Many more billions for war & nuclear weapons

“A Megaton of Waste”

The White House’s new defense budget lavishes money on America’s nuclear weapons program in the name of competing with China and Russia. It’s totally unnecessary.”

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/03/bidens-new-defense-budget-wastes-a-crazy-amount-of-money-on-new-nuclear-weapons.html  (Abel)

How Rising Temperatures Increase the Likelihood of Nuclear War

As climate changes stresses our human institutions, we are likely to face deadly conflicts over critical resources.

By Michael T. KlareTwitter

JANUARY 13, 2020

https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/nuclear-defense-climate-change/

Tell Congress: Cut the Pentagon budget and invest in our communities!: This week, President Biden proposed a budget of about $813,000,000,000 for military spending and nuclear weapons. This is an increase of about $31,000,000,000 over this year’s budget. Please join us in urging Congress to deliver better health care, schools, and jobs—not more money for weapons, war, and corporate defense contractors.   AFSC 4-2-22

71.  WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS #71, April 27, 2022

http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2022/05/war-watch-wednesdays-71.html

1. Noam Chomsky and Jeremy Scahill on Ukraine War, Media, Propaganda and Accountability
2. Ukrainian Academic Olga Baysha on The Real Zelensky
3. Caitlin Johnstone: Everyone’s Anti-War until the War Propaganda Starts
4. Pope Francis states the NATO may have provoked Ukraine War

Video: “Noam Chomsky and Jeremy Scahill on the Russia-Ukraine War, the Media, Propaganda, and Accountability.”

TRANSCEND VIDEOS, 25 Apr 2022

Jeremy Scahill | The Intercept – TRANSCEND Media Service

Video: https://www.transcend.org/tms/2022/04/noam-chomsky-and-jeremy-scahill-on-the-russia-ukraine-war-the-media-propaganda-and-accountability/

Noam Chomsky spoke with Jeremy Scahill in a wide-ranging discussion on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

14 Apr 2022 – The Russian invasion of Ukraine has now surpassed 50 days of sustained mass death and destruction. Despite several rounds of negotiations over the past seven weeks, the war continues to intensify. Russian President Vladimir Putin remains defiant and has indicated that the brutal military campaign will continue unabated. On Tuesday, Putin said negotiations had hit a “dead end” and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned that Russia will not pause its military operations during future peace talks. U.S. President Joe Biden announced this week yet another allocation of $800 million dollars in “more sophisticated and heavier-duty weaponry” than previous transfers to the Ukrainian side. Meanwhile, NATO appears set to expand further, with both Finland and Sweden indicating they are actively considering joining the alliance. Germany and other European countries are publicly committing to buying and selling more weapons and spending more on defense. NATO is raising the prospect of expanding its permanent military presence in Europe, and Washington is reasserting its political dominance over Europe on security matters.

On Sunday, in an interview on NBC, national security adviser Jake Sullivan cast the war not just as a defense of Ukraine but also an opportunity to deliver significant blows to the stability of the Russian state. “At the end of the day, what we want to see is a free and independent Ukraine, a weakened and isolated Russia, and a stronger, more unified, more determined West,” he said. “We believe that all three of those objectives are in sight, can be accomplished.”

As Ukraine and its Western allies accuse Russian forces of heinous war crimes and crimes against humanity, including massacres of large numbers of civilians, Putin’s government and media apparatus is waging an all-out campaign to denounce the allegations as lies and fake news.

Biden has officially accused Putin of war crimes and suggested he should face a “war crime trial.” Russia, like the U.S., has steadfastly refused to ratify the treaty establishing the International Criminal Court, so it is unclear how or where the administration believes such a trial would take place.

This week, renowned dissident and linguist Noam Chomsky joined me for a wide-ranging discussion on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, holding the powerful accountable, the role of media and propaganda in war, and what Chomsky believes is necessary to end the bloodshed in Ukraine.

Video: https://www.transcend.org/tms/2022/04/noam-chomsky-and-jeremy-scahill-on-the-russia-ukraine-war-the-media-propaganda-and-accountability/

UKRAINE: The Real Zelensky

April 29, 2022

Natylie Baldwin  interviews academic Olga Baysha about Ukraine’s president, a former TV actor who has become, since the start of the war, an A-list celebrity in the U.S.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky on Feb. 23, the eve of Russia’s invasion. At the time he was hosting the presidents of Lithuania and Poland in Kiev. (President of Ukraine, Flickr)

A comedic actor who rose to the country’s highest office in 2019, Volodymyr Zelensky was virtually unknown to the average American, except perhaps as a bit player in former U.S. President Donald Trump’s impeachment theater.

But when Russia attacked Ukraine on Feb. 24, Zelensky was suddenly transformed to an A-list celebrity in U.S. media. American news consumers were bombarded with images of a man who appeared overcome by the tragic events, possibly in over his head, but ultimately sympathetic.  It didn’t take long for that image to evolve into the khaki-clad, tireless hero governing over a scrappy little democracy and single-handedly staving off the barbarians of autocracy from the east.

But beyond that carefully crafted Western media image is something much more complicated and less flattering. Zelensky was elected by 73 percent of the vote on a promise to pursue peace while the rest of his platform was vague. On the eve of the invasion, however, his approval rating had sunk to 31 percent due to the pursuit of deeply unpopular policies.

Ukrainian academic, Olga Baysha, author of Democracy, Populism, and Neoliberalism in Ukraine: On the Fringes of the Virtual and the Real, has studied Zelensky’s rise to power and how he has wielded that power since becoming president.

In the interview below, Baysha discusses Zelensky’s embrace of neoliberalism and increasing authoritarianism, how his actions contributed to the current war; his counterproductive and self-absorbed leadership throughout the war, the complex cultural and political views and identities of Ukrainians, the partnership between neoliberals and the radical right during and after the Maidan uprising and whether a Russian takeover of the entire Donbass region might be less popular among the local population than it would have been in 2014.

Continued: https://consortiumnews.com/2022/04/29/ukraine-the-real-zelensky/?fbclid=IwAR3MiEIbcBCga5j_v04yINJ-m24xyXFKt4BYQDG7G26hS62tH5D3QXFtwyA

From the excellent Media Watchdog organization Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR).

https://fair.org/extra-newsletter/

Lifting the Lid from the Memory Hole: Afghanistan

“Today we Afghans remain trapped between two enemies: the Taliban on one side and the U.S./NATO forces and their warlord hirelings on the other.”  Malalai Joya, A Woman Among Warlords (2009), 227.

Patriotic Dissent: How a Working-Class Soldier Turned Against “Forever Wars” BY STEVE EARLY – SUZANNE GORDON

https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/07/24/patriotic-dissent-how-a-working-class-soldier-turned-against-forever-wars/     (Also in the VFP The Peace Sentinel (Formerly Peace in Our Times)

JULY 24, 2020

When it comes to debate about US military policy, the 2020 presidential election campaign is so far looking very similar to that of 2016. Joe Biden has pledged to ensure that “we have the strongest military in the world,” promising to “make the investments necessary to equip our troops for the challenges of the next century, not the last one.”

In the White House, President Trump is repeating the kind of anti-interventionist head feints that won him votes four years ago against a hawkish Hillary Clinton. In his recent graduation address at West Point, Trump re-cycled applause lines from 2016 about “ending an era of endless wars” as well as America’s role as “policeman of the world.”

In reality, since Trump took office, there’s been no reduction in the US military presence  abroad, which last year required a Pentagon budget of nearly $740 billion. As military historian and retired career officer Andrew Bacevich notes, “endless wars persist (and in some cases have even intensified); the nation’s various alliances and its empire of overseas bases remain intact; US troops are still present in something like 140 countries; Pentagon and national security state spending continues to increase astronomically.”

When the National Defense Authorization Act for the next fiscal year came before Congress this summer, Senator Bernie Sanders proposed a modest 10 percent reduction in military spending so $70 billion could be re-directed to domestic programs. Representative Barbara Lee introduced a House resolution calling for $350 billion worth of DOD cuts. Neither proposal has gained much traction, even among Democrats on Capitol Hill. Instead, the House Armed Services Committee just voted 56 to 0 to spend $740. 5 billion on the Pentagon in the coming year, prefiguring the outcome of upcoming votes by the full House and Senate.

An Appeal to Conscience

Even if Biden beats Trump in November, efforts to curb US military spending will face continuing bi-partisan resistance. In the never-ending work of building a stronger anti-war movement, Pentagon critics, with military credentials, are invaluable allies. Daniel Sjursen, a 37-year old veteran of combat in Iraq and Afghanistan is one such a critic. Inspired in part by the much-published Bacevich, Sjursen has just written a new book called Patriotic Dissent: America in the Age of Endless War (Heyday Books)

Patriotic Dissent is a short volume, just 141 pages, but it packs the same kind of punch as Howard Zinn’s classic 1967 polemic, Vietnam: The Logic of Withdrawal. Like Zinn, who became a popular historian after his service in World War II, Sjursen skillfully debunks the conventional wisdom of the foreign policy establishment, and the military’s own current generation of “yes men for another war power hungry president.” His appeal to the conscience of fellow soldiers, veterans, and civilians is rooted in the unusual arc of an eighteen-year military career. His powerful voice, political insights, and painful personal reflections offer a timely reminder of how costly, wasteful, and disastrous our post 9/11  wars have been.

Sjursen has the distinction of being a graduate of West Point, an institution that produces few political dissenters. He grew up in a fire-fighter family on working class Staten Island. Even before enrolling at the Academy at age 17, he was no stranger to what he calls “deep-seated toxically masculine patriotism.” As a newly commissioned officer in 2005, he was still a “burgeoning neo-conservative and George W. Bush admirer” and definitely not, he reports, any kind of “defeatist liberal, pacifist, or dissenter.”

Sjursen’s initial experience in combat—vividly described in his first book, Ghost Riders of Baghdad: Soldiers, Civilians, and the Myth of The Surge (University Press of New England)—“occurred at the statistical height of sectarian strife” in Iraq.  “The horror, the futility, the farce of that war was the turning point in my life,” Sjursen writes in Patriotic Dissent. When he returned, at age 24, from his “brutal, ghastly deployment” as a platoon leader, he “knew that the war was built on lies, ill-advised, illegal, and immoral.” This “unexpected, undesired realization generated profound doubts about the course and nature of the entire American enterprise in the Greater Middle East—what was then unapologetically labeled the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT).”

A Professional Soldier

By the time Sjursen landed in Kandahar Province, Afghanistan, in early 2011, he had been promoted to captain but “no longer believed in anything we were doing.” He was, he confesses, “simply a professional soldier—a mercenary, really—on a mandatory mission I couldn’t avoid. Three more of my soldiers died, thirty-plus were wounded, including a triple amputee, and another over-dosed on pain meds after our return.”

Despite his disillusionment, Sjursen had long dreamed of returning to West Point to teach history. He applied for and won that highly competitive assignment, which meant the Army had to send him to grad school first. He ended up getting credentialed, while living out of uniform, in the “People’s Republic of Lawrence, Kansas, a progressive oasis in an intolerant, militarist sea of Republican red.” During his studies at the state university, Sjursen found an intellectual framework for his “own doubts about and opposition to US foreign policy.” He completed his first book, Ghost Riders, which combines personal memoir with counter-insurgency critique. Amazingly enough, it was published in 2015, while he was still on active duty, but with “almost no blowback” from superior officers.

Before retiring as a major four years later, Sjursen pushed the envelope further, by writing more than 100 critical articles for TomDispatch and other civilian publications. He was no longer at West Point so that body of work triggered “a grueling, stressful, and scary four-month investigation”by the brass at Fort Leavenworth, during which the author was subjected to “a non-publication order.” At risk were his career, military pension, and benefits. He ended up receiving only a verbal admonishment for violating a Pentagon rule against publishing words “contemptuous of the President of the United States.” His “PTSD and co-occurring diagnoses” helped him qualify for a medical retirement last year.

Sjursen has now traded his “identity as a soldier—the only identity I’ve known in my adult life—for that of an anti-war, anti-imperialist, social justice crusader,” albeit one who did not attend his first protest rally until he was thirty-two years old. With several left-leaning comrades, he started Fortress on A Hill, a lively podcast about military affairs and veterans’ issues. He’s a frequent, funny, and always well-informed guest on progressive radio and cable-TV shows, as well as a  contributing editor at Antiwar.com, and a contributor to a host of mainstream liberal publications. This year, the Lannan Foundation made him a cultural freedom fellow.

In Patriotic Dissent, Sjursen not only recounts his own personal trajectory from military service to peace activism. He shows how that intellectual journey has been informed by reading and thinking about US history, the relationship between civil society and military culture, the meaning of patriotism, and the price of dissent.  One historical figure he admires is Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler, the recipient of two Medals of Honor for service between 1898 and 1931. Following his retirement, Butler sided with the poor and working-class veterans who marched on Washington to demand World War I bonus payments. And he wrote a best-selling Depression-era memoir, which famously declared that “war is just a racket” and lamented his own past role as “a high-class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street, and for the Bankers.”

Reframing Dissent

Sjursen contrasts Butler’s anti-interventionist whistle-blowing, nearly a century ago, with the silence of high-ranking veterans today after “nineteen years of ill-advised, remarkably unsuccessful American wars.”  Among friends and former West Point classmates, he knows many still serving who “obediently resign themselves to continued combat deployments” because they long ago “stopped asking questions about their own role in perpetuating and enabling a counter-productive, inertia-driven warfare state.”

Sjursen looks instead to small left-leaning groups like Veterans for Peace and About Face: Veterans Against the War (formerly Iraq Veterans Against the War), and Bring Our Troops Home.US, a network of veterans influenced by the libertarian right. Each in, its own way, seeks to “reframe dissent, against empire and endless war, as the truest form of patriotism.” But actually taming the military-industrial complex will require “big-tent, intersectional action from civilian and soldier alike,” on a much larger scale. One obstacle to that, he believes, is the societal divide between the “vast majority of citizens who have chosen not to serve” in the military and the “one percent of their fellow citizens on active duty,” who then become part of “an increasingly insular, disconnected, and sometimes sententious post-9/11 veteran community.”

Not many on the left favor a return to conscription. But Sjursen makes it clear there’s been a downside to the U.S. replacing “citizen soldiering” with “a tiny professional warrior caste,” created in response to draft-driven dissent against the Vietnam War, inside and outside the military. As he observes:

“Nothing so motivates a young adult to follow foreign policy, to weigh the advisability or morality of an ongoing war as the possibility of having to put ‘skin in the game.’ Without at least the potential requirement to serve in the military and in one of America’s now countless wars, an entire generation—or really two, since President Nixon ended the draft in 1973–has had the luxury of ignoring the ills of U.S. foreign policy, to distance themselves from its reality.”

At a time when the U.S. “desperately needs a massive, public, empowered anti-war and anti-imperial wave” sweeping over the country, we have instead a “civil-military” gap that, Sjursen believes, has “stifled antiwar and anti-imperial dissent and seemingly will continue to do so.” That’s why his own mission is to find more “socially conscious veterans of these endless, fruitless wars” who are willing to “step up and form a vanguard of sorts for revitalized patriotic dissent.” Readers of Sjursen’s book, whether new recruits to that vanguard or longtime peace activists, will find Patriotic Dissent to be an invaluable educational tool. It should be required reading in progressive study groups, high school and college history classes, and book clubs across the country. Let’s hope that the author’s willingness to take personal risks, re-think his view of the world, and then work to change it will inspire many others, in uniform and out.

72.  WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS #72, May 4, 2022

Everyone’s Anti-War until the War Propaganda Starts

IN FOCUS, 2 May 2022

Caitlin Johnstone – TRANSCEND Media Service

27 Apr 2022 – Nobody thinks of themselves as a warmonger, but then the spin machine gets going and before you know it they’re spouting the slogans they’ve been programmed to spout, waving the flags they’ve been programmed to wave, and consenting to whatever the imperial war machine wants in that moment.

Virtually everyone will tell you they love peace and hate war when asked; war is the very worst thing in the world, and no healthy person relishes the thought of it. But when the rubber meets the road and it’s time to oppose war and push for peace, those who’d previously proclaimed themselves “anti-war” are on the other side screaming for more weapons to be poured into a proxy war that their government deliberately provoked.

This is because the theory of being anti-war is very different from the practice. In theory people are just opposed to the idea of exploding other people for no good reason. In practice they’re always hit with a very intense barrage of media messaging giving them what look like very good reasons why those people need exploding.

Being truly anti-war isn’t easy. It doesn’t look like people picture in their imaginations. It looks like getting smashed with a deluge of information designed to manipulate and confuse and working through it while getting screamed at by those who’ve fallen for the brainwashing. It’s not cute. It’s not fun. It’s not the feel-good flower power time that people intuit it is when they look at the part of themselves that seeks peace. It’s standing up against the most sophisticated propaganda machine that has ever existed while being offered every reason not to.

When people think of themselves as “anti-war”, they’re usually imagining themselves as anti- another Iraq war, or anti- some theoretical Hitler-like president starting a war because he likes killing people. They’re not picturing the reality of what being anti-war actually is in practice.

Because selling the war to the public is a built-in component of all war strategy, the war will always look necessary from the mainstream perspective, and it won’t look like those other wars which we now know in retrospect were mistakes. It’s always designed to look appealing. There’s never not going to be atrocity propaganda. There’s never not going to be reasons fed to you selling this military intervention as special and completely necessary. That will be the case every single time, because that’s how modern wars are packaged and presented.

This is why you’ll always see a number of self-described leftists and anti-imperialists cheering for the latest US war project. They are ideologically opposed to the idea of war in theory, but the way it actually shows up in practice is always different from what they pictured.

Our entire civilization is shaped by domestic propaganda, but the only time you ever hear that word in mainstream discourse is when it’s used to discuss the comparatively almost nonexistent influence of Russian propaganda on our society. All the mainstream alarm ringing about Russian propaganda gives the impression that it comprises close to 100 percent of the total propaganda that westerners consume, when in reality it’s a tiny fraction of one percent of the total propaganda that westerners consume. Almost all of it comes from western sources.

Propaganda is the single most overlooked and underappreciated aspect of our society. It has far more influence over how the public thinks, acts and votes than any of our official mechanisms for doing so, yet it’s barely discussed, it isn’t taught in schools, and even the best political ideologies barely touch on it relative to their other areas of focus.

All the fretting about Russian propaganda from establishment narrative managers comes so close to giving away their secret: that they know it’s possible to manipulate the way the public thinks, acts and votes using media. They just don’t admit that they’re the ones who are doing this.

It’s actually the weirdest thing in the world that there’s something that has been directly affecting our minds our entire lives, and which directly affects the way our entire society is organized, but we don’t talk about it constantly. It should be at the front and center of our attention.

But of course that’s the whole idea. Propaganda only works on those who don’t know they’re being propagandized. The US-centralized empire’s ability to hide its propaganda machine is a foundational element of its brilliance.

Being truly anti-war is necessarily a commitment to finding out not just what’s true about all the war narratives currently promulgated by the imperial war machine, but all the narratives you’ve been fed about the world since you were young. It’s a commitment to truth that takes on an almost spiritual quality in the way it informs every aspect of your life when truly espoused.

It’s important to research and learn new things about the world, but what’s equally important and which doesn’t get emphasized nearly enough is the practice of examining the beliefs you already hold about your society, your government, your nation and your world. Inquiring as to whether they’re really true, and who might benefit from your believing them.

Don’t make the error of assuming you’ll be aware and informed enough to spot all the lies right away. You’re dealing with the single most advanced and powerful propaganda machine that has ever existed, and you’ve been marinating in its effects your entire life. It takes some time. Even the most aware among us were indoctrinated into the mainstream worldview to some extent earlier in their lives, and to this day most of the information they get about the world has some of its roots and branches in parts of the propaganda matrix.

It takes work to see things clearly enough to form a really truth-based worldview. But unless you do this it’s impossible to be truly anti-war, because you can’t skillfully oppose something you don’t understand. To fight the imperial war machine is to fight the imperial propaganda machine.

Pope Says NATO Might Have Provoked Russian Invasion of Ukraine By Francis X. Rocca and Evan Gershkovich

https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/russia-ukraine-latest-news-2022-05-03/card/pope-says-nato-may-have-provoked-russian-invasion-of-ukraine-

Pope Francis delivers his Sunday prayer in the Vatican.VINCENZO PINTO/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

ROME⁠—Pope Francis said that the “barking of NATO at the door of Russia” might have led to the invasion of Ukraine and that he didn’t know whether other countries should supply Ukraine with more arms.

The pope at the same time deplored the brutality of the war and criticized the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church for defending the invasion in religious terms, warning that Patriarch Kirill of Moscow “cannot turn himself into Putin’s altar boy.”

Pope Francis made his remarks in an interview with Italian daily Corriere Della Sera. He described Russia’s attitude to Ukraine as “an anger that I don’t know whether it was provoked but was perhaps facilitated” by the presence in nearby countries of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Meanwhile, Patriarch Kirill of Moscow delivered a sermon Tuesday at the Kremlin’s Cathedral of the Archangel, falsely claiming that Russia never attacked another country.

“We don’t want to go to war with anyone, Russia has never attacked anyone,” he said, in remarks carried by the Interfax news agency.

“It’s amazing that a great and powerful country never attacked anyone,” he added. “It only defended its borders.”

Since February, Pope Francis has deplored the suffering of Ukrainians and denounced the invasion but refrained from explicitly naming Russia as the aggressor, reflecting both a Vatican tradition of neutrality and his own agenda of better relations with the Russian Orthodox Church, as well as a reluctance to align the Vatican with U.S. foreign policy.

“In Ukraine, it was other states that created the conflict,” Pope Francis said in the interview, without identifying which states. He likened the war to other conflicts that he said were fomented by international interests: “Syria, Yemen, Iraq, one war after another in Africa.”

“I don’t know how to answer—I am too far away—whether it is right to supply the Ukrainians” with weapons, the pope said. “What’s clear is that in this land arms are being tested… Wars are fought for this: to test the arms we have made.”

In the past, Ukrainians have criticized the pope for describing their conflicts with Russia as “fratricidal,” which they have said plays down Moscow’s aggression.

The pope said that he was ready to travel to Moscow to meet with President Vladimir Putin to appeal for peace, but that the Kremlin hadn’t responded to the offer. He said he told the Russian ambassador to the Vatican at the start of the war: “Please stop.”

Critique of US-NATO Explanation of the Origins and Causes of the Ukraine War

“Taking Aim at Ukraine: How John Mearsheimer and Stephen Cohen Challenged the Dominant Narrative.”
Interfering in another state is tricky business – so says the gutsy University of Chicago international relation…  Forwarded by From Sonny San Juan, Jr.

Stephen F. Cohen.  War With Russia?:  From Putin & Ukraine to Trump & Russiagate (2019). Skyhorse Publishing, 2022.  Memorial Edition.  256 Pages

·       buy
Publisher’s DESCRIPTION

Prescient and even more relevant than when originally released in 2019, this Memorial Edition of War With Russia ? provides keen perspective to help readers understand the current Ukraine crisis. Are we in a new Cold War with Russia? Does Vladimir Putin really want to destabilize the West? War With Russia? answers these questions and more.

America is in a new Cold War with Russia even more dangerous than the one the world barely survived in the twentieth century. The Soviet Union is gone, but the two nuclear superpowers are again locked in political and military confrontations, now from Ukraine to Syria. All of this is exacerbated by Washington’s warlike demonizing of the Kremlin leadership and by Russiagate’s unprecedented allegations. US mainstream media accounts are highly selective and seriously misleading. American “disinformation,” not only Russian, is a growing peril.

In War With Russia?, Stephen F. Cohen—the widely acclaimed historian of Soviet and post-Soviet Russia—gives readers a very different, dissenting narrative of this more dangerous new Cold War from its origins in the 1990s, the actual role of Vladimir Putin, and the 2014 Ukrainian crisis to Donald Trump’s election and today’s unprecedented Russiagate allegations.

Cohen’s views have made him, it is said, “America’s most controversial Russia expert.” Some say this to denounce him, others to laud him as a bold, highly informed critic of US policies and the dangers they have helped to create.

War With Russia? gives readers a chance to decide for themselves who is right: are we living, as Cohen argues, in a time of unprecedented perils at home and abroad?

74.  WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS #74, May 18, 2022

Nuclear Weapons/Nuclear Winter and Climate Catastrophes

Scott Ritter Peacemaker

Pentagon-Funded Think Tank Simulates War With China On NBC

Scott Ritter on US Empire
Publications in OMNI US-NATO-UKRAINE-RUSSIA Anthologies
Anthology.  US Democracy: Roman or British Empire?

Ritter, Scott. Target Iran: The Truth about the White House’s Plans for Regime Change. https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2011/02/us-democracy-roman-or-british-empire.html
Anthology #2, “Scott Ritter.  SCORPION KING: America’s Suicidal Embrace of Nuclear Weapons.”   https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2020/12/war-watch-wednesdays-www.html
Anthology  #11, “Ritter: The Case for Neutrality to Defuse Crisis With Russia.”  https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2022/02/omni-russia-newsletter-11-february-24.html
Anthology  #13, “Scott Ritter, Harms of US Russophobia.”  https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2022/03/omni-russiaukraine-newsletter-13-march.html
Anthology #18, “Scott Ritter. Pity the Nation.” https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2022/04/omni-us-russia-ukraine-war-anthology-18.html    

SCOTT RITTER’S WAGING PEACE: The Art of War for the Antiwar Movement. 
https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2008/09/omnis-constitution-day.html  

Pentagon-Funded Think Tank Simulates War With China On NBC

https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/pentagon-funded-think-tank-simulates

Also Published in Monthly Review, Caitlin Johnstone May 15.

NBC’s Meet the Press just aired an absolutely freakish segment in which the influential narrative management firm Center for a New American Security (CNAS) ran war games simulating a direct US hot war with China. 

CNAS is funded by the Pentagon and by military-industrial complex corporations Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, and Lockheed Martin, as well as the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office, which as Antiwar’s Dave DeCamp notes is the de facto Taiwanese embassy in the US.  The war game simulates a conflict over Taiwan which we are informed is set in the year 2027, in which China launches strikes on the US military in order to open the way to an invasion of the island. We are not told why there needs to be a specific year inserted into mainstream American consciousness about when we can expect such a conflict, but then we are also not told why NBC is platforming a war machine think tank’s simulation of a military conflict with China at all….continued

76.  WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS, #76, June 1, 2022
Harms of US Wars.
North Korea: a favorable inside perspective.

“Contrary to Relentless Media Demonization, A Swiss Businessman Who Worked in North Korea For Seven Years Found Much To Like About the Country” By Jeremy Kuzmarov.  CovertAction Magazine.  May 05, 2022 1:44 pm.

In November 2018, The New York Times ran a front-page article titled “In North Korea, Missile Bases Suggest a Great Deception.”

Co-authored by Pulitzer-winning correspondent David E. Sanger, the article cited satellite imagery and a report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) to argue that North Korea was continuing to secretly develop missiles in violation of the June 2018 Singapore agreement between Kim Jong-un and U.S. President Donald Trump.

However, the prominently embedded satellite photo was actually dated March 2018—three months before Kim and Trump met in Singapore—and the missile bases presented as damning evidence of Kim’s duplicity had been known to South Korea for at least two years.

The Times’s deception is part of a larger media propaganda campaign against North Korea that has helped condition the U.S. public to accept draconian U.S. sanctions policies, the spending of billions of dollars per year beefing up the South Korean military, and the $7.1 billion Pacific Deterrence Initiative that includes a major naval build-up in the South China Sea.

Felix Abt was one of the first foreign entrepreneurs to work in North Korea, and the founding president of the first foreign chamber of commerce in North Korea, set up by a dozen resident foreign business people in 2005, and co-founder and director of the Pyongyang Business School.

He has just published a book entitled A Land of Prison Camps, Starving Slaves and Nuclear Bombs? An Alternative Account to the Western Media’s Blinkered North Korea Portrayal, which debunks the media’s narrative of North Korea as a “monolithic gulag network filled with slaves” and a “hellhole…rife with suffering and starvation.” […]

The post Contrary to Relentless Media Demonization, A Swiss Businessman Who Worked in North Korea For Seven Years Found Much To Like About the Country appeared first on CovertAction Magazine.

77.  WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS, June 8, 2022

http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2022/06/77-war-watch-wednesdays.html

Margaret Kimberley, GLOBAL US Violence.
WBW, Patricia Hynes, Hope But Demand Justice.
Sam Hamill, et al., eds.  Poets Against the War. 

“Mass Shootings, Empire, And Racist, Copaganda Dog Whistles”  By Margaret Kimberley, Black Agenda Report. Popular Resistance.org (6-4-22).  A settler colonial state founded on indigenous genocide and African enslavement that is still addicted to the doctrine of racial domination will be violent. How could it be otherwise? This nation has the world’s highest rate of incarceration, 1,000 police killings every year, a defense budget bigger than any other, and the imperialist wars that inevitably follow. No one should be shocked when individuals here carry out violent acts. Yet that is exactly what we get when mass shootings take place, pretend shock and confused outrage. On May 15, 2022 a racist white man killed 10 Black people at a… -more-

In June 2022, World BEYOND War will be holding a weekly discussion each of four weeks of Hope but Demand Justice with the author Patricia Hynes as part of a small group WBW book club limited to a group of 18 participants. She will send each participant a signed paperback or an eBook. We’ll let you know which parts of the book will be discussed each week along with the Zoom link to access the discussions. Details and Registration Here.  PS: Can you think of any authors you’d like to discuss in the future?   Please tell us!  H. Patricia Hynes is a retired Professor of Environmental Health from Boston University School of Public Health and current Chair of the Board of the Traprock Center for Peace and Justice. She has written and edited seven books, among them “The Recurring Silent Spring.” She writes and speaks on issues of war and militarism with an emphasis on women, the environment, and public health; for example, “Stop the Wars. Save the Planet”: If humanity and much of life on Earth is to survive, we desperately need a climate revolution and a peace revolution.  May 26, 2022.  –D

Sam Hamill, et al., eds.  Poets Against the War.  Thunder’s Mouth Press/Nation Books, 2003.  See all formats and editions.

Amazon sales comment.

Led by poet Sam Hamill, February 12, 2003 became a day of Poetry Against the War conducted as a reading at the White House gates in addition to over 160 public readings in many different countries and almost all of the 50 states. Since then, over 9,000 poets have joined this grassroots peace movement by submitting poems and statements to www.poetsagainstthewar.org, registering their opposition to the Bush administration’s headlong plunge toward war in Iraq. Poets Against the War features a selection of the best poems that were submitted to the website. Contributors include: Adrienne Rich, W.S. Merwin, Galway Kinnell, Robert Bly, Marilyn Hacker, Grace Schulman, Shirley Kaufman, Wanda Coleman, Yusef Komunyakaa, Hayden Carruth, Jane Hirshfield, Tess Gallagher, Sandra Cisneros, former Poet Laureate Rita Dove, and many others [including UAF ‘s Geoff Brock’s “Poetry and the American Voice” – Dick].

I recommend Hamill’s Anthology and Introduction for their brilliant revelation of the cultural and political potential of poetry.   The wife of Pres. George W. Bush, Laura, a professional librarian, had the good idea of convening a White House symposium on poetry, but had the bad idea of naming the Symposium “Poetry and the American Voice.”  Unfortunately for her, she also chose Walt Whitman, Langston Hughes, and Emily Dickinson as the subjects of the Symposium, who are, in Hamill’s words, “three of the most original and anti-establishmentarian poets in our literature.”  Her mistake was compounded by the date chosen for the Symposium– only a few days preceding the start of her husband’s indescribably brutal, illegal, criminal, unnecessary “shock and awe” invasion of Iraq (some 3000 missiles striking Baghdad the first two days, justified by lies, and Bush was never imprisoned or even indicted).   The poet Sam Hamill sent out a call for poems “speaking ‘for the conscience of our country’” in opposition.  11,000 poets sent 13,000 poems!  As soon as Mrs. Bush heard of the uprising of the voices of American poetry, she “postponed” the Symposium.  In its place, “over 200 ‘poetry readings against the war’” were held throughout the country and hundreds more around the world, and Hamill selected some 200 poems to represent those 11,000 Poets Against the War.

     Hamill dedicated the book “For Laura Bush.”

One way to categorize the collection is by each poem’s degree of direct to indirect statement.  Some of the poems, unless you knew the occasion, you could not guess they talked of war.  Others directly address readers. Here’s the opening stanza of Robert Bly’s “Call and Answer.”  

“Tell me why it is we don’t lift our voices these days
And cry over what is happening.  Have you noticed
The plans are made for Iraq and the ice cap is melting?”

–Dick

78.  WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS, June 15, 2022

Gareth Porter.  Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Scare.  WBW Book Club.
Sarah Raymundo on Vincent Bevins’s The Jakarta Method and US atrocities against global insurgencies.
Margaret Kimberley on US global violence and US domestic violence. 

In July 2022, World BEYOND War will be holding a weekly discussion each of four weeks of Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare with the author Gareth Porter as part of a small group WBW book club limited to a group of 18 participants. Gareth will send each participant a signed paperback. We’ll let you know which parts of the book will be discussed each week along with the Zoom link to access the discussion. Details and Registration Here.

Sarah Raymundo.  “The Jakarta Method, Then and Now: U.S. Counterinsurgency and the Third World.”   (June 3, 2022)

Increasing numbers of left-wing activists around the world are turning to Vincent Bevins’s The Jakarta Method to learn more about the horrific atrocities committed by the United States against peoples’ struggles for the right to self-determination in the so-called postcolonial era. In particular, the book describes how imperialist expansion destroyed revolutionary struggles in the third world. | more…

Margaret Kimberley.  “Mass Shootings, Empire, and Racist, Copaganda Dog Whistles.” Mronline.org (6-3-22).

Two mass shootings produced not only anger and grief but lies and pretense that violence here is somehow mysterious. Political leaders advocate state violence all the time, calling for new victims to be created here and around the world.

79.  WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS, June 22, 2022

Rick Steves.  Fascism in Europe Film and Travel as a Political Act Book.
David Swanson (World Beyond War).  US Participation in WWII not justifiable. 
The Mapping Project. U.S. Imperialism since World War 2.
Kate Hudson.   “Nine World Leaders Hold Trigger to Nuclear War.”

Rick Steves.  Fascism in Europe.  The well-known tourism film-maker deliberately created this film to warn his viewers in the West of authoritarianism, of the atrocious consequences of Mussolini’s Fascism and Hitler’s Nazism, of cults of leaders– the Duce, the Führer–, and their imperial nationalism.  Mussolini’s motto was “believe, obey, fight” for leader and state.  To oppose or disobey Hitler meant imprisonment, torture, death.   To accompany the film, Steves wrote a book, Travel as a Political Act.  Steves argues that these totalitarians arose out of ignorance, anti-intellectualism, and fear.  Thus he seeks in his films and book to prevent their recurrence via knowledge, understanding, and empathy of other nations and cultures.  All of his travel films, we can hope, no matter how indirectly, influence for peace.   See J. William Fulbright’s books and Exchange Program.—D

Understanding the Second World War to Make Sure It’s the Last

Nine World leaders hold trigger to nuclear war

Editor.  Mronline.org (6-20-22). 

Kate Hudson.   “Nine World leaders hold trigger to nuclear war.”
Originally published: Big News Network,  June 14, 2022  (more by Big News Network) (Posted Jun 17, 2022).  Produced by the Morning Star and Globetrotter.
  WarGlobalNewswireInternational Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), Nuclear War, Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW)

As our world spirals toward the catastrophe of nuclear war, there has never been a greater need for a new global balancing, a rejection of great power, war, exploitation, and aggression. MORE click on title.

80.  WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS, #80, June 29, 2022

Jacqueline Luqman.   “WHEN AMERICA NO LONGER EXPORTS CARNAGE AS A BUSINESS MODEL, MAYBE WE’LL STOP SEEING IT IN THE STREETS HERE.”  Black Agenda Report.

·       June 11, 2022.  Popular Resistance.org (6-12-22). 

• https://www.blackagendareport.com/when-america-no-longer-exports-carnage-business-model-maybe-well-stop-seeing-it-streets-here

·       Educate!

The Tears, Prayers, And Thoughts Regarding Mass Shootings Are Sincerely Expressed By Most People.

But hypocrisy and cynicism loom very large for Joe Biden and congress. They want us to believe that state violence is disconnected from violence carried out by individuals.

Speaking in the dimly lit Cross Hall in the White House, and flanked on either side by rows of candles and the soft lighting of the chandeliers and torchiere lamps above and behind him, Joe Biden conjured up his best human emotions to deliver an impassioned promise that he would do something about gun violence in this country.  “How much more carnage are we willing to accept?” Biden asked, demanding Republicans in particular end their blockade of gun control votes.

Here is Joseph Biden and the Congress he leads repeatedly approving hundreds of millions of dollars of weapons to be sent to Ukraine in a war that the US and their white supremacist international army NATO started with the sole purpose of provoking Russia.

The Biden Administration and everyone in Congress has approved military support to Ukraine repeatedly since February, seven times to be exact, on February 25, March 12, March 16, April 5, April 13, April 21, and April 24. The earlier military support packages averaged about $30 million a day and to be clear they did not include economic and humanitarian support and the costs of U.S. forces deployed to Europe to address the crisis. This current package increases the aid level to $135 million a day.

The defense contractors make millions from the US government ordering more weapons, and it does not matter to anyone in the defense industrial complex nor in Congress that many of the people who are receiving these weapons and other military aid are right-wing, neo-Nazi fanatics who just carried out an eight-year civil war against ethnic Russians in Donbas and Lugansk. In fact they KNOW who they are giving weapons to, and they continue to do it while telling you and me that it is PUTIN who needs to be stopped.

So who does Biden think he’s fooling standing behind a podium feigning outrage and invoking God in wondering when will the carnage on our streets end, when he is pouring carnage onto the streets of Ukraine to the tune of $135 million a day.

When the US stops enabling the carnage all over the world as a business model, maybe then we’ll stop seeing the blowback on our streets.

ACTIONS FROM VETERANS FOR PEACE, Weekly E-News, June 9, 2022

81 WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS, #81, July 6, 2022
WBW Book Club for Peace and Ending War.
Transcend Media Service (TMS).  Global Network Against Weapons in
     Space:  Civilian Rocket Launch Sites Militarized.
Biden’s Bloated Military Budget Raised $45 Billion More by Senate Panel.
Nafeez Ahmed. UN Warns of Global Collapse, MSM Are Silent.

WBW Book Club Online with Gareth Porter, Jeff Cohen, Francesco Da Vinci, Alfred de Zayas, Rivera Sun

World BEYOND War  7-1-22

         8:30 AM (9 minutes ago)              

 Check out some of our upcoming online book clubs.

These are small-group discussions, four weeks in a row, online with some of the best authors on peace and ending war.

This one with Gareth Porter starts July 10, and as soon as you sign up we’ll both email you a PDF and mail you a paperback of the incredible book under discussion, Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare.

Or, consider signing up well ahead with time to receive and read the book, for one of these:

August: Cable News Confidential with Jeff Cohen.

September: I Refuse to Kill with Francesco Da Vinci.

October: Building a Just World Order with Alfred de Zayas.

November: The Crown of Light with Rivera Sun.

World BEYOND War is a global network of volunteers, chapters, and affiliated organizations advocating for the abolition of war.

TRANSCEND Media Service
Editorials and articles originated on TMS may be freely reprinted, disseminated and translated, provided a citation and link to the source, TRANSCEND Media Service, is included. Please forward our Weekly Digest to your colleagues and friends. Thank you, enjoy your reading.

UNCEASING WARS, NUCLEAR WAR DANGER, WARMING, WEATHER EXTREMES, PANDEMICS, ECONOMIC CRISIS: GLOBAL COLLAPSE?
‘Revolting’: Senate panel raises Biden’s bloated military budget by $45 billion: Recently the Senate Armed Services Committee voted to increase the president’s already unprecedented military spending request, bringing the total proposed budget for the coming fiscal year to $857.6 billion. That’s even though most U.S. adults support cuts to the Pentagon budget. “If Congress truly wants to keep people safe, they must start by rejecting this increase and investing taxpayer dollars in human wellbeing, instead,” says AFSC’s Tori Bateman. (Truthout) .  AFSC Weekend Reading (6-24-22).

United Nations Warns Of ‘Total Societal Collapse’

By Nafeez Ahmed, Byline Times. Popular Resistance.org(5-30-22).  When the United Nations published its 2022 ‘Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction’ (GAR2022) in May, the world’s attention was on its grim verdict that the world was experiencing an accelerating trend of natural disasters and economic crises. But not a single media outlet picked up the biggest issue: the increasing probability of civilizational collapse. Buried in the report, which was endorsed by UN Secretary-General António Guterres, is the finding that escalating synergies between disasters, economic vulnerabilities and ecosystem failures are escalating the risk of a “global collapse” scenario.  -more-

82 WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS, July 13, 2022

http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2022/07/82-war-watch-wednesdays.html

Chris Hedges.   “No Way Out but War.”   May 22, 2022.

https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/no-way-out-but-war

Permanent war has cannibalized the country. It has created a social, political, and economic morass. Each new military debacle is another nail in the coffin of Pax Americana.

 I could not copy the graphic “No Guts No Glory” by Mr. Fish

The United States, as the near unanimous vote to provide nearly $40 billion in aid to Ukraine illustrates, is trapped in the death spiral of unchecked militarism. No high speed trains. No universal health care. No viable Covid relief program. No respite from 8.3 percent inflation. No infrastructure programs to repair decaying roads and bridges, which require $41.8 billion to fix the 43,586 structurally deficient bridges, on average 68 years old. No forgiveness of $1.7 trillion in student debt. No addressing income inequality. No program to feed the 17 million children who go to bed each night hungry. No rational gun control or curbing of the epidemic of nihilistic violence and mass shootings. No help for the 100,000 Americans who die each year of drug overdoses. No minimum wage of $15 an hour to counter 44 years of wage stagnation. No respite from gas prices that are projected to hit $6 a gallon.

The permanent war economy, implanted since the end of World War II, has destroyed the private economy, bankrupted the nation, and squandered trillions of dollars of taxpayer money. The monopolization of capital by the military has driven the US debt to $30 trillion, $ 6 trillion more than the US GDP of $ 24 trillion. Servicing this debt costs $300 billion a year. We spent more on the military, $ 813 billion for fiscal year 2023, than the next nine countries, including China and Russia, combined.

We are paying a heavy social, political, and economic cost for our militarism.   MORE  https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/no-way-out-but-war

The Quest for Peace in Islamic Tradition by Abbas Aroua, with aforeword by Johan Galtung.  2013.  Publisher’s description:
This contribution from an insider Muslim author provides peace workers with a few resources from Islamic tradition that could be used when addressing a conflict rooted in an Islamic context. It presents briefly a number of basic Islamic concepts that are often misunderstood and misused. It addresses the issues of peace and war, conflict and conflict transformation, the requirements for decent work, the concept of «work of goodness» as well as other issues related to Islam/West relations, the tensions that may arise between Muslims and Westerners and the way to deal with them.  About the Author: Medical and health physicist, Abbas Aroua is adjunct professor at the Lausanne Faculty of Biology and Medicine. He is also the founder in 2002 and director of the Cordoba Foundation of Geneva (CFG) for peace studies. Involved in research, training and mediation the CFG focuses on conflicts in or involving the Muslim world.   https://www.transcend.org/tms/2022/06/please-pitch-in-to-avoid-tms-bankruptcy/comment-page-1/#comment-95915

John Paul Lederach.    Building Peace: Sustainable Reconciliation in Divided Societies. ‎ United States Institute of Peace (February 1, 1998).  

A major work from a seminal figure in the field of conflict resolution, Building Peace is John Paul Lederach’s definitive statement on peacebuilding. Marrying wisdom, insight, and passion, Lederach explains why we need to move beyond “traditional” diplomacy, which often emphasizes top-level leaders and short-term objectives, toward a holistic approach that stresses the multiplicity of peacemakers, long-term perspectives, and the need to create an infrastructure that empowers resources within a society and maximizes contributions from outside.

Sophisticated yet pragmatic, the volume explores the dynamics of contemporary conflict and presents an integrated framework for peacebuilding in which structure, process, resources, training, and evaluation are coordinated in an attempt to transform the conflict and effect reconciliation.

Building Peace is a substantive reworking and expansion of a work developed for the United Nations University in 1994. In addition, this volume includes a chapter by practitioner John Prendergast that applies Lederach’s conceptual framework to ongoing conflicts in the Horn of Africa.

NEEDED: A GLOBAL MOVEMENT FOR NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT

Dear Friends,
I have just posted my culture of peace blog for July, entitled :
“NEEDED: A GLOBAL MOVEMENT FOR NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT”
You will find it at https://decade-culture-of-peace.org/blog/?p=1457

In case you have not already received it, this month’s CPNN bulletin is
entitled “TWO THEMES OF PEACE: COLOMBIA AND NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT” You may
find at https://cpnn-world.org/new/?p=27587

If you wish to make a comment on the blog or bulletin, you may write to
me at coordinator@cpnn-world.org and I will put your comment on line. 
Because of the flood of spam, I have discontinued the direct application
of comments.
Thank you for your interest in the culture of peace.
David Adams

83 WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS, #83, July 20, 2022

Hedges.  “The Pimps of War.”

AFSC: Cut the Pentagon Budget.

US Conference of Mayors’ Peace Resolution.

UPJ: Resources for Understanding the War.

Chris Hedges.  “The Pimps of War.”   The Chris Hedges Report.  Apr 10, 2022. 

The coterie of neocons and liberal interventionists who orchestrated two decades of military fiascos in the Middle East and who have never been held to account are now stoking a war with Russia.
[I could not copy the graphic “The Pimps of War” by Mr. Fish.  Click on url.]

The same cabal of war mongering pundits, foreign policy specialists and government officials, year after year, debacle after debacle, smugly dodge responsibility for the military fiascos they orchestrate. They are protean, shifting adroitly with the political winds, moving from the Republican Party to the Democratic Party and then back again, mutating from cold warriors to neocons to liberal interventionists. Pseudo intellectuals, they exude a cloying Ivy League snobbery as they sell perpetual fear, perpetual war, and a racist worldview, where the lesser breeds of the earth only understand violence. 

They are pimps of war, puppets of the Pentagon, a state within a state, and the defense contractors who lavishly fund their think tanks – Project for the New American Century, American Enterprise Institute, Foreign Policy Initiative, Institute for the Study of War, Atlantic Council and Brookings Institution. Like some mutant strain of an antibiotic-resistant bacteria, they cannot be vanquished. It does not matter how wrong they are, how absurd their theories, how many times they lie or denigrate other cultures and societies as uncivilized or how many murderous military interventions go bad. They are immovable props, the parasitic mandarins of power that are vomited up in the dying days of any empire, including ours, leaping from one self-defeating catastrophe to the next.

I spent  20 years as a foreign correspondent reporting on the suffering, misery, and murderous rampages these shills for war engineered and funded.   MORE https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/the-pimps-of-war

Tell Congress: Invest in peace—not war and militarism: This week, the House of Representatives took up the National Defense Authorization Act. Members voted on Pentagon spending, nuclear weapons, and other critical issues that affect the lives, safety, and health of people around the globe. We need to keep up the pressure on Congress to move away from militarism and invest in peace. If you haven’t already, urge your representative to cut the Pentagon budget!

U.S. Conference of Mayors Adopts Bold New Mayors for Peace Resolution
At the close of its 90th Annual Meeting in Reno, Nevada, on June 6, the final plenary of the United States Conference of Mayors (USCM) unanimously adopted a sweeping new resolution, titled “Forging a Path to Peace and Common Security.” The resolutioncalls for a negotiated end to the war in Ukraine, global elimination of nuclear weapons, and the redirection of military and nuclear weapons spending to support safe and resilient cities and meet human needs. This isthe seventeenth consecutive year the USCM has adopted resolutions submitted by U.S. members of Mayors for Peace. The USCM is the official nonpartisan association of America’s big cities. Resolutions adopted at its annual meetings become official policy that guides the organization’s advocacy efforts for the coming year. READ MORE.

Organizations against War via United for Peace and Justice (June 2022)

Ukraine War Resources
The Ukraine war goes on, and so does the debate over how those working for peace should respond. United for Peace & Justice continues to update our Ukraine resource page with materials ranging from organizational statements by peace groups to commentary from the Ukraine independent Left to statements by the Russian government. Some links worth visiting include a new site featuring commentary from Russia, Ukraine, and their neighbors, including interviews with Russian student anti-war activists, and thePermanent Assembly Against the War, bringing together antiwar activists from across Europe.

84 WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS, #84,July 27, 2022

Trillions for War, Billions for Climate and Planet.

World Beyond War’s online forum in August on pro-war bias of online cable news.

Biden’s anti-China Provocations.

Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) nations held their first meeting at the United Nations in Vienna.

“$2 Trillion for War Versus $100 Billion to Save the Planet.”

Editor.  Mronline.org (7-23-22).  The West seems more fixated on spending social wealth on the military rather than addressing the climate catastrophe.  See CMM #

7-22-22.   CABLE TV NEWS AND JEFF COHEN’S Cable News Confidential, online in four small-group sessions over four weeks.  Exposes the pro-war biases of U.S. television news, cable news channels–Fox, CNN, and MSNBC.  When: For one hour on four Thursdays, August 4, 11, 18, 25, 2022. The time is 23:00 UTC (similar to GMT), 1 pm in Honolulu, 4 pm in Los Angeles, 7 pm in New York,

Biden’s Reckless New Provocation Ratchets Up Risk of Nuclear War with China

By Jeremy Kuzmarov.  CovertAction Magazine. Jul 07, 2022 08:21 am.

Sending U.S. Warships into South China Sea and Taiwan Strait in Violation of UN Convention on the Law of the Sea

On June 25, the U.S. Navy sent a warship, the USS Benfold, to the South China Sea, only one day after a U.S. spy plane provocatively flew over the Taiwan Strait under the close monitoring of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA).

According to CNN, the U.S. flyover came after China sent 29 planes into Taiwan’s self-declared air defense identification zone (ADIZ).

From China’s point of view, the U.S. spy plane mission on June 24 was especially provocative because it was the first U.S. military activity in the region after China made it clear that there are no “international waters” in the Taiwan Strait.

Under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, China claims jurisdiction over the Taiwan Strait.

The PLA Eastern Theater Command organized aerial and ground forces and tracked the spy plane’s movements on high alert throughout its entire course on June 24 according to Senior Colonel Shi Yi, spokesperson of the PLA Eastern Theater Command. 

Shi slammed the Biden administration’s move as being “intentional,” whose purpose was “to disrupt the regional situation and endanger the cross-Straits peace and stability. We firmly oppose this,” she said.  […]

The post Biden’s Reckless New Provocation Ratchets Up Risk of Nuclear War with China appeared first on CovertAction Magazine.

as held at the United Nations in Vienna, with friends, allies, and members of UFPJ groups in attendance. It is the first time member states met since the TPNW was negotiated in 2017. The treaty entered into force in 2021, following ratification by 50 governments. As the number of states parties continues to grow, further pressuring nuclear armed states and their allies to act on abolition, this Meeting of States Parties laid out the practical matters and process for implementation of the totality of the legally binding treaty, “until every nuclear weapon is eliminated from the earth.” Read the full story by Matt De Vlieger, former UFPJ National Coordinator, reporting from Vienna.

85. WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS, #85, AUGUST 3, 2022
William D. Hartung.  “Fueling the Warfare State:       

     America’s $1.4 Trillion ‘National Security’ Budget.”

Caitlin Johnstone.  Imperial Propaganda System.

Chris Hedges.  Add Incarceration for Controlling the Narrative

 “Imperial narrative control has five distinct elements.”

Caitlin A. Johnstone.  Mronline.org (7-3-22).

All of our world’s worst problems are created by the powerful. The powerful will keep creating those problems until ordinary people use their superior numbers to make them stop. Ordinary people don’t use their superior numbers to stop the powerful because the powerful are continuously manipulating people’s understanding of what’s going on.

AND PRISON

When whistleblowers go to prison, we’re on the road to tyranny 

Daniel Hale is in a supermax prison for telling the truth about America’s drone war. That prison awaits us all 

By CHRIS HEDGES, AUGUST 2, 2022, WWW.SALON.COM 

This article originally appeared at ScheerPost. Used by permission. 

MARION, Illinois . . .he describes his journey from working for the National Security Agency and the Joint Special Operations Task Force at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan to becoming federal prisoner 26069-07.  

Hale, a 34-year-old former Air Force signals intelligence analyst, is serving a 45-month prison sentence, following his conviction under the Espionage Act for disclosing classified documents about the U.S. military’s drone assassination program and its high civilian death toll. The documents are believed to be the source material for “The Drone Papers” published by The Intercept, on Oct. 15, 2015.  MORE

86.  WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS, #86, AUGUST 10, 2022  https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2022/08/omni-war-watch-wednesdays-86-august-10.html
Barry Sanders.  The Green Zone.  War v. Planet and Civilization..

Dick wrote the following as a KPSQ weekly editorial, #18, Sat. Feb. 24, 2018.  He presented them in 5 to 7 minutes from April 2017 to September 29, 2018 on the weekly program “Folkus,” directed by Jim Lukens. My topic was the convergence of US twentieth-and twenty-first centuries capitalism, wars, climate catastrophe, and population and consumption increase.  (Convergence with the corona virus pandemic, which has killed over a million of US populace, didn’t begin until in 2019.)

War v. Environment. Barry Sanders, The Green Zone: The Environmental Costs of Militarism (2009).  (This little book published over a decade ago remains one of the best accounts of the climate/militarism relationship.)

Title of my talk:  The Military Bridge from Holocene to Anthropocene

       The Holocene epoch of stable climate, that allowed our civilization, has ended.   Punctuated by the extraordinary human buildup of population, consumption in affluent countries, capitalism/economic growth, wars, CO2/greenhouse gases, warming/weather intensification, deforestation, acidification of the rising oceans, and mass extinction of animals and plants, the Anthropocene epoch has begun.  Humans have forced evolution itself into a new, rapidly developing trajectory.

      Perhaps the single greatest institutional contributor to warming, the largest single source of pollution in the world, is US militarism;  in particular, the military in its most ferocious mode– the US military at war, now ceaseless.     The military produces enough greenhouse gases to place the entire globe in danger.  But ironically, war, that most destructive of human behaviors, is commonly disregarded.

       The private Information Clearing House, as of January 2009, counted Iraq War civilian deaths at 1,297,997 since the invasion in 2003. But I have found no record anywhere of the cows and chicken, dogs and cats, birds and snakes, crickets or butterflies killed during those or any other years or wars, nor of the destruction of soils or rivers or forests.

    If humans who were seeking to avoid death were so slaughtered, how enormous must have been the decimation of other species and the sources of life from the shooting, firing, dropping, exploding, and incinerating.  The “Shock and Awe” invasion of Iraq began at 10:15 the evening of March 19, 2003, when some 1,700 bombers and fighter planes flew some 1,400 sorties and fired 504 cruise missiles directly into Baghdad.  In the first two days 800 cruise missiles were fired, one every four minutes, day and night.  Each missile weighed about 3,000 pounds, adding up to a total of 1,200 tons, or 2,400,000 pounds of explosives. 

     When the US goes to war against a foreign nation it is a war not only against people, but against the Earth, the soil and animals and plants, in the most far-reaching, annihilating ways.  The earth can no longer absorb the punishment of war of the ferocity that the greatest superpower in history is capable of inflicting. 

      Yet the US will not only not let go its will to dominate the world; rather it is tightening its grip.  In its latest National Defense Strategy, the Pentagon declared a new Cold War with both China and Russia and promised to wage the war around the globe.  That is, it is not a defense strategy, but an aggressive attempt to justify a massively expensive military buildup for global control, the effects of which on the environment and climate are beyond imagination.  

     What the Pentagon offers us is the old, ruinous, ostensible threat of Cold War adversaries.  As Pentagon Secretary Jim Mattis expressed it, “Great Power competition, not terrorism, is now the primary focus of U.S. national security.” To the Pentagon, primarily China and Russia threaten the world, not warming and all its costs (of which the Pentagon is aware).

Resistance

                You and I can make two effective responses right now.  We can henceforth delete the word “Defense” from the Pentagon.  It’s the War Department, just as it was before President Truman and the Pentagon cunningly changed its name.  And we can actively support anti-war, anti-imperial organizations; such as Veterans for Peace, Peace Action, AFSC/FCNL, ICAN, NAPF, and OMNI.

      Then we can assist the nascent international effort to connect  war and warming by urging the United Nations to report the full costs to species and earth of US wars, and the Pentagon to keep full records of its slaughters. 

       And then we can laugh out loud at all the greenwashing distracting us from these war and warming connections and costs, many as absurd as Baghdad’s inner fortress named the “green zone.”  (#18 , 624 words)

87 WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS, #87, AUGUST 17, 2022   https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2022/08/war-watch-wednesdays-87-august-17-2022.html

NONVIOLENCE, PACIFISM
Francesco Da Vinci.  I Refuse to Kill.
In September 2022, World BEYOND War will hold a weekly discussion each of four weeks of I Refuse to Kill: My Path to Nonviolent Action in the ’60s with the author Francesco Da Vinci as part of a small group WBW [zoom] book club limited to a group of 18 participants. Francesco will send each participant a signed hardback. We’ll let you know which parts of the book will be discussed each week along with the Zoom details to access the discussions.

SIGN UP HERE.

Chris Hedges: Soldiers Speak Out Against America’s Misguided Wars By Chris Hedges, The Real News. Popular Resistance.org (8-7-22). 

In Their New Book, Veterans Andrew Bacevich And Danny Sjursen Describe How The Realities Of War Expose The Lies Told By Generals And Politicians About American Goodness And Virtue.

We are not a good and virtuous nation. God does not bless us above other nations. Victory is not assured. War is not noble and uplifting. The clash between the reality of combat and the Disneyfied version of combat consumed by the public, one that propels many young men and women into war, creates not only dissonance and moral injury, but an existential crisis—one that combat veterans, at least those who are self-reflective, must cope with for the rest of their lives.

Andrew Bacevich, a retired Army colonel who fought in Vietnam, and Danny Sjursen, a retired Army major who did tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, have just published Paths of Dissent: Soldiers Speak Out Against America’s Misguided Wars. Bacevich and Sjursen, West Point graduates like many writers in the book, come out of the military culture. They began as true believers, embracing the myths of American goodness and virtue, and the military honor code pounded into them as young cadets at the military academy. The reality of combat, as it has for generations, exposed the lies told by the generals and politicians.  -more-

88 WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS, AUGUST 24, 2022   https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2022/08/omni-war-watch-wednesdays-august-24-2022.html

Dan Kovalik.  The Plot to Scapegoat Russia: How the CIA and the Deep State Have Conspired to Vilify Putin.
Tom Engelhardt.  Tomgram: “Is the Never-Ending Story Ending?”

The Plot to Scapegoat Russia: How the CIA and the Deep State Have Conspired to Vilify Putin By Dan Kovalik, Introduction by David Talbot.  Skyhorse, 2017.  
Publisher’s Description

An in-depth look at the decades-long effort to escalate hostilities with Russia and what it portends for the future.
Since 1945, the US has justified numerous wars, interventions, and military build-ups based on the pretext of the Russian Red Menace, even after the Soviet Union collapsed at the end of 1991 and Russia stopped being Red. In fact, the two biggest post-war American conflicts, the Korean and Vietnam wars, were not, as has been frequently claimed, about stopping Soviet aggression or even influence, but about maintaining old colonial relationships. Similarly, many lesser interventions and conflicts, such as those in Latin America, were also based upon an alleged Soviet threat, which was greatly overblown or nonexistent. And now the specter of a Russian Menace has been raised again in the wake of Donald Trump’s election.

The Plot to Scapegoat Russia examines the recent proliferation of stories, usually sourced from American state actors, blaming and manipulating the threat of Russia, and the long history of which this episode is but the latest chapter. It will show readers two key things: (1) the ways in which the United States has needlessly provoked Russia, especially after the collapse of the USSR, thereby squandering hopes for peace and cooperation; and (2) how Americans have lost out from this missed opportunity, and from decades of conflicts based upon false premises. These revelations, amongst other, make The Plot to Scapegoat Russia one of the timeliest reads of 2017.

WAR AND WARMING
Tomgram: Engelhardt, Is the Never-Ending Story Ending?

POSTED ON AUGUST 11, 2022
The Decline and Fall of Everything (Including Me)
What Goes Up Must… Well, You Know…

BY TOM ENGELHARDT

[The conclusion: us gigantic military and climate endgame]  Admittedly, though I recently stumbled across something I wrote in the 1990s that mentioned global warming, I only became strongly aware of the phenomenon in this century as my own decline began (almost unnoticed by me). Even when, at TomDispatch, I started writing fervently about climate change, I must admit that I didn’t initially imagine myself living through it in this fashion — as so many of us have in this globally overheated summer of 2022. Nor did I imagine that such devastating fires, floods, droughts, and storms would become “normal” in my own lifetime. Nor, I must admit, did I think then that the phenomenon might lead to a future all-too-literal end point for humanity, what some scientists are starting to term a “climate endgame” — in other words, a possible extinction event.

And yet here we are, in a democratic system under unbelievable stress, in a country with a gigantic military (backed by a corporate weapons-making complex of almost imaginable size and power) that’s proven incapable of winning anything of significance, even if funded in a fashion that once might have been hard to imagine in actual wartime. In a sense, its only “success” might lie its remarkable ability to further fossil-fuelize the world. In other words, we now live in an America coming apart at the seams at a moment when the oldest story in human history might be changing, as we face the potential decline and fall of everything.

One thing is certain: as with all of us, when it comes to my personal story, there’s no turning around my own decline and fall. When it comes to our country and the world, however, the end of the story has yet to be written. The question is: Will we find some way to write it that won’t end in the fall not just of this imperial power but of humanity itself?

See the end of this doc. for discussion of #89/Chris Hedges by Art Hobson, Gerry Sloan, and George Paulson

89 WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS, #89, AUGUST 31, 2022   https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2022/08/omni-war-watch-wednesdays-89-august-31.html

Chris Hedges.  “Ukraine and the Politics of Permanent War.” 
World Beyond War.  The War Abolisher Awards of 2022.
Dick Bennett.  “Finding Hope.”

Chris Hedges.  “Ukraine and the Politics of Permanent War.” 
The prosecution of permanent war requires permanent censorship.

No one, including the most bullish supporters of Ukraine, expect the nation’s war with Russia to end soon. The fighting has been reduced to artillery duels across hundreds of miles of front lines and creeping advances and retreats. Ukraine, like Afghanistan, will bleed for a very long time. This is by design.

On August 24, the Biden administration announced yet another massive military aid package to Ukraine worth nearly $3 billion. It will take months, and in some cases years, for this military equipment to reach Ukraine. In another sign that Washington assumes the conflict will be a long war of attrition it will give a name to the U.S. military assistance mission in Ukraine and make it a separate command overseen by a two- or three-star general. Since August 2021, Biden has approved more than $8 billion in weapons transfers from existing stockpiles, known as drawdowns, to be shipped to Ukraine, which do not require Congressional approval.

Including humanitarian assistance, replenishing depleting U.S. weapons stocks and expanding U.S. troop presence in Europe, Congress has approved over $53.6 billion ($13.6 billion in March and a further $40.1 billion in May) since Russia’s February 24 invasion. War takes precedence over the most serious existential threats we face. The proposed budget for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in fiscal year 2023 is $10.675 billion while the proposed budget for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is $11.881 billion. Our approved assistance to Ukraine is more than twice these amounts. 

The militarists who have waged permanent war costing trillions of dollars over the past two decades have invested heavily in controlling the public narrative. The enemy, whether Saddam Hussein or Vladimir Putin, is always the epitome of evil, the new Hitler. Those we support are always heroic defenders of liberty and democracy. Anyone who questions the righteousness of the cause is accused of being an agent of a foreign power and a traitor.

The mass media cravenly disseminates these binary absurdities in 24-hour news cycles. Its news celebrities and experts, universally drawn from the intelligence community and military, rarely deviate from the approved script. Day and night, the drums of war never stop beating. Its goal: to keep billions of dollars flowing into the hands of the war industry and prevent the public from asking inconvenient questions.   MORE  https://scheerpost.com/2022/08/29/chris-hedges-ukraine-and-the-politics-of-permanent-war/

Attend Online Presentation of War Abolishers of 2022 Awards.  World BEYOND War ( 8-15-22).
The War Abolisher Awards of 2022 will be presented, and we’ll hear from the recipients, at a free, public online event on September 5, 2022.

RSVP HERE.

Find the timing and the answers to most questions at the link.
We’ll be announcing the winners on August 29th.

Save your spot. It’s free and takes a few seconds.

World BEYOND War is a global network of volunteers, chapters, and affiliated
organizations advocating for the abolition of the institution of war.
Donate to support our people-powered movement for peace.

2022 War Abolisher Awards to Go to Italian Dock Workers, New Zealand Filmmaker, U.S. Environmental Group, and British MP Jeremy Corbyn

Dick: Finding HOPE, all around and in us. 

Despair: to lose hope, to be without hope.

To a Christian, despair denies Jesus.  Through Jesus and a God of love we can understand the universe and solve human problems   With Jesus we cannot despair.

To a humanist, despair abandons reason and science and the other affirmations of human thought and action by which we understand the universe and solve human problems.  The colleges of the arts and sciences exemplify humanist hope.

These two ways to truth are not essentially, inevitably antagonistic.  The Dalai Lama led the Tibetan nation and faith while affirming all religions and science and social sciences.  Both can agree with Thomas Hardy’s way to truth:  “If way to a better there be/It exacts a full look at the worst.” ( “In Tenebris II”)  Both eschew denial of reality, evasion, naiveté, wishful thinking, ignorance, partial thinking, inadequate perception, bigotry, jingoism, xenophobia, which generate illusions.  Both seek action based on full reality.  And both are imperfect, always to be improved.

The present confluence of wars, threat of nuclear war, planetary heating, global racism, population growth, economic inequality, and pandemics exacts a full look at the worst, if we are to act wisely for peace.

OMNI’S WWW AND CMM and its anthologies seek to provide parts of this full reality.

Ref.
The last page of every number of Free Inquiry provides “The Affirmations of Humanism: A Statement of Principles” by Paul Kurtz.

90 WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS, #90, September 7, 2022  https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2022/09/omni-war-watch-wednesdays-90-september.html

The Art of Un-War.  Krzysztof Wodiczko’s films and public interventions against militarization and war.
Chris Hedges on the Collapse of Civilizations.

https://account.newday.com/streaming/?film=ART-01&preview=GHlu3DPx5d3xrKIf
My Videos

The Art Of Un-War          New Day Films

Play Video

Renowned artist Krzysztof Wodiczko has practiced socially engaged art for over five decades and  has dedicated his life and art in denouncing militarization and war. An instigator for social change, Wodiczko’s powerful public art interventions disrupt the valorization of state-sanctioned aggression and challenge our complacency towards war, xenophobia and displacement. The film focuses on Wodiczko’s social practice art and the recurring themes of war, trauma and displacement in Wodiczko’s work.

Combining design and technology, Krzysztof Wodiczko’s projects often function as interventions in public spaces, disrupting the valorization of state-sanctioned aggression. Wodiczko has dedicated his life and art in denouncing militarization and war. The Art Of Un-War  follows Wodiczko, an instigator for social change, as he challenges our complacency towards war, xenophobia and displacement with his unique public projections. Wodiczko’s trajectory unfolds from his birth in Warsaw during World War II, to his expulsion from Poland by the communist regime, to today. This in-depth exploration into the life and art of the Polish born artist focuses on the recurring themes of war in his work throughout his five decades plus career. Wodiczko’s public projections become impactful responses to the inequities and horrors of war and injustice.

The film delves into timely works such as Abraham Lincoln War Veteran Projection in Union Square, NYC, where Wodiczko projects the voices and images of soldiers from 20th and 21st-century wars onto the statue of Lincoln. The participants’ stories of loss, displacement, abuse, and PTSD combined with Wodiczko’s own story of trauma emerge in tandem as the projects become a vehicle for healing. The evolution of Wodiczko’s political art unfolds throughout the film from his first intervention created in Warsaw in 1968 in response to censorship, to one of his most ambitious projects and a focal point of the film – a radical proposal to transform Paris’ Arc De Triomphe war monument into a site for peace-building research and activism. Wodiczko counters the monument’s glorification of war and portrayal of distorted histories by constructing scaffolding around the Arc De Triomphe and transforming it into its complete antithesis.

https://account.newday.com/streaming/?film=ART-01&preview=GHlu3DPx5d3xrKIf

Chris Hedges.   “We Are Not the First Civilization to Collapse, But We Will Probably Be the Last.”   Chris Hedges Report, 8-14-22.

Subject: The archeological remains of past civilizations, including those of the prehistoric Cahokia temple mound complex in Missouri, are sobering reminders of our fate.

[Conclusion]  By the 1400s Cahokia had been abandoned. In 1541, when Hernando de Soto’s invading army descended on what is today Missouri, looking for gold, nothing but the great mounds remained, relics of a forgotten past.

This time the collapse will be global. It will not be possible, as in ancient societies, to migrate to new ecosystems rich in natural resources. The steady rise in heat will devastate crop yields and make much of the planet uninhabitable. Climate scientists warn that once temperatures rise by 4℃, the earth, at best, will be able to sustain a billion people.

The more insurmountable the crisis becomes, the more we, like our prehistoric ancestors, will retreat into self-defeating responses, violence, magical thinking and denial. 

The historian Arnold Toynbee, who singled out unchecked militarism as the fatal blow to past empires, argued that civilizations are not murdered, but commit suicide. They fail to adapt to a crisis, ensuring their own obliteration. Our civilization’s collapse will be unique in size, magnified by the destructive force of our fossil fuel-driven industrial society. But it will replicate the familiar patterns of collapse that toppled civilizations of the past [he subject of the first three-quarters of the essay].  The difference will be in scale, and this time there will be no exit.

The Chris Hedges Report is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS, #91, September 14, 2022
https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2022/09/omni-war-watch-wednesdays-91-september.html
Veterans for Truth and Sanity v. Ukraine War
 Jack Gilroy.  >From US Culture of War to US Domestic Violence and Mass Shootings

See OMNI’s anthologies on the US-NATO-Ukraine-Russia War #25 AUGUST 7, 2022. 

https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2022/08/omni-us-nato-ukraine-russia-war-25.htmlVeterans for Sanity to Biden on Ukraine

Forwarded by Sonny San Juan via uark.onmicrosoft.com

Sep 6, 2022, 7:39 PM (12 hours ago)               

 Ukraine Decision Time for Biden

MEMORANDUM FOR: The President

FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity

SUBJECT: Ukraine Decision Time

REF: Nukes Cannot be Un-Invented, VIPS

Mr. President:

September 05, 2022:  “Antiwar”, https://original.antiwar.com/Veteran-Intelligence-Professionals-for-Sanity2/2022/09/05/veteran-intelligence-professionals-ukraine-decision-time-for-biden/

– Before Defense Secretary Austin flies off to Ramstein for the meeting Thursday of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group we owe you a few words of caution occasioned by our many decades of experience with what happens to intelligence in wartime. If he tells you Kyiv is beating back the Russians, kick the tires – and consider widening your circle of advisers

Truth is the coin of the realm in intelligence analysis. It is equally axiomatic that truth is the first casualty of war, and that applies to the war in Ukraine as well as earlier wars we have been involved in. When at war, Defense Secretaries, Secretaries of State, and generals simply cannot be relied upon to tell the truth – to the media, or even to the President.

MORE  “, https://original.antiwar.com/Veteran-Intelligence-Professionals-for-Sanity2/2022/09/05/veteran-intelligence-professionals-ukraine-decision-time-for-biden/ We learned that early – the hard and bitter way. A lot of our comrades in arms did not come 

Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPs) is made up of former intelligence officers, diplomats, military officers and congressional staffers. The organization, founded in 2002, was among the first critics of Washington’s justifications for launching a war against Iraq. VIPS advocates a US foreign and national security policy based on genuine national interests rather than contrived threats promoted for largely political reasons.

Mass Shootings from Culture of War
“Thirty Six Percent of Mass Shooters Were Trained by the U.S. Military, But Few Americans Know This Because the Media Never Report It” By Jack Gilroy on Aug 30, 2022 10:27 am.

Media pundits and politicians blame lax gun laws, social isolation and mental illness for mass shootings, but ignore the advent of a fascist culture that venerates the U.S. military.

In the wake of a barrage of mass shootings, the media have offered a variety of explanations centering predominantly on the social isolation and mental illness of shooters and their easy access to military-style weaponry due to lax gun regulations.

These factors are significant but almost all media pundits avoid the gorilla sitting in the psyche of the American mind—that of the huge military budget and culture of military veneration, which is reminiscent of fascist cultures.

In a July 8 column entitled “Why Shooters Do the Evil They Do,” New York Times columnist David Brooks characteristically cites mental illness, loneliness and the need for recognition and power as lying at the root of recent mass shootings.

What is missing is any discussion of American-style militarism, something Brooks has whitewashed throughout his writing career.

According to David Swanson, Director of World Beyond War, 36% of mass shooters have been trained by the U.S. military—when only one percent of Americans serve in the military.

Many of the mass shooters also have used military-style weapons and have worn military-style clothing.

Jillian Peterson and James Densley recently published a detailed study of mass shooters sponsored by the National Institute of Justice entitled The Violence Project: How to Stop a Mass Shooting Epidemic, which has been widely cited by the media.

The book casts light on many dark corners of American life but characteristically ignores among the darkest—the military-industrial complex. […]

This essay appeared first in CovertAction Magazine.

92 WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS, #92, September 21, 2022

http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2022/09/war-watch-wednesdays-92.html

“Ukraine and the Politics of Permanent War. ” by Chris Hedges

CIA in Proxy War in Ukraine. Caitlin Johnstone

Tolstoy Excerpt from Patriotism and Christianity

CIA in US Proxy War
Western officials admit Ukraine is crawling with CIA personnel By Caitlin A. Johnstone (Posted Jun 28, 2022).  (Also published in Space Alert! Summer 2022).   https://mronline.org/2022/06/28/western-officials-admit-ukraine-is-crawling-with-cia-personnel/
The New York Times reports that Ukraine is crawling with special forces and spies from the U.S. and its allies, which would seem to contradict earlier reports that the U.S. intelligence cartel is having trouble getting intel about what’s happening on the ground in Ukraine.  This would also, obviously, put the final nail in the coffin of the claim that this is not a U.S. proxy war.  (continued)

Tolstoy’s Patriotism and Christianity, a Foundation for WWW and CMM

Leo Tolstoy from his book

“No feats of heroism are needed to achieve the greatest and most important changes in the existence of humanity; neither the armament of millions of soldiers, nor the construction of new roads and machines, nor the arrangement of exhibitions, nor the organization of workmen’s unions, nor revolutions, nor barricades, nor explosions, nor the perfection of aerial navigation; but a change in public opinion.

And to accomplish this change no exertions of the mind are needed, nor the refutation of anything in existence, nor the invention of any extraordinary novelty; it is only needful that we should not succumb to the erroneous, already defunct, public opinion of the past, which governments have induced artificially; it is only needful that each individual should say what he really feels or thinks, or at least that he should not say what he does not think.

…

One is ashamed to say how little is needed for all men to be delivered from those calamities which now oppress them; it is only needful not to lie.

…

One free man will say with truth what he thinks and feels amongst thousands of men who by their acts and words attest exactly the opposite. It would seem that he who sincerely expressed his thought must remain alone, whereas it generally happens that every one else, or the majority at least, have been thinking and feeling the same things but without expressing them.

And that which yesterday was the novel opinion of one man, to-day becomes the general opinion of the majority.

And as soon as this opinion is established, immediately by imperceptible degrees, but beyond power of frustration, the conduct of mankind begins to alter.

Whereas at present, every man, even, if free, asks himself, “What can I do alone against all this ocean of evil and deceit which overwhelms us? Why should I express my opinion? Why indeed possess one? It is better not to reflect on these misty and involved questions. Perhaps these contradictions are an inevitable condition of our existence. And why should I struggle alone with all the evil in the world? Is it not better to go with the stream which carries me along? If anything can be done, it must be done not alone but in company with others.”

And leaving the most powerful of weapons — thought and its expression — which move the world, each man employs the weapon of social activity, not noticing that every social activity is based on the very foundations against which he is bound to fight, and that upon entering the social activity which exists in our world every man is obliged, if only in part, to deviate from the truth and to make concessions which destroy the force of the powerful weapon which should assist him in the struggle. It is as if a man, who was given a blade so marvelously keen that it would sever anything, should use its edge for driving in nails.

We all complain of the senseless order of life, which is at variance with our being, and yet we refuse to use the unique and powerful weapon within our hands — the consciousness of truth and its expression; but on the contrary, under the pretext of struggling with evil, we destroy the weapon, and sacrifice it to the exigencies of an imaginary conflict’.

…

One man does not assert the truth which he knows, because he feels himself bound to the people with whom he is engaged; another, because the truth might deprive him of the profitable position by which he maintains his family; a third, because he desires to attain reputation and authority, and then use them in the service of mankind; a fourth, because he does not wish to destroy old sacred traditions; a fifth, because he has no desire to offend people; a sixth, because the expression of the truth would arouse persecution, and disturb the excellent social activity to which he has devoted himself.

One serves as emperor, king, minister, government functionary, or soldier, and assures himself and others that the deviation from truth indispensable to his condition is redeemed by the good he does. Another, who fulfils the duties of a spiritual pastor, does not in the depths of his soul believe all he teaches, but permits the deviation from truth in view of the good he does. A third instructs men by means of literature, and notwithstanding the silence he must observe with regard to the whole truth, in order not to stir up the government and society against himself, has no doubt as to the good he does. A fourth struggles resolutely with the existing order as revolutionist or anarchist, and is quite assured that the aims he pursues are so beneficial that the neglect of the truth, or even of the falsehood, by silence, indispensable to the success of his activity, does not destroy the utility of his work.

In order that the conditions of a life contrary to the consciousness of humanity should change and be replaced by one which is in accord with it, the outworn public opinion must be superseded by a new and living one. And in order that the old outworn opinion should yield its place to the new living one, all who are conscious of the new requirements of existence should openly express them. And yet all those who are conscious of these new requirements, one in the name of one thing, and one in the name of another, not only pass them over in silence, but both by word and deed attest their exact opposites.

…

Only the truth and its expression can establish that new public opinion which will reform the ancient obsolete and pernicious order of life; and yet we not only do not express the truth we know, but often even distinctly give expression to what we ourselves regard as false.

If only free men would not rely on that which has no power, and is always fettered — upon external aids; but would trust in that which is always powerful and free — the truth and its expression!”

Thanks to Abel Tomlinson

93 WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS, #93, September 28, 2022

Doug Storm’s Interview of H. Bruce Franklin on Superweapons and Imperialism.  
US-NATO-UKRAINE-RUSSIA Anthology #13

H. BRUCE FRANKLIN ON US Pursuit of  Superweapons and IMPERIALISM

     For fifty-nine years Bruce Franklin has “consistently exposed the workings of U.S. imperialism” and “the damage it has wrought” at home and abroad. 

    Here are two of his books.
    In 1988 he published War Stars: The Superweapon and the U.S. Imagination.  The book is about fantasies of superweapons in the US imagination dating from Robert Fulton’s ultimate weapons in the eighteenth century to Gen. Billy Mitchell and President Truman in the twentieth century.

    In his latest book, Crash Course: From the Good War to the Forever War (2018), he traces the parallels between U.S. foreign military aggressions and “the equally brutal tactics used on the home front to crush organized labor, antiwar, and civil rights movements.”   
     Here are a few of his comments from the interview.
On the US ethical failure in WWII: “…we lost that war.  We thought we were fighting against militarism, fascism, and imperialism, but because of “how we fought that war,” because we used air attacks on civilian populations “as a main strategy,” climaxed by the nuclear bombing of two Japanese cities, the US became a criminal nation. 

On the long aggression against Russia:  “We participated in invading Russia…from 1918 through 1920.  We refused to recognize the USSR until 1933. . . .

“H. Bruce Franklin’s Most Important Books: HBF Interviewed by Doug Storm.”  Monthly Review (September 2022).

US-NATO-UKRAINE-RUSSIA Anthology  #13

https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2022/03/omni-russiaukraine-newsletter-13-march.html

Abel Tomlinson, Ukraine Peace Protest Follow-Up

Bryce Greene, Russia Was Provoked

Scott Ritter, Harms of US Russophobia
   Attempt to Shut up Prof. Mearsheimer at U of Chicago

Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies, US Support for Ukrainian Neo-
    Nazis

Lucas Leiroz, Understanding Ukrainian Nazism

Steven Starr, Russia’s Fear of NATO’s Encroachment and Nuclear
    Weapons

Ben Burgis, No to No-Fly Zone
March 1 to 7: International Week to Stop War with Russia
Moon of Alabama, Disarming Ukraine, Day 7

Oliver Boyd Barrett, Ukraine, Planetary Crisis, Threatening Nuclear War

Rachel Hu and Chris Garaffa, Ukraine, US, NATO Expansion, China,
    Russophobia

Contents Russia and Ukraine #12

WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS, #94, October 5, 2022 

http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2022/10/omni-war-watch-wednesdays-94-october-5.html

Chris Hedges.  The Greatest Evil Is War.

Chris Hedges.  The Greatest Evil is War.  Penguin/Random House, 2022.

 Comment on the book

“Chris Hedges has compiled a remarkable record of reporting and analysis. He has been an incomparable source of insight and understanding, both in his outstanding career as a courageous journalist and in his penetrating commentary on world events. This is a contribution of great significance in these troubled times.”  —Noam Chomsky
“A plangent diatribe against war.”  —Kirkus Reviews
“Savage honesty is a hallmark of everything Chris Hedges writes. Other writers seek to comfort or distract; his purpose is to agitate, unsettle, and demand moral accountability. The Greatest Evil Is War is no exception, which is precisely why every American should read it and reflect on its disturbing message.”   ⏤Andrew Bacevich, author of After the Apocalypse: America’s Role in a World Transformed
“Hedges refuses to reside in the abstract, creating instead a book about war that is meant to be experienced viscerally. . . . His book is nothing short of a gut punch.”
⏤Jake Whitney, The Progressive
“Journalist Hedges (Our Class) delivers a blistering condemnation of war in all forms and for all reasons. Opening the book with a forceful condemnation of the U.S. government’s role in provoking the Russian invasion of Ukraine by breaking its promise not to expand NATO into Central and Eastern Europe, Hedges draws on his experiences as a war correspondent in Bosnia, Kosovo, Sierra Leone, and elsewhere to paint a visceral portrait of the horrors of combat and its physical and psychological aftereffects. Throughout, he fiercely condemns the ‘war industry’ for prolonging conflicts and U.S. politicians and journalists for using “bellicose rhetoric” to demonize enemies and elevate allies into ‘demigods.’ Some of the book’s most powerful pieces draw on the firsthand testimonies of soldiers and their loved ones, including a former U.S. Army Ranger who speaks eloquently of how indoctrination into military culture made him ‘want to deliver death,’ and the father of a Marine killed by a sniper in Iraq. Elsewhere, Hedges lets personal aggrievements distract from his larger points, as when he complains that the Kremlin-funded news channel RT America, where he had a show, was shut down in response to the invasion of Ukraine. Though not all its provocations land, this spiky treatise deserves to be reckoned with.”  —Publishers Weekly

I invite you to check it out and if you like it tell others.  –D

WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS, #95, October 12, 2022

http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2022/10/war-watch-wednesdays-95.html
Neta C. Crawford.   The Pentagon, Climate Change, and War (book).

NAPF v. Nuclear War.AFSC:  Sign the petition to stop endless wars.

Convergence of War and Warming

 Neta C. Crawford.   The Pentagon, Climate Change, and War:  Charting the Rise and Fall of U.S. Military Emissions.  MIT, 2022.  392 pp.

Author(s)   Praise

How the Pentagon became the world’s largest single greenhouse gas emitter and why it’s not too late to break the link between national security and fossil fuel consumption.

The military has for years (unlike many politicians) acknowledged that climate change is real, creating conditions so extreme that some military officials fear future climate wars. At the same time, the U.S. Department of Defense [War]—military forces and DOD agencies—is the largest single energy consumer in the United States and the world’s largest institutional greenhouse gas emitter. In this eye-opening book, Neta Crawford traces the U.S. military’s growing consumption of energy and calls for a reconceptualization of foreign policy and military doctrine. Only such a rethinking, she argues, will break the link between national security and fossil fuels.

NUCLEAR AGE PEACE FOUNDATION (NAPF) v. Nuclear Weapons.

The international days that align with our mission were commemorated and promoted at the United Nations in New York in September. They are the International Day Against Nuclear Tests (August 29) and the International Day For Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons (September 26). NAPF supports the absolute imperative of nuclear weapons abolition, drawing on lessons from the past, the current state of affairs, and what studies – including those of nuclear winter – tell us about the future on Earth ravaged by nuclear war. Please watch our statement at the UN HERE! 

Sign the petition to stop endless wars: In 2002, Congress passed the 2002 Authorization for Use of Military Force, which authorized the invasion of Iraq. Today, 20 years later, any president can still use the AUMF to justify endless wars. This year is our best opportunity to finally repeal this authorization. Add your name to our petition with Daily Kos and urge senators to repeal the 2002 Iraq AUMF.  From the AFSC.

Sent to Social Media and Google Group

WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS, #96, October 19, 2022.   https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2022/10/omni-war-watch-wednesdays-96-october-19.html

STOPPING the Ukraine War: OMNI’s 26 Anthologies, the Case for Peace

CONTENTS OMNI’S US, NATO, RUSSIA, UKRAINE ANTHOLOGY #14, March 19, 2022  http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2022/03/omni-russiaukraine-newsletteranthology.html
Katrina vanden Heuvel.  End the Invasion and Stop the Killing.

HISTORY

Jeremy Kuzmarov.  Russia’s Invasion Was Provoked: CIA’s William Burns.

Dr. Gerald Horne.  “What’s to Be Done in Eastern Europe.”  US: Regime
    Change in Russia.

Tomgram/Tom Dispatch. “William Astore.”

William Astore.  US Cold War, US Arsenal

“When Did the Ukraine War Begin?”  US Empire, NATO, 2004 Orange
      Revolution, 2006 Decision, 2014 Coup in UK and Maidan Massacre,
      Minsk Protocols.

Oliver Stone and Igor Lopatonok.  Ukraine on Fire.  How and When the
    War Started (before the 2014 coup, before the 2004 Orange Revolution).

Abel Tomlinson.  “Ukraine Manufacturing Atrocities to Draw in NATO.”

Fournier, “No Flies Polls.”

Remembering US Aggression:

Nelson Peery, Black Fire, the Bloody US Pacification of the Philippines.
Brian Terrell, “US Policy Toward Russia and Its Neighbors.” 

US Aggression, Truman Doctrine, Carter Doctrine, NATO, Sanctions, Selling
    Weapons, Nuclear Weapons Treaty.

END THE WAR

Vanden Heuvel (above)

AFSC. Diplomacy, Refugee Protection, Humanitarian Assistance
About Face.  DemilitarizeU.

UNITED NATIONS
UN Wire.  Support Refugees

BE INFORMED

No Chemical/Biological Warfare

US/Russian Counterclaims re Biowarfare.

NO HUMAN SHIELDS

Population Fund vs. Alleged Russian Attack on Hospital.

UNHCR.  Human Rights Violations in Belarus.

Contents US, Russia, Ukraine, Nos. 1-5, 2014-2015

Contents Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine #13

Hitler’s Takeover of the Institutions of the Weimar Republic, the US Democratic and Republican Parties since WWII the War Party, and the Republican Party’s Possible Takeover of the Supreme Court, Presidency, and Congress in the next election: different methods and players, possible similar result?

     Upton Sinclair’s novel, Dragon’s Teeth (1942, pp. 246-48) and Benjamin Hett’s The Death of Democracy: Hitler’s Rise to Power and the Downfall of the Weimar Republic.

97 WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS, #97, OCTOBER 26, 2022.

NUCLEAR WAR
 http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2022/10/war-watch-wednesdays-97.html

Gerald Sloan.  “Assisted Suicide.”
Join NAPF for the Next Nuclear Dangers Zoom Discussion
Dick.  From Holocene to Anthropocene: the Military Bridge.

ASSISTED SUICIDE

By Gerald H. Sloan

Superpowers are playing chicken

with nuclear weapons

while we try to teach our children

how to be better persons.

Where’s the contradiction here

when words like “shark attack”

inspire more fear

than “nuclear winter?”

No words in any language

can span the yawning

chasm, no system link

such epic doublethink.

How to explain to the next

generation this abrogation

on so vast a scale, no calculus

by which our overseers do not fail?

Join Us for the Next Nuclear Dangers Zoom Discussion

War v. Environment.

Title:  The Military Bridge from Holocene to Anthropocene.  The Militarism Bridge from Conventional to Nuclear War.

       What are your favorite ironies today?   Let me suggest two more.  One:  The fortress at the center of Baghdad is called the “Green Zone.”  Two: In 2008, while the Burj Dubai tower was being built (twice the height of the Empire State Building), the Stratigraphy Commission of the Geological Society of London was saying Farewell to the Holocene, Hello Anthropocene!

       The Holocene epoch of stable climate that allowed our civilization has ended.   Because of (causes) the extraordinary human buildup of population, consumption in affluent countries, capitalism, economic growth, and (consequences) CO2/greenhouse gases, warming, weather instability, deforestation, acidification of the oceans, and mass destruction of animals and plants, the Anthropocene epoch has begun.  Humans have forced evolution itself into a new, rapidly developing trajectory.

      Perhaps the single greatest institutional contributor to warming, the largest single source of pollution in the world, is US militarism; in particular, the military in its most ferocious mode, the US military at war, now ceaseless.     The military produces enough greenhouse gases to place the entire globe in danger of extinction. 

     The scale of environmental damage over the last half century is unprecedented. Falling water tables, shrinking forest cover, declining species diversity all presage ecosystems in distress. These trends are now widely acknowledged as emanating from forces of humanity’s own making; ironically however, war, that most destructive of human behaviors, is commonly bypassed.

       The disregard that all wars engender for all living things, especially for ostensible enemies, is so common as to be unremarked, and the Pentagon keeps no record of numbers of enemy combatants or civilians killed.  The private Information Clearing House, as of January 2009, counted Iraq War civilian deaths at 1,297,997 since the invasion in 2003.  I have found no record of the cows and chicken, dogs and cats, birds and snakes, crickets or butterflies killed during those or any other years or wars.

    If humans who were seeking to avoid death were so slaughtered, how enormous must have been the decimation of other species from the shooting, firing, dropping, exploding, and incinerating.  The “Shock and Awe” invasion of Iraq began at 10:15 the evening of March 19, 2003, when some 1,700 bombers and fighter planes flew some 1,400 sorties and fired 504 cruise missiles directly into Baghdad.  In the first two days 800 cruise missiles were fired, one every four minutes, day and night.  Each missile weighed about 3,000 pounds, adding up to a total of 1,200 tons, or 2,400,000 pounds of explosives. 

     When the US goes to war against a foreign nation it is a war not only against people, but against the Earth, the soil and animals and plants, in the most far-reaching, annihilating ways.  The earth can no longer absorb the punishment of war of the ferocity that the greatest superpower in history is capable of inflicting. 

      Yet the US will not only not let go its will to dominate the world; rather it is tightening its grip.  In its latest National Defense Strategy, the Pentagon declared a new Cold War with both China and Russia and promised to wage the war around the globe.  That is, it is not a defense strategy, but an aggressive attempt to justify a massively expensive military buildup for global control, the effects of which on the environment and climate are beyond imagination.  

     What we need is an International Rescue Strategy against the consequences of the onrushing climate catastrophe that includes not only coastal city adaptations to rising seas but relief for global economic inequality within and among nations, and millions of displaced refugees.   Instead, the Pentagon offers us the old, ruinous, ostensible threat of Cold War adversaries.  As Pentagon Secretary Jim Mattis expressed it, “Great Power competition, not terrorism, is now the primary focus of U.S. national security.” To the Pentagon, China and Russia threaten the world, not warming, hurricanes, drought, extinctions, or rising oceans.

Resistance

      You and I can make two effective responses right now.  We can stop saying Department of Defense.  Put an X or a slash over Defense.   It’s the War Department, just as it was before President Truman and the Pentagon cunningly changed its name.  And we can support anti-war, anti-imperial organizations; such as Veterans for Peace, Peace Action, AFSC/FCNL, ICAN, NAPF, OMNI. Want to expand your antiwar footprint?  Join an antiwar organization.

      And then we can join the United Nations in estimating the environmental and climatic destruction of US wars before and afterward, toward pushing Congress to force the Pentagon to declare the true costs of its wars.  This is a feasible and even familiar practice.   For example, a 2010 study found that 3,000 companies were responsible for $ 2.15 trillion worth of environmental damage in 2008.  Let’s get the damage data and let’s name the perps.

       And then we can laugh out loud at all the green-washing–many as absurd as Baghdad’s “green zone”– distracting us from calamitous planetary war and warming.

References, KPSQ talk #18 on War and Environment Sat. Feb. 24, 2018. (800 words, I cut this for the radio editorial to around 650 to be under 7 minutes).    
Barry Sanders, The Green Zone: The Environmental Costs of Militarism.  2009.  Over a decade old but still cutting-edge, so little attention to the destruction has been paid.Mike Davis, “Foreword,” to The Green Zone, “ Living on the Ice Shelf: Humanity’s Melt Down” (2008).
“Putting a price on global environmental damage .“   Trucost.  https://www.trucost.com/trucost-news/putting-price-global-environmental-damage/  Oct 5, 2010.
 Robert Borosage.  “Trump’s Forever Wars.”  The Nation (Feb. 26, 2018).
Alice and Lincoln Day, Producers.  Scarred Lands & Wounded Lives: The Environmental Footprint of War. The effects of war and war preparations on the environment, while profound, have been largely overlooked.  In 2011OMNI brought Alice and Lincoln here to show their excellent film.

Sent to blog, social media, google groups, marc

98.  WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS, #98, NOVEMBER 2, 2022.
https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2022/11/omni-war-watch-wednesdays-98-november-2.html

NUCLEAR WAR
World Beyond War.  Kucinich Calls for Diplomacy.
Dick.  Nukewatch Quarterly urgently important.
Chris Hedges Warns of the War Mongers and Dr. Strangeloves.
Franҫois Diaz Maurin.  “No Place to Hide.”

“Kucinich Says Call for Diplomacy to end Ukraine-Russia War Must be Heard. “  By Dennis Kucinich, World BEYOND War, October 26, 2022, https://worldbeyondwar.org/kucinich-says-call-for-diplomacy-to-end-ukraine-russia-war-must-be-heard-silencing-of-congressional-progressive-caucus-casts-dems-as-the-war-party/

CLEVELAND (Oct. 26) Weds – – Dennis J. Kucinich, former Congressman and former Democratic Presidential candidate today called upon Congressional Democrats to “rethink their opposition to diplomacy” as a means to end the war between Russia and Ukraine.

The Fall 2022 edition of the Nukewatch Quarterly is now ready for viewing online!Click here to read the whole newsletter.    In seeking to abolish nuclear weapons, NQ is one of the most important journals published in the world today.

Chris Hedges.  Maximum Danger from the War Mongers and  Dr. Strangeloves.

The longer the proxy war in Ukraine continues, the closer we come to a direct confrontation with Russia. Once that happens, the Dr. Strangeloves running the show will reach for the nukes.

I have covered enough wars to know that once you open that Pandora’s box, the many evils that pour out are beyond anyone’s control. War accelerates the whirlwind of industrial killing. The longer any war continues, the closer and closer each side comes to self-annihilation.  Unless it is stopped, the proxy war between Russia and the U.S. in Ukraine all but guarantees direct confrontation with Russia and, with it, the very real possibility of nuclear war.

 Joe Biden, who doesn’t always seem to be quite sure where he is or what he is supposed to be saying, is being propped up in the I-am-a-bigger-man-than-you contest with Vladimir Putin by a coterie of rabid warmongers who have orchestrated over 20 years of military fiascos. They are salivating at the prospect of taking on Russia, and then, if there is any habitation left on the globe, China. Trapped in the polarizing mindset of the Cold War — where any effort to de-escalate conflicts through diplomacy is considered appeasement, a perfidious Munich moment — they smugly push the human species closer and closer toward obliteration. Unfortunately for us, one of these true believers is Secretary of State Antony Blinken.  MORE click on title

Franҫois Diaz Maurin.  “No Place to Hide.  How a Nuclear War Would Kill You and Almost Everyone Else.”   Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.  October 20, 2022. https://thebulletin.org/2022/10/nowhere-to-hide-how-a-nuclear-war-would-kill-you-and-almost-everyone-else/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=ThursdayNewsletter10202022&utm_content=NuclearRisk_NowhereToHide_10202022
In a nuclear war, hundreds to thousands of detonations would occur within minutes, resulting in tens to hundreds of millions of people dead or injured in a few days. But a few years after, global climatic changes caused by the many nuclear explosions could be responsible for the death of more than half of the human population on Earth. Read more.

99.  WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS, #99, NOVEMBER 9, 2022.  https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2022/11/omni-war-watch-wednesdays-99-november-9.html

David Swanson, World Beyond War.  “Armistice Day November 11.”

Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies.  War in Ukraine: Making Sense of a
   Senseless Conflict.
Two from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists on the Cuban Missile Crisis.
  Times the world came close to nuclear disaster.
  How many nuclear weapons did the US and USSR have?
Justice for the Marshall Islands: Nuclear Weapons Testing. 

ARMISTICE DAY NOVEMBER 11

At 11:00 on 11/11 do something for peace

The urgent importance of Armistice Day in the middle of a war involving all of the nuclear-armed nations should be noted by all.  We refer to the first Nuclear Cold War as though a Second occurred, but the First never ended.   The Stalinist autocracy changed to an oligarchy of billionaires, and the nuclear threat remained, and now is dire, for the NATO nations have expanded eastward to Russia’s borders.  We must stop this arming, innovating, and threatening by nuclear weapons before some officer presses the button, or a mistake is made.

NUCLEAR WAR

Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies.  War in Ukraine: Making Sense of a Senseless Conflict.

Three Articles in Retrospect

US NUCLEAR WEAPONS TESTING.   Union of Concerned Scientists. 
“Act Now for Nuclear Justice in the Marshall Islands.”  Union of Concerned Scientists.
Dear Dick, 10-8-22 (forwarded by Jean Gordon)
Between 1946 and 1958 the United States tested 67 nuclear weapons in the Marshall Islands. With the advances in power of the bombs over time, this averages out to the equivalent of dropping one Hiroshima-sized bomb a day for 20 years. These nuclear tests vaporized some islands completely, spread radioactive contamination across the remaining islands, and left many permanently uninhabitable. Marshallese people continue to suffer from cancers and other long-term health effects caused by radiation exposure.

Please urge your members of Congress to cosponsor a resolution supporting nuclear justice in the Marshall Islands.

END #99

100. WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS, #100, NOVEMBER 16, 2022. 

VFP.  NO TO NUKES

NO TO NUKES, LET’S DO IT TOGETHER

VFP Spokane – SAY NO TO NUKES Picket and Rally.”   VFP Weekly E-News (10-24-22).

VFP Spokane, in conjunction with Defuse Nuclear War and UNAC developed a strategy and held an event to “Say No To Nukes” at the Foley Federal Courthouse on October 14th. Information packets were left at Senator Patty Murray’s and Representative McMorris-Rodgers’ offices. The sidewalk was briefly occupied for a photo op. A variety of speakers addressed the 50-person gathering as to the importance of expressing core values for the wellbeing of Humanity. City Council President Breean Beggs congratulated efforts to continually pursue the good for our community. The rally was uplifted by performances of anti-war songs throughout and after the announcement of further actions on October 24th, the event ended with a prayer and a song for safe travels.

Read the full report back!

NUCLEAR POWER AND NUCLEAR WEAPONS
Alfred Meyer.  “It’s All About the Bomb.”  The Progressive (Oct.-Nov. 2022).  “Why civilian nuclear power is merely a cover for producing more nuclear weapons.”  Conclusion: “To protect ourselves from the dangers of the nuclear enterprise, we need to stop the nuclear weapons and nuclear power reactor programs—a tall order, for sure, but if we seek success in our efforts, we are well advised to understand the forces we are engaging with.  It is all about nuclear weapons.”  [The Progressive has long and consistently opposed nuclear weapons.  For that alone it deserves our support.  –D]

SILENCE OF THE CHURCHES.  FEW FOOLS FOR CHRIST.

Ed Shanahan.  “Rev. Carl Kabat, 88, Peace Activist and Avowed ‘Fool for Christ,’ Dies.”  The New York Times Obituaries, Sunday, August 21, 2022, p. 24.  “…Roman Catholic priest and tenacious yet joyful foe of nuclear weapons who spent nearly 20 years in prison for protests….citing Corinthians [Kabat] called himself a ‘fool for Christ’…sounding the alarm about the doomsday threat posed by the world‘s nuclear arsenal.”

NOVEMBER 8, 2022

U.S. Review Envisions Using Nuclear Weapons Against Non-Nuclear Attacks

BY PATRICK MAZZA

Ivy Mike nuclear blast, Enewetak Atoll, November 1, 1952. Photo: National Nuclear Security Administration.

On the 2020 campaign trail, Joe Biden said the U.S. should never be the first to use nuclear weapons. “There is no first use doctrine we should be pushing,” he said.  But a new administration review has reiterated the long-term policy that the U.S. will launch nuclear weapons in response to non-nuclear attacks. It once again underscores the power of the military-industrial-congressional complex to maintain the status quo, even when it poses civilization-ending dangers.

Stephen Young, of the Union of Concerned Scientists Global Security Program, said the new nuclear review “abandons the pledge Biden made on the campaign trail to support a ‘no first use’ policy and declare that the sole purpose of U.S. nuclear weapons is to deter nuclear attacks on the United States and its allies.”…

 “Broad and ambiguous” on when weapons used

 “This broad and ambiguous nuclear weapons declaratory policy walks back President Biden’s earlier position and pledge to narrow the role of U.S. nuclear weapons,” said Daryl G. Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association.  “In 2020, Biden wrote ‘that the sole purpose of the U.S. nuclear arsenal should be deterring—and, if necessary, retaliating against—a nuclear attack. As president, I will work to put that belief into practice, in consultation with the U.S. military and U.S. allies.’”…Continued…

UN votes 152 to 5 telling Israel to get rid of its nuclear weapons

By Ben Norton (Posted Nov 03, 2022)

Originally published: Multipolarista  on October 31, 2022 (more by Multipolarista)

The vast majority of countries on Earth voted in the United Nations General Assembly to condemn the Israeli apartheid regime for having nuclear weapons, in flagrant violation of international law.

Israel is the only country in West Asia that has nukes. Tel Aviv has not officially acknowledged its possession of the planet-destroying weapons, but experts estimate it has at least 90 nuclear warheads, and perhaps hundreds.

The October 28, 2022 UN General Assembly vote telling Israel to get rid of its illegal nuclear weapons.

On October 28, a staggering 152 countries (79% of all UN member states) adopted a resolution that called on Israel to give up its atomic bombs, join the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and allow the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to supervise its nuclear facilities.

Just five countries voted against the measure: the United States and Canada, the small island nations of Palau and Micronesia, and apartheid Israel itself….continued

FIND ONE MORE ON NUKES

101 WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS, #101, NOVEMBER 23, , 2022. 

QUAKERS KNOW THE WAY TO PEACE

Statement on the peace testimony and Ukraine: AFSC joins with other Quaker groups in affirming our commitment to seeking peaceful alternatives to armed conflict and ensuring the human costs of war are not forgotten. Whichever way this war ends, we know that healing and sustainable peacemaking will take more than a generation, and will only be possible through inclusive and sustainable processes.  

FIND TWO OR THREE OTHER ITEMS ON WAR’S IMPACT ON THE SOLDIERS

Then Conscription Began for the British Troops

By Dick Bennett

The soldiers cheered “God and Country!”

for victory over the enemy. 

God with us.   (Gott mit uns.) 

Over five foot eight the volunteers came,

cheering right and honor.

They walked tall to kill the enemy,

led by kilted bagpipes,

into the wire, into the guns.

After the Battle of the Marne

over five foot six the volunteers came

drank their rum to cheer their fear.

After the Battle of Ypres

five foot four the volunteers came

steeled by Cross or mother, wife, and kids,

by rum, comrades, fears and tears,

they crept toward wire and guns.

Back home conscription had begun.

AFSC, Daily Kos Petition to Stop the Wars

Chris Hedges “The Greatest Evil is War”, Oct. 29, 2022

Speaking at the Sanctuary for Independent Media in Troy, New York.

“Chris Hedges returned to The Sanctuary for Independent Media in Troy NY on October 21, 2022 to speak on the subject of his latest book, titled “The Greatest Evil is War” (Seven Stories Press). This unflinching indictment of the horror and obscenity of war draws from experience and interviews for a book that looks at the hidden costs of war, what it does to individuals, families, communities, and nations.”

www.mediasanctuary.org
www.chrislhedges.com

OPPOSE WAR WEAPONS

Ban Killer Drones.”  VFP WEEKLY E-NEWS (10-24-22).

Anti-drone war cable TV spots, with voice-over by Martin Sheen, appeared on CNN and MSNBC President Joe Biden’s weekend hometown, Wilmington, DE. The creation of spots was overseen by VFP member Cres Vellucci for BanKillerDrones.org, co-coordinated by VFP national board member Nick Mottern and VFP advisory board member Kathy Kelly.  Two workshops held at the 2022 VFP Convention, appear at bankillerdrones.org.

PUT HIXSON IN MY RUSSIA/UKRAINE WAR DOC AS SOON AS THE DOC IS REPAIRED 11-5

102.  WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS, #102, NOVEMBER 30, 2022. 

Walter Hixson, Imperialism and War: The History Americans Need to Own.  Institute for Research, 2021.

Publisher’s Synopsis
Transcending the mythology of “American exceptionalism,” the acclaimed historian Walter Hixson unveils a long history of war and imperialism, one that is deeply embedded in the American national DNA. From Columbus to the “forever wars” of the modern Middle East, Americans have sought imperial domination over other peoples, invariably deemed inferior, and have regularly chosen to go to war with them.

The consequences of the nation’s violent aggression have been severe yet not fully analyzed owing to the powerful boundaries erected by patriotic nationalism. Americans have viewed themselves as a “chosen people” and the United States as a “beacon and liberty,” the champion of the “free world,” but this self-serving discourse has served to enable continental and overseas imperialism and war.

Americans typically professed to go to war because they “had to” or to make the world “safe for democracy,” but only rarely were these scenarios in play. Rather, Americans usually chose to go to war, and US foreign policy rarely produced or even sought to produce democratic outcomes. Instead, the United States often engaged in violent repression of other peoples and bolstered dictatorial regimes, including those engaged in mass murder.

US war and imperialism frequently proved ineffectual, as they were often grounded in dramatic misperceptions. Foreign aggression also often sowed the seeds for “blowback” attacks and the continuation or renewal of conflict and warfare. Moreover–and rarely analyzed–continental and overseas aggression also undermined democracy, civil liberties, and progressive reform on the home front.

Rooted in decades of study and delivered in crystal clear and direct language, this book is must-reading for anyone wishing to go beyond the clichés that typically structure discussions of the history and contemporary prospects of American foreign relations. In a bold conclusion Hixson outlines the desperate need for adoption of a new paradigm of “cooperative internationalism” to transcend the nation’s penchant for war and     imperialism fueled by national self-worship.

THE WAR PARTY

 FIND 2 OR 3 MORE ON TRUMP BIDEN ET AL   44

John Nichols.  “Editorial: It’s Still About Trump.”  The Nation (9.5-12.2022).   The “fundamental issue of the 2022 midterm elections is whether the United States will continue as a constitutional republic or warp into an authoritarian state.”  The Democrats must defeat Donald Trump’s and the GOP’s efforts to dismantle democratic norms. Democrats must speak with “absolute clarity about the threat posed” by them.

103.  WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS, DECEMBER 7, 2022

SCAN FOR TOPICS

VS CORPORATE WAR CRIMES
VFP Weekly E-News (10-24-22).

 Kathy Kelly and Nick Mottern are involved in the creation of the Merchants of Death War Crimes Tribunal, (Online, Nov. 10-13, 2023).  VFP advisory board members Marjorie Cohn and Ann Wright, and noted human rights lawyer Bill Quigley, are assisting Tribunal organizers, who intend to document ways in which Lockheed-Martin, Boeing, Raytheon and drone producer General Atomics have aided and abetted U.S. war crimes since 9/11.

RESIST THINK TANK-M-I-C

KNOWLEDGE OF WAR, ENDING WAR

Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo. 
“He was the new messiah of the battlefields saying to people as I am so shall you be.   For he had seen the future he had tasted it and now he was living it.  He had seen the airplanes flying he had seen the skies of the future filled with them black with them and now he saw the horror beneath.  He saw a world of lovers forever parted of dreams never consummated of plans that never turned into reality.  He saw a world of dead fathers and crippled brothers and crazy screaming sons.  He saw a world of armless mothers clasping headless babies to their breasts trying to scream out their grief from throats that were cancerous with gas.  He saw starved cities black and cold and motionless and the only things in this whole dead terrible world that made a move or a sound were the airplanes that blackened the sky and far off against the horizon the thunder of the big guns and the puffs that rose from barren tortured earth from their shells exploded.”  [The thoughts are those of the horribly wounded WWI soldier protagonist.  Transcribed by Dick.]

Chris Hedges.  “Shadows of War.”  The Progressive (Oct.-Nov. 2022).  “The true costs of war are hidden from the public because the reality is too horrific to accept.”   One of Hedge’s main goals is “at least an attempt to unmask war’s savagery.”  In this excerpt he discusses books of war photographs by Peter van Agtmael, 2^nd Tour, Hope I Don’t Die, and by Lori Grinker, Afterwar: Veterans from a World in Conflict.  These books “begin to capture war’s reality,” but we seldom see even these “shadows of war” because “the state and the press, the handmaiden of the war makers, work hard to keep [the effects] hidden” (the “smells, noises, confusion, and most of all its overpowering fear,” the “terrible burns, blindness, amputation, and lifelong pain and trauma).   (Excerpted from The Greatest Evil Is War, Seven Stories P, 2022).  –Dick

99 WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS, #99, NOVEMBER 9, 2022

“He was the future he was a perfect picture of the future and they were afraid to let anyone see what the future was like.  Already they were looking ahead they were fighting the future and somewhere in the future they saw war.  To fight that war they would need men and if men saw the future they would fight.  So they were masking the future they were keeping the future a soft quiet deadly secret.  They knew that if all the little people all the little guys saw the future they would begin to ask questions. They would ask questions and they would find answers and they would say to the guys who wanted them to fight they would say you lying thieving sons of bitches we won’t fight we won’t be dead we will live we are the world we are the future and we will not let you butcher us no matter what you say no matter what speeches you make no matter what slogans you write.” Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo.  [The thoughts are those of the horribly wounded WWI soldier protagonist, without arms, legs, and face.]

100 WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS, #100, NOVEMBER 16, 2022

“If you make a war if there are guns to be aimed if there are bullets to be fired if there are men to be killed they will not be us.  They will not be us the guys who grow wheat and turn it into food. . . .oh no it will not be us who die.  It will be you.  It will be you—you who urge us on to battle you who incite us against ourselves you who would have one cobble kill another cobbler you who would have one man who works kill another man who works you who would have one human being who wants only to live kill another human being who wants only to live.  Remember this.  Remember this well you people who plan for war.  Remember this you patriots you fierce ones you spawners of hate you inventors of slogans.  Remember this as you have never remembered anything else in your lives.  We are men of peace we are men who work and we want no quarrel.” Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo.  [The author imagines the thoughts of a WWI quadruple amputee, whose face was also destroyed.]

101 WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS, #101, NOVEMBER 23, 2022

PREVENTING WAR

Understanding the causes of the Ukraine war of 2014-.

Here’s a snippet of Hedges’ interview of Medea Benjamin on her new book.

. . . Chris Hedges:  What do you think is driving the hostility towards, or what drove it? I’m not defending, of course, the war in Ukraine, as you don’t either. A preemptive war is a war crime. But what drove that hostility? Andrew Bacevich argues that it was just the hubris of a broken Soviet empire and a weakened Russia. I’ve got to believe that the billions in profit that were made, are being made by the war industry, by refitting Warsaw Pact countries with NATO equipment was also a factor. But what do you believe drove this hostility?

Medea Benjamin:  I think there are many factors behind it, and you named some of it. We also have, within the Democratic Party, the last years of the demonization of Russia around Russia-gate, instead of admitting that Hillary Clinton was a bad candidate, blaming the Russians on the victory of Donald Trump. We know that we have two war parties. I think the Republicans are more focused on China as the adversary and the Democrats more focused on Russia. But in any case, we have this growing militarization that has taken over NATO, but a militarization of Ukraine by the US. And even under Obama, we see that right after the Minsk Agreement was signed and there was supposed to be some peaceful solution to the conflict in the Donbas, you see him sending weapons to Ukraine, supposedly defensive weapons.

And now of course, all of that charade of defensive versus offensive have been lifted, but it has been both Democrats and Republicans who have really pushed for increased hostility towards Russia, increased militarization of Europe. And this is also a way to get Europe totally behind the United States, whereas I think with the Europeans, like the Germans and many other European countries becoming so dependent on Russia for their energy supplies, the US was trying to find a way to sever the ties between Western Europe and Russia, and make sure that Western Europe was solidly behind the United States. And this terrible invasion by Putin has given them exactly what the US wanted.

Chris Hedges:  Let’s talk about the Minsk Agreement. This was an agreement that Ukraine never honored. Explain what it was and what it was meant to do.  MORE

ANDREW BOYD with DAVE OSWALD MITCHELL.   A TOOLBOX FOR REVOLUTION.   “. . . a crash course in the emerging field of carnivalesque realpolitik, both elegant and incendiary.”  Naomi Klein.  

102 WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS, #102, NOVEMBER 30, 2022

103 WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS

104 WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS

POSSIBLE MATERIALS FOR FUTURE WWW

“The Coldest of All Cold Monsters”

by Peter Werbe.  Fifth Estate # 410, Fall, 2021

https://www.fifthestate.org/archive/410-fall-2021/the-coldest-of-all-cold-monsters/

Review of
The Operating System: An Anarchist Theory of the Modern State by Eric Laursen, Foreword by Maia Ramath. AK Press 2021.

Politics in the U.S. are so skewed to the right that tepid reformers such as Congressional Representative Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (AOC) and Senator Bernie Sanders are characterized as the radical left for advocating universal health care and free college tuition.

That label was historically applied to communists and socialists who called for the dictatorship of the proletariat or at least the nationalizing of the means of production. However, having veered sharply from their traditional confrontation with capital, not even left groups or parties any longer speak in those terms. They, too, it seems, will settle for health care and free college provided by the State.

Not bad ideas in themselves, but not ones that address themselves to the fundamental construct of modern life comprised of the capitalist economy and its administration and protection apparatus, the political State. Eric Laursen’s new book may be the most complete dissection in a long while of its role, its functions, and, as the subtitle promises, an anarchist analysis detailing how it operates.

As most readers of the Fifth Estate know, the State is a relative newcomer in human affairs. One that was established several thousand years ago as a racket by the elite once societies separated into classes and there was surplus wealth to accumulate and protect.

But, as Laursen lays out, simply men under arms was insufficient to maintain power and privilege. The necessity to dispatch men with spears or guns to quell dissent indicated a failure of the mythology affirming the sanctity of the division of rulers and ruled. A culture of the State had to be constructed that declared nothing was possible outside of the State.

Seventeenth century English political philosopher Thomas Hobbes famously wrote that before the State was established, life was “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.” That the exact opposite was true under Hobbes’s patron, King Charles II, who presided over squalor, poverty, plague, war, and environmental destruction, didn’t dissuade those who wanted to inculcate the tyranny of the fact of State rule.

(Continued

Published in UN Wire (5-6-22)
“The View From Moldova — Is This Putin’s Next Target?”

 Full Story: UN Dispatch (5/5) 

IN THE MOOD FOR  SOME SATIRE?

The View from

Is This Biden’s Next Target?

The View from

Is This Trump’s Next Target?

The View from

Is This Obama’s Next Target?

The View from

Is This Bush II’s Next Target

Etc.

POSSIBLE WWW SOURCES
NukeWatch: note on the org, a single no., an article

WWW BOOKS beginning Dec. 23, 2020

Burbach and Tarbell

Immerwahr

Johnstone

Ritter

Sorensen

Vine

Begin inserting short sections on peacemaking, e.g. satyagraha
USE THE PEACE ALMANAC

POSSIBLE BOOKS FOR WWW

Quick View

AXIS OF RESISTANCE Towards an Independent Middle East

Tim Anderson

Quick View

THE AMERICAN TRAJECTORY: Divine or Demonic?

David Ray Griffin

Quick View

Related Products

Quick View

THE NEO-CATHOLICS Implementing White Nationalism in America

Betty Clermont

Quick View

DISCOVERING AMERICA AS IT IS

Valdas Anelauskas

Quick View

SEEKING TRUTH IN A COUNTRY OF LIES

Edward Curtin

Quick View

HOME FRONT The Government’s War on Soldiers

Rick Anderson

ANDREW COCKBURN, author of Kill Chain: The Rise of the High Tech Assassins.

POSSIBLE ACTIONS

DEMONIZINGTHE ENEMY

The U.S. Air Force Just Admitted The F-35 Stealth Fighter Has Failed

David Axe

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2021/02/23/the-us-air-force-just-admitted-the-f-35-stealth-fighter-has-failed/?sh=189408bf1b16

More

JANUARY 6:  On this day in 1941, President Roosevelt proclaimed the “Four Freedoms” of speech and religion, and from fear and want.   Today these freedoms in the US “remain to be strived for.”  Peace Almanac, ed. David Swanson.

AUTHOR/TITLE INDEX TO DICK’S KPSQ EDITORIALS 

BOOKS CITED BELOW in FULL TITLES and DATES WERE PRESENTED ON KPSQ AS EDITORIALS of 5 to 7 minutes from April 2017 to September 29, 2018 on the weekly program “Folkus,” directed by Jim Lukens.  My topics were the convergence of US twentieth-and twenty-first centuries capitalism, wars, climate catastrophe, and population consumption and rise. 

 Tariq Ali.  Bush in Babylon: The Recolonization of Iraq.  Verso, 2003.  (#
     forthcoming).

Ian Angus.  Facing the Anthropocene: Fossil Capitalism and the
      Crisis of the Earth System.  Monthly Review, 2016. 
      (# forthcoming)

Andrew J. Bacevich.  America’s War for the Greater Middle East: A Military
     History.  Random House, 2016.  (# forthcoming).  Other relevant books by 
         Bacevich:  Breach of Trust, Washington Rules, The Limits of Power, The
     New American Militarism, American Empire, etc.
Stacy Bannerman    “Is Climate The Worst Casualty of War?”   Common
     Dreams, July 31, 2018.  (# 46, 9-15-18). Also Peace in Our Times (Fall 2018) p. 21.  See Bertell, Chomsky and Polk, Dower, Dyer, Greer, Johnson, Maddow, Parenti, Paskal, Sanders, Smith and Vivekananda, Gar Smith, Wood.  

Louis Beres.  America Outside the World: The Collapse of U.S. Foreign Policy. 
     (1987) (#8, 12-13-17)

Rosalie Bertell.  Planet Earth: The Latest Weapon of War (2001) (#22, 3-22-18).

William Blum.  Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II (1986, updated 2004).  (#  forthcoming).   (Blum’s other books:  Rogue State:
     Guide to the World’s Only Superpower (2000); Freeing the World to Death:
     Essays on the American Empire (2005); America’s Deadliest Export:
     Democracy (2013). 

William Blum.  Rogue State: Guide to the World’s Only Superpower (2000).  (#
       forthcoming).

 James Carroll.  House of War: The Pentagon and the Disastrous Rise of
     American Power.  Houghton Mifflin, 2006.  (# 42, 8-18-18)

Peter Carter & Elizabeth Woodworth.  Unprecedented Crime: Climate Science
     Denial and Game Changers for Survival. (2018) (#23, 3-31-18; #40, 8-4-18).

Noam Chomsky.  Profit Over People: Neoliberalism and Global Order.  Seven
     Stories P, 1999.  (# forthcoming)

Noam Chomsky and Laray Polk, Nuclear War and Environmental Catastrophe
      (2013) (#14, 1-27-18).

Fred J. Cook.  The Warfare State.  Macmillan, 1962.  (# forthcoming)

Bruce Cumings, et al.  Inventing the Axis of Evil: The Truth about North Korea, Iran, and Syria.  New Press, 2004. 

Nicolas J.S. Davies.  Blood on Our Hands: The American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq.  Nimble Books, 2010. 

Ashley Dawson.  Extreme Cities: The Peril and Promise of Urban Life in the Age
     of Climate Change. ( 2017).  (#26, 4-28-18, & Engelhardt; #27 5-5-18). 

John Dower.  Cultures of War: Pearl Harbor/Hiroshima/9-11/Iraq.  Norton/New
     Press, 2010.  (# forthcoming)

John Dower.  The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since World War II. 
     Dispatch, Haymarket, 2017.  (#forthcoming)

Gwynne Dyer. Climate Wars. (2010). (#41, 8-11-18).

Daniel Ellsberg.   The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War
       Planner.  Bloomsbury, 2017.  (#43, 8-25-18).

Tom Engelhardt.  The End of Victory Culture: Cold War America and the
      Disillusioning of a Generation.  (1995/2007).   (#16, 4-26-18, & Dawson).

Tom Engelhardt.  A Nation Unmade by War.  A TomDispatch Book.  Haymarket
     P, 2018.  (#31, 6-2-18).

Andrew Feinstein. The Shadow World: Inside the Global Arms Trade (2011) (#9,
     12-20-17)

J. William Fulbright.  The Arrogance of Power.  Vintage/Random House, 1966.
              

J. William Fulbright.  The Price of Empire (1989) (#2, Spring 2017).

Joseph Gerson.  Empire and the Bomb: How the US Uses Nuclear Weapons to
      Dominate the World.  Foreword by Walden Bello.  Pluto with AFSC, 2007.
      (#45, 9-8-18).

Al Gore.  Inconvenient Sequel. (2017) (#5, 10-27-17).

Lindsey Grant.   Too Many People: The Case for Reversing Growth.   2001.   (#
     29, 5-19-18). (See Seager and Polansky, Weisman).

John Greer.  Dark Age America: Climate Change, Cultural Collapse, and the
     Hard Future Ahead.  New Society, 2016.  (#33, 6-16-18).   

Beau Grosscup.  Strategic Terror: The Politics and Ethics of Aerial
      Bombardment.  Zed, 2006.  (forthcoming)

Richard Heinberg.  The End of Growth: Adapting to Our New Economic Reality. 
     New Society, 2011.  (# forthcoming).   See his The Party’s Over 2002 and
     Powerdown 2004.

Edward S. Herman.  Beyond Hypocrisy: Decoding the News in an Age of
     Propaganda, Including A Doublespeak Dictionary for the 1990s.  South End,
      1992. (#

Edward S. Herman.  Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower.  
     Common Courage, 2000.

James Hoggan with Richard Littlemore.  Climate Cover-Up: The Crusade to
      Deny Global Warming (2009) (#11, 1-3-18).  (See Mark.)

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Reports 1991-.  (KPSQ EDITORIAL #27, 5-5-18)

John Isbister.  Capitalism and Justice: Envisioning Social and Economic Justice.
     Kumarian, 2001.   (# forthcoming)

Chalmers Johnson.   Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American
     Empire (2000); The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of
     the Republic (2004); Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic
     (2006); Dismantling the Empire: America’s Last Best Hope (2010).   (#
     forthcoming)

Diana Johnstone, “Doomsday Postponed?” from MAD to Madness by Paul
      Johnstone (2017) (#25, 4-21-18)

Michael Kazin. War Against War: The American Fight for Peace, 1914-1918. 
     Simon & Schuster, 2017.   (#35, 6-30-18)

Naomi Klein, No Is Not Enough (2017).  (#13, 1-17-18).

Rachel Maddow, Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power (2012).  (#16,
     2-10-18).

Magdoff and Foster.  What Every Environmentalist Needs to Know About
      Capitalism (2017).  (#12, 1-10-18).

Magdoff and Williams.  Creating an Ecological Society: Toward a Revolutionary
     Transformation.  Monthly Review P, 2017.   (# forthcoming)

Alfred W. McCoy.  Policing America’s Empire: The United States, the Philippines, and the Rise of the Surveillance State.  U of Wisconsin P, 2009.  (# forthcoming)

Charles C. Mann.  The Wizard and the Prophet; Two Remarkable Scientists and
      Their Dueling Visions to Shape Tomorrow’s World.  Knopf, 2018. 
      (# forthcoming)

Geoff Mann and Joel Wainwright.  Climate Leviathan: A Political Theory of Our
     Planetary Future.  Verso, 2018.  (forthcoming

Michael Mann and Tom Toles.  The Madhouse Effect: How Climate Change
      Denial Is Threatening Our Planet, Destroying Our Politics, and Driving Us
      Crazy (2016).  (#19, 3-3-18).

Jason Mark.  “”The Case for Climate Reparations.  It’s Time the Carbon Barons
       Paid the Costs of Our Unnatural Disasters.”   Sierra (April/May 2018).  (#28,
       5-12-18 (See Hoggan and other books on ff corporate deception.)

Bill McKibben.  Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet.  Times Books,
     Henry Holt, 2010..      (# forthcoming).

D. L. O’Huallachain & J. Forrest Sharpe, eds.  Neo-Conned!. and Neo-Conned!
     Again: Hypocrisy, Lawlessness, and the Rape of Iraq.  The Illegality and the
     Injustice of the Second Gulf War.  Light in the Darkness Pubs., JHS Press,
     2005.

Christian Parenti.  Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the New Geography of
     Violence (2011).  (#20, 3-10-18; #27, 5-5-18)

Cleo Paskal.  Global Warring: How Environmental, Economic, and Political
     Crises Will Redraw the World Map  (2010). (#20, 3-10-18, and #40, 8-4-18)

John  Quigley.  The Ruses for War: American Interventionism Since World War
      II.  Prometheus, 1992.  (#44, 9-1-18)
Jeremy Rifkin.  Biosphere Politics: A New Consciousness for a New Century. 
     Crown, 1991.  (#47, 9-22-18).

Joseph Romm.  Climate Change: What Everyone Needs to Know  (2018).
           (#27, 5-5-18).

Richard Rubenstein.   Reasons to Kill: Why Americans Choose War (2010). (#10,
     12-27-17)

Richard Sakwa.  Russia Against the Rest: The Post-Cold War Crisis of World
     Order.  Cambridge UP, 2017.  (# forthcoming).  Russia’s efforts to create a
     peaceful world order.

Barry Sanders, The Green Zone: The Environmental Costs of Militarism (2009)

      (#18, 2-24-18).  See Bannerman.

Lydia Sargent, ed.  We Own the World: Z Reader on Empire.  Z Books, 2013  (#
     forthcoming)

John Seager and Lee Polansky, eds.  The Good Crisis: How Population
     Stabilization Can Foster a Healthy U.S. Economy.  Population Connection,
     2016.  (#39)    (see Grant, Weisman)

Dan Smith and Janani Vivekananda.  A Climate of Conflict: The Links Between
       Climate Change and War (2008).  (#21, 3-17-18)

Gar Smith, The War and Environment Reader (2017). (#24, 4-14-18).

Richard Smith.  Green Capitalism: The God That Failed (2016).  (#6, 12-1-17, #7,
     12-6-17)

Norman Solomon, War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning
      Us to Death (2005) (#17, 2-17-18)

James G. Speth. James G.  The Bridge at the Edge of the World: Capitalism, the
     Environment, and Crossing from Crisis to Sustainability.  Yale UP, 2008. 
     Capitalism is a root cause of climate collapse.  

Nick Turse.  The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives.   
       Metropolitan/Holt (2018).  (#30, 5-26-18)

William T. Vollmann.  Carbon Ideologies.  2 vols.  Vol. I, No Immediate Danger. 
     Vol. II, No Good Alternative.  Viking,2018.  (# forthcoming

Alan Weisman.  Countdown: Our Last, Best Hope for a Future on Earth?  Little,
      Brown, 2013.  (#38, 7-21-18)    (see Grant, Seager and Polansky)

Wennersten and Robbins.  Rising Tides: Climate Refugees in the Twenty-First
       Century.  Indiana UP, 2017.   (#32, 6-9-18)

Wood, Mary Christina.  Nature’s Trust: Environmental Law for a New Ecological
     Age.  Cambridge UP, 2014.  (# forthcoming)

Wood, Edward W.   Worshipping the Myths of World War II: Reflections on
     America’s Dedication to War.   Potomac Books, 2006.  (#37, 7-14-18)

Roland Worth, Jr.   No Choice But War: The United States Embargo Against  
         Japan and the Eruption of War in the Pacific.  McFarland, 1995.  (#36, 7-7-
        18)

Zinn, Howard.  A People’s History of the United States.  1980. (Harper 20^th
     Anniv. Ed. 1990; Harper Perennial Modern Classics 2005).  (#34. 6-23-18)

TOPICAL INDEX TO DICK’S KPSQ EDITORIALS

US Wars, Nuclear Arsenal and War, Empire

     Ali, Bacevich, Beres, Blum, Carroll, Cook, Davies, Dawson, Dower (2), Ellsberg, Engelhardt,
     Feinstein, Fulbright, Gerson, Greer, Grosscup, Herman, Johnson, Johnstone,
     Kazin, Maddow, McCoy, O’Huallachain and Sharpe, Quigley, Rubenstein, Sargent, Solomon, Turse,      Wood, Worth, Zinn

US Capitalism, Growth, Profit, Consumerism, Fossil Fuels,
      Inequality, War, Empire

      Angus,Chomsky, Cook, Heinberg, Isbister,Magdoff and Foster, Magdoff and
      Williams,McKibben, R. Smith, Speth, Vollmann, M.K. Wood

US and Warming, Climate

     Carter and Woodworth, Dawson, Gore, Hoggan, IPCC, Klein, G. Mann and
     Wainwright, M. Mann and Toles, Mark, Romm,

US Wars and Warming

      Bannerman, Bertel, Chomsky, Dyer, Parenti, Paskal, Sanders, D. Smith and
     Vivekananda, G. Smith,

US and Population, Overconsumption

     Angus, Grant,C. Mann, Seager and Polansky, Weisman,

Dick, Found this list below of earliest WWW .  Copied here in case it helps.

WARS

#1 (4-9-17 ):     Wars #1.  My first “editorial” told about the Marshall Islands suit v. nuclear nations.  

#2 (   ):    Wars #2.  the US/NK nuclear threatening, and empathy.   J. W. Fulbright, The Price of Empire

#3 (7-29-17):  Wars #3.  the long remembrance in Fayetteville of the WWII nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  REF?

#4 (9-16): Bridging  nuclear war editorials to forthcoming on global warming   REF

WARMING

#5 (10-27):  Warming #1.   Conseq. of Warming, and Gore’s Inconvenient
     Sequel

#6 (12-1-17): Warming #2.   Richard Smith’s Green Capitalism: The God That Failed

#7 (12-6-17): Warming #3.   Richard Smith’s 6 Theses in Green Capitalism: The God That Failed  and Transition to US Warfare State. 

 (3pp. Jim suggested longer and more frequent editorials)

WARS

#8 (12-13-17).  Wars #4.    US vs. the World, Beres, America Outside the World

#9 (12-20-17).  Wars #5.  US Ceaseless Wars, the 70 Years War; Ref.: Feinstein, The Shadow World

#10 (12-27-17).  Wars #6.    Why US Attacks So Many Countries and accepted so easily by the public. Ref: Reasons Why Americans Choose to Kill by Richard Rubenstein.

WARMING

#11 (Jan. 3, 2018).  Warming #4, Corporate delay, distraction, denial.   Hoggan.  Climate Cover-Up.

#12 (Jan. 10, 2018).  Warming #5, US Capitalism vs. Climate.  Magdoff and Foster, What Every Environmentalist Needs to Know About Capitalism.

#13 (Jan. 17).  Warming #6, Resisting Trump and GOP, Klein, No Is Not Enough

TRANSITION: WARMING, WAR

#14 (Sat., Jan. 27)  Chomsky and Polk, Nuclear War and Environmental Catastrophe (2013)

WAR, ENVIRONMENT, WARMING

#15 (Sat. Feb. 3) War #7. Costs of War.  Gar Smith, The War and Environment Reader (2017)

#16 (Sat. Feb. 10) War #8.  US inclination  to war.  Rachel Maddow, Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power (2012)

#17  (Sat. Feb. 17) War #9.    Presidential/Media Complex for War.  Norman Solomon, War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death (2005).    

  #18 (Sat. Feb. 24).  War v. Environment. Barry Sanders, The Green Zone: The Environmental Costs of Militarism (2009)

War #8.  Nuclear War: Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD).  Diana Johnstone, “Doomsday Postponed?” in Paul Johnstone, From MAD to Madness: Inside Pentagon Nuclear War Planning (2017).    276-   Seymour Chwast.  At War with War (2017).

William Blum.  Killing Hope and Rogue State.  Gives a chronology of US interventions and invasions.  Source of my statement regarding millions killed by US aggressions.

The original 800 words version was pub. in WWW #94

This copy was cut to 624 words.   Delete after recording.

   #18 (Sat. Feb. 24 broadcast date).  War v. Environment. Barry Sanders, The Green Zone: The Environmental Costs of Militarism (2009). 

Title:  The Military Bridge from Holocene to Anthropocene

       The Holocene epoch of stable climate, that allowed our civilization, has ended.   Because of the extraordinary human buildup of population, consumption in affluent countries, capitalism/economic growth, wars, CO2/greenhouse gases, warming/weather instability, deforestation, acidification of the rising oceans, and mass extinction of animals and plants, the Anthropocene epoch has begun.  Humans have forced evolution itself into a new, rapidly developing trajectory.

      Perhaps the single greatest institutional contributor to warming, the largest single source of pollution in the world, is US militarism;  in particular, the military in its most ferocious mode– the US military at war, now ceaseless.     The military produces enough greenhouse gases to place the entire globe in danger.  But ironically, war, that most destructive of human behaviors, is commonly disregarded.

       The private Information Clearing House, as of January 2009, counted Iraq War civilian deaths at 1,297,997 since the invasion in 2003. But I have found no record anywhere of the cows and chicken, dogs and cats, birds and snakes, crickets or butterflies killed during those or any other years or wars, nor of the destruction of soils or rivers or forests.

    If humans who were seeking to avoid death were so slaughtered, how enormous must have been the decimation of other species and the sources of life from the shooting, firing, dropping, exploding, and incinerating.  The “Shock and Awe” invasion of Iraq began at 10:15 the evening of March 19, 2003, when some 1,700 bombers and fighter planes flew some 1,400 sorties and fired 504 cruise missiles directly into Baghdad.  In the first two days 800 cruise missiles were fired, one every four minutes, day and night.  Each missile weighed about 3,000 pounds, adding up to a total of 1,200 tons, or 2,400,000 pounds of explosives. 

     When the US goes to war against a foreign nation it is a war not only against people, but against the Earth, the soil and animals and plants, in the most far-reaching, annihilating ways.  The earth can no longer absorb the punishment of war of the ferocity that the greatest superpower in history is capable of inflicting. 

      Yet the US will not only not let go its will to dominate the world; rather it is tightening its grip.  In its latest National Defense Strategy, the Pentagon declared a new Cold War with both China and Russia and promised to wage the war around the globe.  That is, it is not a defense strategy, but an aggressive attempt to justify a massively expensive military buildup for global control, the effects of which on the environment and climate are beyond imagination.  

     What the Pentagon offers us is the old, ruinous, ostensible threat of Cold War adversaries.  As Pentagon Secretary Jim Mattis expressed it, “Great Power competition, not terrorism, is now the primary focus of U.S. national security.” To the Pentagon, primarily China and Russia threaten the world, not warming and all its costs (of which the Pentagon is aware).

Resistance

                You and I can make two effective responses right now.  We can henceforth delete the word “Defense” from the Pentagon.  It’s the War Department, just as it was before President Truman and the Pentagon cunningly changed its name.  And we can actively support anti-war, anti-imperial organizations; such as Veterans for Peace, Peace Action, AFSC/FCNL, ICAN, NAPF, and OMNI.

      Then we can assist the nascent international effort to connect  war and warming by urging the United Nations to report the full costs to species and earth of US wars, and the Pentagon to keep full records of its slaughters. 

       And then we can laugh out loud at all the greenwashing distracting us from these war and warming connections and costs, many as absurd as Baghdad’s inner fortress named the “green zone.”  (#18 , 624 words)

EDITORIAL #19 (Saturday March 3, broadcast date).  Warming, Denial, War.   Michael Mann and Tom Toles.  The Madhouse Effect: How Climate Change Denial Is Threatening Our Planet, Destroying Our Politics, and Driving Us Crazy (2016).

Title:  Global Warming:  Deniers Delayed Action, Warriors Diverted the Needed Funds.

The Deniers

     My last editorial dealt with the environmental costs of militarism.   My subject today is two of the many obstacles to public acceptance of the scientific facts of global warming.  First, the anti-science deniers of climate warming.  They are of several kinds, among them:  the officers of organizations and front groups established by corporations or wealthy individuals to confuse the public; the media talking heads, public relations mercenaries, and politicians who serve as accomplices; and the media outlets that serve as mouthpieces for business as usual propaganda.   I will identify some of the politicians.  The second obstacle to public understanding is the enormous diversion of tax money to the US empire for oil, rationalized by fear mongering.  The additional costs of warming to warring make the subject of warming doubly repugnant to a financially stressed populace, and the massive fearmongering by the Pentagon and its warrior allies of foreign “terrorists” everywhere wanting to hurt us, reinforces the people’s evasion of climate realities.  My chief source today is The Madhouse Effect by Michael Mann and Tom Toles.

     Florida has maybe the worst situation.  With 1,200 miles of coastline and more than 5 million residents who would be displaced by just 10 feet of sea-level rise, Florida has more to lose by unmitigated climate change than any other state.  So what was Republican Governor Rick Scott’s plan to protect his state?  He proposed banning the use of the terms climate change and global warming in all official state communications and publications.    And Florida’s US senator and former presidential hopeful, Marco Rubio?  He attacked the scientists, denied any human role in warming, and oppose all viable policy solutions.  

     Climate denialism is not only coastal.  Senator James Inhofe (R. Okla.) is one of the worst.   He declared that climate change is the “greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.”  And Republican Representative Joe Barton of Texas, said: “the science is not settled, and…is actually going the other way,” “we may in fact be going into a cooling period,” “C02 is rising, but it is not necessarily…causing temperature to rise.”  He was chair of the House committee on Energy and Commerce.  Both Inhofe and Barton received considerable money from the fossil fuel industry during their congressional fossil fuel industry service.  

Global Warming and Wars

     Global warming will increase conflict. Population is increasing.  Warming will increase competition among a growing global population over less food, less water, and less land—a prescription for a storm of wars small and large.   That storm has long been brewing.  The ongoing drought in Syria was made worse by the aggravating effects of climate change, increasing population, and increasing scarcity of water, all of which played a role in the civil unrest and social instability that led to the civil war there, in which the US has intervened.

      Let’s never forget the foreign wars we are fighting in dangerous regions of the world, like the Middle East to keep oil flowing to the US and its allies.  The US had as of October 2015, approximately 35,000 U.S. military personnel in the Middle East.   In Iraq in 2016, 5000 and in the other ME countries.   And that’s not counting the contractors keeping them combat operating.  Think of these wars as a $100 billion subsidy to the fossil fuels industry, courtesy of the US taxpayer.

Conclusion

     Lying deniers of warming delayed government action to mitigate and adapt to the effects of warming—needed on the massive scale of the Marshall Plan perhaps plus the Apollo Moon space flight.   The warriors diverted the money we needed and need for coastal cities, for all the sea walls, the removal of towns and cities to inland locations, for forest fire-fighting, for recovering from hurricanes and tornadoes, and the list continues into the trillions of dollars.

     Our executive and congressional leaders were first warned by James Hansen in the 1980s.  We are not much better prepared today for the advancing warming catastrophe as then.  666 words add no more.

References:

     Michael Mann and Tom Toles.  The Madhouse Effect: How Climate Change Denial Is Threatening Our Planet, Destroying Our Politics, and Driving Us Crazy (2016).

     Related:  –James Hoggan with Richard Littlemore.    Climate Cover-Up: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming. Greystone Books, 2009.  “This is a story of betrayal, a story of selfishness, greed, and irresponsibility on an epic scale.” 

Dr. Peter D. Carter and Elizabeth Woodworth, UNPRECEDENTED CRIME: Climate Science Denial and Game Changers for Survival.  2018.  The first half ratchets up the  Hoggan/Littlemore exposes to urge prosecution of truth-deniers.

#20: The following is the original longer version from which the radio revision was made (see below).

EDITORIAL #20 (Saturday March 10, broadcast date).  War and Warming.   Christian Parenti.  Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence (2011). 

 Title: The Catastrophic Convergence of Wars, US Neo-Liberal economics, and Warming

     The subject of these editorials is war and warming, and I turn now to several emphasizing warming.  My chief source today is Christian Parenti’s  book Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence.

     Climate change is happening, and its consequences are everywhere experienced by the more extreme weather events, including desertification, ocean acidification, melting glaciers, and rising sea levels.  It is also expressed in politics, causing more humanitarian crises and fueling civil wars.  The UN estimated way back in 2007 that all but one of its emergency appeals for humanitarian aid were climate related.  By 2009, 300 million people per year were affected, from floods, droughts, forest fires, and new diseases. That was nine years ago, and these estimates have risen.

     Sea levels are already among the world’s greatest stresses, and are estimated to rise an average of 5 feet over the next 90 years.   Such  heights will lead to massive dislocations.  One study projected that 700 million climate refugees will be on the move by 2050.       The modern era’s first massive climate refugees were the five hundred thousand Bangladeshis made homeless when half of Bhola Island flooded in 2005.  In Bangladesh an estimated 22 million people will be forced from their homes by 2050 because of climate change.

     These roots of war are on the horizon.  India has already almost completed building a militarized border fence along its 2,500-mile frontier with Bangladesh,  and activists of India’s Hindu Right Wing are pushing vigorously for the mass deportation of (Muslim) Bangladeshi immigrants. 

     Meanwhile, twenty-two Pacific Island nations, home to 7 million people, are planning for relocation as rising seas threaten them with national annihilation.  Where will they go, and how will they be received?   What will happen when the coastal cities flood?  What chaos and violence will result when Shanghai, New York City, London, and Tokyo are under water? 

     Climate change arrives in a world already in crisis.  The current and impending dislocations of climate change intersect with the already-existing crises of ceaseless wars and endemic poverty. It’s a catastrophic convergence of political, economic, and environmental disasters. 

    The traumas and destructive political responses of Cold War militarism and the anti-social pathologies of neo-liberal have weakened the US ability to protect itself.  These forces had undermined the nation’s cooperative, regulatory, and redistributive functions, which overdeveloping its competitive and military capacities.  Instead of solidarity through cooperation, our economic system hypes individual economic triumph over others; instead of building economic infrastructures for all, our political leaders build the biggest military machine in all history for conquest abroad and militarized police for repression at home.  These forces have created permanent crisis and extreme inequality.  Most countries of the world are unable and some, like the US, will not rescue its citizens from the ravages of war or warming.

      Now climate change is added to these crises.  The Pentagon calls it a “threat multiplier.”  All across the planet, extreme weather and water scarcity escalate existing social and international conflicts.  Especially in the planet’s mid-latitudes of economically and politically battered post-colonial states climate change is striking hard.  These societies, greatly dependent upon agriculture and fishing, are very vulnerable to shifts in weather.  These countries were also proxies in the front lines of the Cold War that sowed instability of armed groups, abundance of weapons, smuggling networks, and corrupted officials.  They were also on the front lines of neoliberal economic    restructuring, with its austerity and debt.  They include most of the failed and semi-failed states of the developing world.  There are some 46 countries—home to some 3 billion people—in which effects of climate change, interacting with political problems, create a high expectation of internal and cross-border wars.  

     US and western military planners recognize the danger in these convergences of political and social disorder and climate change.  They see a world of civil war, refugees, pogroms, and social breakdown.  But instead of building a caring, rescuing world, the US particularly, President Trump’s 1981 budget, provides $700 billion for a global, open-ended, counterinsurgency. 

      Resistance:

     Resistance to warming has meant mitigation and adaptation.  Mitigation requires drastic reduction of the causes of warming: especially ending use of fossil fuels now. Unfortunately, US capitalism, so fully tied to fossil fuels, will not choose another energy, and the quantity of CO2 and other greenhouse gases already in our atmosphere precludes significant relief..  Adaptation is modification and adjustment to those conditions, preparing to live with the effects of climate change.

      There are two types of adaptation: technical or economic and political.  Technical adaptation includes living with the damage wrought by humans by building sea walls around vulnerable coastal cities, restoring coastal land to mangroves and everglades, developing sustainable, industrial scale agriculture despite weather gyrations.  Political adaptation means transforming human relationships from their present violence, at present increasing because of climate change, to new peaceful relationships including economic redistribution and diplomacy instead of militarism.

       We need a new metaphor for our crisis.  Now US leaders and their followers see themselves as in an armed lifeboat responding to climate change by arming, excluding, neglecting, repressing, policing, and killing.   Our lifeboat is the wealthiest and best built and armed, and several more intend to survive similarly.   The other lifeboats descend in quality toward chaos; many are leaking; some are sinking.  

To speak straightforwardly, fortress USA (Pentagon, Wall Street, White House, Congress) is developing a militarized adaptation to climate change to contain failing and failed states, or– violent counterinsurgency forever.

     But will this adaptation be successful?  Will not the collapse of the Global South take us all down?  If climate change is allowed to destroy whole economies and nations, will walls, guns, barbed wire, armed aerial drones, permanently deployed mercenaries, or nuclear bombs save us?  (987 words, must reduce to fewer than 650)

References #20, March 10:

Christian Parenti.  Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence.  2011.Chapters 1 and 2, Notes pp. 246-7.

Related:

Cleo Paskal.  Global Warring: How Environmental, Economic, and Political Crises Will Redraw the World Map.  2010.

Dan Smith and Janani Vivekananda.  A Climate of Conflict: The Links Between Climate Change and War.  2008.

India fences half of its border with Bangladesh | Dhaka Tribune

www.dhakatribune.com/bangladesh/2017/03/04/half-india-bangladesh-border-fenced/

Mar 4, 2017 – India has finished fencing half of its porous border with Bangladesh and plans to seal off the rest by 2019.

#20: the shortened version for radio (from the original of 900+ words).

EDITORIAL #20 (Saturday March 10, broadcast date).  War and Warming.   Christian Parenti.  Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence (2011).   

Title: This is Dick Bennett with War and Warming editorial #20.   My title:  The Catastrophic Convergence of Wars, US Neo-Liberal economics, and Warming

     The subject of these editorials is war and warming, and I turn now to several emphasizing warming.  My chief source today is Christian Parenti’s  book Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence.

     Climate change is happening, and its consequences are everywhere experienced by increasing and increasingly extreme weather events: heat, desertification, agricultural disruption, hurricanes, ocean acidification, melting glaciers, rising sea levels, coastal inundations.   These roots of human conflict are being experienced around the world, causing more civil and cross-border wars and more refugees, and more species extinctions.

         Sea levels are already among the world’s climate change related greatest stresses, and are estimated to rise an average of 5 feet over the next 90 years.   Such heights will lead to massive dislocations.  One study projected that 700 million climate refugees will be on the move by 2050.  The modern era’s first massive climate refugees were the five hundred thousand Bangladeshis made homeless when half of Bhola Island flooded in 2005.  In Bangladesh an estimated 22 million people will be forced from their homes by 2050 because of climate change.

    India has almost completed a militarized border fence along its 2,500-mile frontier with Bangladesh, and Hindu anti-immigrant forces are agitating to deport refugee Bangladeshi.  

     Meanwhile, twenty-two Pacific Island nations, home to 7 million people, are planning for relocation as rising seas threaten them with national annihilation.  Where will they go, and how will they be received?  

    In the United States, also building a wall against Latin Americans, What will happen when its coastal cities flood? 

     Globally, What chaos and violence will result when Shanghai, New York City, London, and Tokyo are under water? 

     Climate change arrives in a world already in crisis.  The current and impending dislocations of climate change intersect with the already-existing crises of ceaseless wars and endemic poverty. It’s a catastrophic convergence of political, economic, and environmental disasters. 

          The Pentagon calls climate change a “threat multiplier.”  All across the planet, extreme weather and water scarcity escalate existing social and international conflicts.  There are some 46 countries—home to some 3 billion people—in which effects of climate change, interacting with political problems, create a high expectation of internal and cross-border wars.  

     US and western military planners recognize a world of civil war, refugees, pogroms, and social breakdown.  But instead of building a caring, rescuing world, the US particularly, President Trump’s 2018 budget, provides $700 billion for a global, open-ended, violent counterinsurgency.    

   Resistance:

     Political adaptation means transforming human relationships from their present violence, to new peaceful relationships including economic redistribution and diplomacy instead of militarism.

       We need a new metaphor for our crisis.  Now US leaders and their followers see themselves as in an armed lifeboat responding to climate change by arming, excluding, neglecting, repressing, policing, and killing.   Our lifeboat is the wealthiest and best built and armed, and several more intend to survive similarly.   All other lifeboats descend in quality toward chaos; many are leaking; some are sinking.  

To speak straightforwardly, fortress USA (Pentagon, Wall Street, White House, Congress, wealthy individuals) is developing a militarized adaptation to climate change to contain failing and failed states, or– violent counterinsurgency forever.

     But will this adaptation be successful?  Will not the collapse of the Global South take us all down?  If climate change is allowed to destroy whole economies and nations, will walls, guns, barbed wire, armed aerial drones, permanently deployed mercenaries, or nuclear bombs save us?  592

References #20, March 10 (shortened radio version):

Christian Parenti.  Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence.  2011.Chapters 1 and 2, Notes pp. 246-7.

Related:

Cleo Paskal.  Global Warring: How Environmental, Economic, and Political Crises Will Redraw the World Map.  2010.

#21 Saturday, 8:45, March 17, broadcast date

Dan Smith, Janani Vivekananda, A Climate of Conflict.  2008. This report is an adapted version of International Alert’s report “A Climate of Conflict: The Links between Climate Change, Peace and War” (November 2007). https://www.sida.se/contentassets/0c0498eb4310425b96e57f6f81199f3b/a-climate-of-conflict_1177.pdf

Title: The Links between Climate Change, Peace, and War.

My main reference today is the book by Dan Smith and Janani Vivekananda, A Climate of Conflict: The Links between Climate Change, Peace and War.

  Roughly three kinds of books have been written about wars and warming: 1. War and its consequences causing warming, 2. Warming and its consequences causing wars, and 3. Integration of the two processes.  This book concentrates on the second: warming, i.e. weather extremes and their consequences producing conflicts. 

       Climate change is upon us and its physical effects have started to unfold   Growing strains on ecosystems translate directly into national, regional and global security threats. Pollution, desertification, scarcity of fresh water, changing weather patterns resulting in floods, storms, etc, cause food insecurity and population displacements, which may lead to political instability and violent conflicts. These, in turn, risk setting back development by decades. Two-thirds of the world’s population live in countries that are at high risk of instability as a consequence of climate change. Many of the countries predicted to be worst affected by climate change are also affected, or threatened, by violent conflicts. The very poor are hit the hardest. Climate change also impacts on regional and global economic patterns, with new risks for investors and corporations.        

     Consequently, the need for social, environmental, political and economic stability must go hand in hand. Tackling the challenges of climate change must include a holistic perspective of state- and human security. A great leap in awareness and preparedness is needed on the part of organizations, businesses, public officials and state agencies.

     Climate, poverty, governance:  To understand how the effects of climate change will interact with socio-economic and political problems in poorer countries means tracing the consequences of consequences. This process highlights three key elements of risk – political instability, economic weakness, food insecurity.  Each alone can produce large-scale displacement of refugees.   And large-scale displacement carries high risk of conflict because of the fearful reactions it often receives and the inflammatory politics that often greet it.

     Countries at risk:  Many of the world’s poorest countries and communities thus face a double-headed problem: that of climate change and violent conflict.   Climate change is already compounding the propensity for violent conflict in these countries, which in turn will leave communities poorer, less resilient and less able to cope with the consequences of climate change. There are 46 countries  in which the effects of climate change interacting with economic, social and political problems will create a high risk of violent conflict.

      There is a second group of 56 countries where the institutions of government will have great difficulty taking the strain of climate change on top of all their other current challenges. In these countries, though the risk of armed conflict may not be so immediate, the interaction of climate change and other factors creates a high risk of political instability, with potential violent conflict a distinct risk in the longer term.

     It is too late to believe the situation can be made safe solely by reducing carbon emissions worldwide in order to mitigate climate change. Those measures are essential for our great-great grandchildren, but their effects will only be felt with time. What is required now is for states and communities to adapt to handle the challenges of climate change NOW.  

     These global realities explain why the United States is so much needed in the world.  Most of the countries that face the double-headed problem of climate change and violent conflict cannot be expected to take on the task of adaptation alone. Some of them lack the will, more lack the capacity, and some lack both. What is required is international cooperation to support local action, both as a way of strengthening international security and to achieve the global goals of sustainable development. Without dropping or downplaying the long-range goals of mitigation, the US needs to significantly increase its energy and resources that are focused on adaptation.  Against estimated global costs of adaptation that range from $10-40 billion, the resources currently available amount to only a billion.   At the same time as adaptation must receive more emphasis and more funding, it matters even more that it is the right kind of adaptation and that money is spent in the right way.  A different approach is possible, based on peacebuilding, engaging local communities’ energies in a social process to work out how to adapt to climate change and how to handle conflicts as they arise, so that they do not become violent.     

Adaptation and peacebuilding:   The double-headed problem of climate change and violent conflict thus has a unified solution – peacebuilding and adaptation are effectively the same kind of activity. At the same time as adaptation to climate change can and must be made conflict-sensitive, peacebuilding and development must be made climate-sensitive. A society that can develop adaptive strategies for climate change in this way is well equipped to avoid armed conflict. And a society that can manage conflicts and major disagreements over serious issues without a high risk of violence is well equipped to adapt successfully to the challenge of climate change. 1174/847

#21 RADIO VERSION: record Mon. 3-12, broadcast Sat. 3-17

Dan Smith, Janani Vivekananda, A Climate of Conflict.  2008. This report is an adapted version of International Alert’s report “A Climate of Conflict: The Links between Climate Change, Peace and War” (November 2007). https://www.sida.se/contentassets/0c0498eb4310425b96e57f6f81199f3b/a-climate-of-conflict_1177.pdf

Title: The Links between Climate Change, Peace, and War.

My main reference today is the book by Dan Smith and Janani Vivekananda, A Climate of Conflict: The Links between Climate Change, Peace and War.

       Climate change is upon us, and its physical effects have started to unfold   Growing strains on ecosystems translate directly into national, regional and global security threats. Changing weather patterns resulting in floods, storms, rising seas, desertification, scarcity of fresh water– cause food insecurity and population displacements, which may lead to political instability and violent conflicts. Two-thirds of the world’s population live in countries that are at high risk of instability, as a consequence of climate change. Many of the countries predicted to be worst-affected by climate change are also affected, or threatened, by violent conflicts. The very poor are hit the hardest.

     Consequently, social, environmental, political and economic stability must go hand in hand. Tackling the challenges of climate change must include a holistic perspective of state- and global human security. In the USA a great leap in awareness and preparedness is needed.

     Climate change and war indicate three key risks – political instability, economic weakness, food insecurity.  Each alone can produce large-scale displacement of refugees.   And large-scale displacement carries high risk of conflict,  because of the fearful reactions it often receives and the inflammatory politics that often greet it.

     The world’s poorest and richest countries and communities thus face this double-headed problem of climate change and violent conflict.   Climate change is already compounding the propensity for violent conflict in many countries, which in turn will leave communities poorer, less resilient, and less able to cope with the consequences of climate change.

     There are 46 countries  in which the effects of climate change interacting with economic, social and political problems will create a high risk of violent conflict.   There is a second group of 56 countries where the institutions of government will have great difficulty taking the strain of climate change on top of all their other current challenges.

     These    global     realities explain why a helpful United States is so much needed in the world.  Most of the countries that face the double-headed problem of climate change and violent conflict cannot be expected to take on the task of adaptation alone. Some of them lack the will, more lack the capacity, and some lack both. What is required is international cooperation to support local action, both as a way of strengthening international security, and to achieve the global goals of sustainable development. Without dropping or downplaying the long-range goals of mitigation, the US needs to significantly increase its energy and resources focused on adaptation.  Against estimated global costs of adaptation that range from $10-40 billion, the resources currently available amount to only a billion.  

     The double-headed problem of climate change and violent conflict thus has a unified solution – peacebuilding and adaptation are effectively the same kind of activity. Adaptation to climate change and peacebuilding must involve each other.   A society that can develop adaptive strategies for climate change is well equipped to avoid armed conflict. And a society that can manage conflicts and avoid wars is well equipped to adapt successfully to climate change.   The whole world wishes the US will be successful in both.  

          It is too late to believe the situation can be made safe solely by reducing carbon emissions worldwide in order to mitigate climate change. Those measures are essential for our great grandchildren, but their effects will only be felt with time. What is required now is for nations and communities to adapt to handle the challenges of climate change and wars NOW.  

References

Dan Smith and Janani Vivekananda.  A Climate of Conflict: The Links between Climate Change, Peace and War.  2007.

Related

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.  March/April 2018 Issue: Resilience and the Climate Threat, guest-edited by Alice C. Hill.    

#22, March 24, Sat. radio broadcast

Text: Rosalie Bertell.  Planet Earth: The Latest Weapon of War.   Black Rose Books, 2001.

Title:  The Pentagon Needs a New Job Description 

 So many days are beautiful in the Ozarks, it’s difficult to believe we—the people, the leaders, the economic system–have damaged the Earth—its atmosphere, its soil, its oceans–perhaps irreparably. Yet our scientists have been telling us for over 40 years.   So why is the atmosphere still getting hotter, the weather becoming more extreme, the oceans rising and more acidic?      My main reference today is Planet Earth: The Latest Weapon of War byRosalie Bertell published in 2001.  Yes Rosalie fully knew the score by 2001.

      At least since the United Nations Conference on the Environment in 1972, 46 years ago, Earthlings have known, or been able to know, that the average temperature was rising, forests dying or clear-cut, species becoming extinct, drinking water contaminated and depleted, soil eroding, smog and poverty worsening, while population grew faster and faster.  More recently—i.e., during the 1980s and 1990s, violent weather increased at an alarming rate, AND we learned that many so-called natural disasters are human-made. 

     A lot of people were aware and have worked hard to stop these degradations.   The environmental slogan—reduce, reuse, recycle—was popular by the 1960s.  

      Why then in September 1999, 19 years ago, did the UN Environment Program announce again that the environmental crisis was deepening, not receding?    ?Why have all of our efforts to protect and restore the health of the planet by reusing, recycling, and reducing, not stemmed the tide– an apt metaphor, since coastal cities world-wide are now being flooded?

       Yes people like to drink water from billions of bottles made from fossil fuel.

         And yes many of our political and corporate leaders took the cash and denied the warming.  We know this.  Yet the crisis deepens. 

     So let us go deeper.   Let’s consider that we have been treating symptoms instead of causes.  One enormous source of abuse that has increased in frequency since the 1940s has been US wars and preparations for wars.   Wars result not only in immediate deaths of humans, but thousand-fold other species of fauna and flora.   And wars attack not only species but soil and air and water, and through them the climate itself, with consequences lasting hundreds to thousands of years.  And not only war itself undermines our life-support system, but also the research and development, the military exercises and general preparations for battle that are carried out on a daily basis in most parts of the world, where we have 800 military bases.   All in the name of a paranoid concept of “security” enthusiastically embraced by the military industrial complex.         

     Blowing up a nation or a region because a major criminal lives there, contaminating a nation’s food, air, water, and land as a means of achieving justice and peace, are surely not ways to create either, but surely do increase climate change, big time.   Instead of sixty years of war-war, we could have promoted harmony by nonviolent methods.  Instead of military security for the military economy building and sustaining 19 aircraft carriers, 18 Trident submarineswith their ballistic and cruise missiles, and another drone base at Ft. Smith, we might have relieved conflicts arising from rapid population increases and poverty. 

     While pursuing the economic bottom line through military domination, we lost the crucial struggle to protect Earth’s restorative power.  

      Despite all the denial and disinformation from many corporate and political leaders, today the majority of our millennials consider warming our main threat.   I give thanks to them and from them I hope will arise a network of global thinkers and planners who will transform our institutions nonviolently to save our civilization and human other species.  Particularly, we need a new job description for the Pentagon.  

References #22

Rosalie Bertell.  Planet Earth: The Latest Weapon of War.   Black Rose Books, 2001.

Barry Sanders.  The Green Zone.  2009.

Millennials: Climate Change Is World’s Biggest Problem – EcoWatch

Sep 7, 2017 – 

 #24  Saturday April 14, radio editorial presentation (DELAYED FROM APRIL 7)

Gar Smith, The War and Environment Reader (2018) 

Title of Editorial:  US Militarism, Serial Wars, and Global Warming

     Even before war breaks out, the Earth suffers.  Its minerals, chemicals, and fuels are torn from the Earth’s plains and hills and forests, and transformed into bombers and bullets that further crater and sear and poison the land.     My chief reference today is The War and Environment Reader by Gar Smith (2017).

      As the Palace Guard of the most expansive empire in world history, the Pentagon’s operations impose unparalleled environmental impacts on the planet.  The United States maintains tens of thousands of troops stationed at more than 1,000 bases in more than 60 foreign countries.  To put it another way: the Pentagon’s 2010 global empire included more than 539,000 facilities, at nearly 5,000 sites, covering more than 28 million acres.  With the world’s largest air force and naval fleets, the Pentagon is the world’s greatest institutional consumer of oil, burning 320,000 barrels of oil a day, Not including military contractors or weapons producers.

         Entire generations have grown up in a culture of war of endless wars.  The Pentagon, Congress, and White House, the corporations, the big banks, mainstream media, even most of the religions are militarized, and all together–the military-industrial complex–spin and conspire to defend and even glamorize weapons, bombings, killings.  

     It should come as no surprise therefore that war has become one of USA’s biggest exports.  The grim truth is that war is “good for business.”  In 2015, of the hundreds of billions of dollars worth of weapons sold in the world, US corporations grabbed 56%.  

      Five of the world’s largest war-profiteering companies are based in the United States:  Lockheed Martin (the world’s largest arms dealer, responsible for nuclear weapons, Trident submarines, Hellfire missiles); Boeing (B-52 bombers, smart bombs); Raytheon (missiles, munitions); Northrop Grumman (drones, laser weapons), and General Dynamics (jet fighters, tanks, missiles, guns).

     With so much of our wealth going to war, it is again no surprise that eight rich men control as much wealth as 3.6 billion of the world’s poorest.   Were the Pentagon’s 2016 budget redistributed, Lockheed Martin’s underperforming F-35 fighter could have allowed the National School Lunch Program to feed 31 million US children—one-fifth of them malnourished–for 24 years.  Yet our leaders continue to feed Pentagon contractors, including $1 trillion to modernize  nuclear bombs in violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.  

     Armies commanded by generals target the earth’s land, seas, and air for control.  Armies of capital, of wealth, stalk the globe in search of plunder and profit.  The two predators are inseparable—the generals to seize the biosphere, the corporations to exploit and commodify it.  

        At the expense of nature, cities rise and sprawl as forests and wetlands shrink.  Biodiverse wildlands are transformed into chemically addicted monocultures.  Oil,    –burned to warm and cool homes, to propel aircraft, vessels, and vehicles–,    is exhausted into the atmosphere.  As the air and oceans grow hotter, coral nations and coastal cities disappear under rising seas, and polar ice fields, crumble and collapse.  Growth at all costs, succeeded by climate change, drought and floods, succeeded by unprecedented refugees. 

     And all contributing to unrest and conflict and civil war driving desperate people to the sinking cities.

     “But it doesn’t have to be that way,” friends sing their hopeful song.  We do not lack strategies for a more peaceful, just, and ecological world.  Organizations are already putting those strategies into action, like OMNI, and as listed by Gar Smith.  And they are inviting you to join with them.   584 words

References

Gar Smith, The War and Environment Reader (2018).

 Related:

John Dower, The Violent American Century (2017).

Tom Engelhardt, Shadow Government (2011, 2014).  Esp. see Ch. 9,
     “Destroying the Planet for Record Profits” on ecocide and “terrarists.”

As always,  I cut a lot to create the above, here’s an example, put somewhere else maybe:       Like any large unregulated business, the misnamed “defense” industry routinely puts profits before people.  The Pentagon and its contractors understand that so-called “winning” wars is not as profitable as fighting unendingly.  Hence the boundless, endless so-called “War on Terror.”

I cut the following to 660 words and was in process to cutting to 600 when Jim told me to cut to 5 minutes in the future.  So the first copy below is the 660 words, and the 2^nd about 500.  4-16-18

#25, APRIL 21, 2018, KPSQ EDITORIAL ON AIR.   Nuclear War: Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) and the PLANET.

 Diana Johnstone, “Doomsday Postponed?” in Paul Johnstone, From MAD to Madness: Inside Pentagon Nuclear War Planning (2017), pp.  276-   Seymour Chwast.  At War with War (2017).

Title:  Nuclear War and the Planet

     During the Cold War, awareness of the overwhelming extent of mutually sustained damages during a nuclear war between Russia and the United States led to agreements to lessen the possibility of nuclear decimation of the planet during the Cold War.   My main references today are found in From MAD to Madness: Inside Pentagon Nuclear War Planning  by Paul Johnstone.   2017.  Paul Craig Roberts wrote the “Foreword” (2016) (8-14), and Diana Johnstone’s 2 commentaries: “The Dangerous Seduction of Absolute Power” (15-30) and the interrogative  “Doomsday Postponed?” (272-286).

     Today the situation is far more dangerous than during the Cold War period.    From the Soviet collapse in 1991 came the belligerent warfare doctrine of US world hegemony.  For example, Moscow’s acceptance of the reunification of Germany in exchange for the promise that US/NATO would not move farther east resulted in US/NATO breaking the promise and ringing Russia’s border with military bases.

    The old US anti-Communist obsession evolved from Sovietphobia into Russophobia during over a century of threat and fear mongering. Today, demonization of President Putin keeps the wheels of the US economy whirring”– the Military-Industrial complex thrives, people find employment, stockholders get their cut, and Congress members enjoy their campaign donations, and the US national debt rises. 

     In contrast to the Soviet Union, the US has always maintained its “right” to carry out a nuclear first strike.  This policy was reaffirmed in 2016 by Pentagon Secretary Ashton Carter.  “That’s our doctrine now, and we don’t have any intention of changing that doctrine,” he emphasized.

     But that’s no deterrence.  Given the great advantage to the side that strikes first, this policy is an enormous incentive to the other side to strike first in a crisis.  Faced with an aggressive trillion dollars US buildup in tactical nuclear weapons, as initiated by President Obama, coupled with a first strike policy, a potential adversary might panic and attack. 

     Nuclear war would devastate the planet and alter the climate. 

     In a U.S.-Russia war hundreds or even thousands of nuclear weapons might be launched. The climatic consequences would be catastrophic: global average temperatures would drop as much as 12 degrees Fahrenheit (7 degrees Celsius) for up to several years — temperatures last seen during the great ice ages. Meanwhile, smoke and dust circulating in the stratosphere would darken the atmosphere enough to inhibit photosynthesis, causing disastrous crop failures, widespread famine and massive ecological disruption.  The effect would be similar to that of the giant meteor believed to be responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs. This time, we would be the dinosaurs.

     North Korea would most certainly “lose” a nuclear war with the United States. But many millions would die. Such vast damage would be wrought in Korea, Japan and Pacific island territories (such as Guam) that any “victory” wouldn’t deserve the name. Not only would that region be left with horrible suffering amongst the survivors; it would also immediately face famine and rampant disease. Radioactive fallout from such a war would spread around the world, including to the U.S.  Later, this fallout would cause genetic mutations in plants, animals and human beings, as it has in the vicinity of the Chernobyl nuclear accident.

Conclusion

      US world domination is unattainable.  The quest for absolute domination leads to absolute destruction.  Or we could work for the first time to build a peaceful international structure with other nations as partners, rather than as vassals  or enemies.  Working seriously for nuclear disarmament would be the basis of a new world order based on cooperation rather than fear.

      Let us imagine what the world would be like today if the enormous effort for nuclear war had been directed toward finding ways to understand the enemy.  Arkansas’ former Senator Fulbright appealed for empathy during the 1960s and ‘70s.  Seeing others as part of a human community, he wrote, guides us away from parochialism and nationalism and  extermination.   660 

SHORTENED FINAL SCRIPT 

Title:  Nuclear War and the Planet, Dick Bennett  April 21, 2018

     During the Cold War, awareness of the madness of a nuclear war between Russia and the United States led to agreements to lessen the possibility of nuclear decimation of the planet.   My main references today are found in From MAD to Madness: Inside Pentagon Nuclear War Planning by Paul Johnstone.   2017.  Paul Craig Roberts wrote the “Foreword” (2016) (8-14), and Diana Johnstone wrote 2 commentaries: “The Dangerous Seduction of Absolute Power” (15-30) and “Doomsday Postponed?” (272-286).

     Today the situation is far more dangerous than during the Cold War period.    From the Soviet collapse in 1991 came the belligerent warfare doctrine of US world hegemony.  For example, Moscow’s acceptance of the reunification of Germany in exchange for the promise that US/NATO would not move farther east, resulted in US/NATO breaking the promise and ringing Russia’s border with military bases.

    The old US anti-Communist obsession evolved from Sovietphobia into Russophobia during over a century of threat and fear mongering. Today, demonization of President Putin keeps the wheels of the US economy whirring– the Military-Industrial complex thrives, people find employment, CEOs and stockholders get rich, Congress members enjoy their campaign donations, and the US national debt rises. 

     In contrast to the Soviet Union, the US has always claimed its “right” to carry out a nuclear first strike.  This policy was reaffirmed in 2016 by Pentagon Secretary Ashton Carter.  “That’s our doctrine now, and we don’t have any intention of changing that doctrine,” he emphasized.

    But nuclear war would devastate the planet and alter the climate. 

     In a U.S.-Russia war hundreds or even thousands of nuclear weapons might be launched. The climatic consequences would be catastrophic: global average temperatures could drop as much as 12 degrees Fahrenheit (7 degrees Celsius) for up to several years — temperatures last seen during the great ice ages.

     North Korea would most certainly “lose” a nuclear war with the United States. But many millions would die.

Conclusion

      US world domination is unattainable.  The quest for world domination will lead to world destruction. 

      But we have an alternative, as advocated by former Arkansas Senator J. William Fulbright.  We could work to build a peaceful international structure with other nations as partners, rather than as vassals or enemies.  Working seriously for nuclear disarmament would be the basis of a new world order based on cooperation rather than fear.

      Let us imagine what the world would be like today if the enormous effort for nuclear war had been directed toward finding ways to understand the enemy.  Senator Fulbright appealed for empathy during the 1960s and ‘70s.  Seeing others as part of a human community, he wrote, guides us away from parochialism, nationalism, and  extermination.   Read his books, The Arrogance of Power, The Price of Empire.  459

References

Paul Johnstone.  From  MAD to Madness: Inside Pentagon Nuclear War Planning.   2017.  Paul Craig Roberts, “Foreword” (8-14).   Diana Johnstone’s Commentaries, “The Dangerous Seduction of Absolute Power” (15-30),  “Doomsday Postponed?” (272-286).

J. William Fulbright, The Price of Empire.  1989.  Chap. 7, “Seeing the World as Others See It.”  Afterword: Changing Our Manner of Thinking.” 

END #25

#26, KPSQ EDITORIAL, APRIL 28, 2018: DAWSON, EXTREME CITIES; ENGELHARDT, THE END OF VICTORY CULTURE.

Title:  Imperial Victory versus Cities

     In his speech “National Strategy for Victory in Iraq” at the Naval Academy on Nov. 30, 2005, President Bush used the word “victory” 15 times.   Meanwhile, cities around the world were increasingly threatened by climate chaos.

      My references today are Tom Engelhardt, The End of Victory Culture (             1995/2007) and Ashley Dawson, Extreme Cities (2017).

      In 1991, after a half-century of Soviet Union and United States—mirror images SU and US– planet-endangering, planning and threatening nuclear war, SU collapsed. The US was militarily and economically triumphant.  The US, stood alone as the Great Super-Power, the global sheriff, challenged by no terrestrial frontiers.   Such a colossus, its leaders dazzled by such military power, inevitably confirmed its power by expanding its conquests over its puny post-Cold War global opponents: Panama, Iraq War I, Afghanistan, El Salvador, Haiti, and the US bombed Syria a few days ago.   Even more inevitable, and beginning before the collapse of SU, the US was preparing for war in outer-space, the last frontier to conquer and occupy.

       This US Wall Street-Capitalism-White House-Pentagon-Congress-Mainstream Media, will to dominate the world, has scarcely considered the global warming rushing toward catastrophe;   to the contrary, the US has much denied the overwhelming evidence.  Cities house the majority of humanity; most megacities are in coastal zones threatened by sea level rise; urbanites are particularly vulnerable to deadly heat waves by the “heat island” effect; and inequality continues to spiral.   Yet how cities cope with inequalities of race, class, and gender determines how well it will weather the increasingly extreme storms bearing down upon them.    After hurricanes Katrina and Sandy, residents of coastal cities, especially the poor, wait anxiously for the next superstorm, fearing the sea walls and pumps will again be inadequate, because individuals, city and state governments, and the national government are deeply in debt already to the last superstorms.

     Thousands in the US alone are already displaced.  Fayetteville, AR, houses refugees from Katrina.  Coastal communities throughout the US are threatened by sea level rise caused by global warming, and the displaced are not prepared for, budgets everywhere stretched thin even in wealthy, but unequal, US.  And countless neighborhoods, towns, and nations, because they chose less rather than more planning, and unprepared for the coming catastrophe.

     Climate change and violent conflict go In both directions.  Violent conflict increases vulnerability to extreme weather.  Violent conflict absorbs money and harms a6ssets that facilitate adaptation, including infrastructures, institutions, natural resources, and jobs.  In the other direction, climate change makes violent conflict more likely, which makes a population and the land more vulnerable.  Thus climate change creates more and more of the most dangerous places on Earth: failed cities and nations.

     Anthropogenic superstorms are dramatically invading cities while the horrific convergence of urbanization, climate change, and war seems invisible to our Super-Power leaders in the White House and Congress who prefer to grow big-business neo-liberal urban policies and to invade and dominate the world,                               instead of providing affirmative, caring government for all.  497

    References to #26

Ashley Dawson.  Extreme Cities: The Peril and Promise of Urban Life in the Age
     of Climate Change. (2017). 

Tom Engelhardt.  The End of Victory Culture: Cold War America and the
      Disillusioning of a Generation.  (1995/2007).  

William Blum.  Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II.  1986; 1995 (new chapters 50-53, 55); 2004 (new chapter 56 “The American Empire: 1992 to Present”).

Emmalina Glinskis.  “After the Flood: Debt.”  The Nation (Ap 23, 2018).

END #26  600 words

I read the above for KPSQ but I created the following shorter version if needed.

Title:  Imperial Victory versus Cities

     In his speech “National Strategy for Victory in Iraq” at the Naval Academy on Nov. 30, 2005, President Bush used the word “victory” 15 times.   Meanwhile, cities around the world were increasingly threatened by climate chaos.

      My references today are Tom Engelhardt, The End of Victory Culture (             1995/2007) and Ashley Dawson, Extreme Cities (2017).

      In 1991, after a half-century of Soviet Union and United States—mirror images SU and US– planet-endangering, planning and threatening nuclear war, SU collapsed. The US was militarily and economically triumphant.  The US, stood alone as the Great Super-Power, the global sheriff, challenged by no terrestrial frontiers.   Such a colossus, its leaders dazzled by such military power, inevitably confirmed its power by expanding its conquests over its puny post-Cold War global opponents: Panama, Iraq War I, Afghanistan, El Salvador, Haiti, and the US bombed Syria a few days ago.   Even more inevitable, and beginning long before the collapse of SU, the US was preparing for war in outer-space, the last frontier to conquer and occupy.

       This US Wall Street Capitalism-White House-Pentagon-Congress-Mainstream Media, will to dominate the world, has scarcely considered the global warming rushing toward catastrophe;   to the contrary, the US has much denied the overwhelming evidence.  After hurricanes Katrina and Sandy, residents of coastal cities, especially the poor, wait anxiously for the next superstorm, fearing the sea walls and pumps will again be inadequate, because individuals, city and state governments, and the national government are deeply in debt already to the last superstorms.  And countless neighborhoods, towns, and nations, because they chose less rather than more planning, are unprepared for the coming catastrophe.

     Climate change and violent conflict go In both directions.  Violent conflict increases vulnerability to extreme weather.  Violent conflict absorbs money and harms assets that facilitate adaptation, including infrastructures, institutions, natural resources, and jobs.  In the other direction, climate change makes violent conflict more likely, which makes a population and the land more vulnerable.  Thus climate change creates more and more of the most dangerous places on Earth: failed cities and nations.

     Anthropogenic superstorms are dramatically invading cities while the horrific convergence of urbanization, climate change, and war seems invisible to our Super-Power leaders in the White House and Congress who prefer to grow big-business, neo-liberal urban policies and to invade and dominate the world,                               instead of providing affirmative, caring government for all.   396

The following is my full editorial.  The radio text condensed to 5 minutes follows this.

KPSQ EDITORIAL #30: Nick Turse, The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives.  Shortened version—see below–broadcast May 26, 2018. 

Title: The United States military establishment and the arms industry in US culture

       The main subject of my radio editorials is the convergence of ceaseless war, climate change with extreme weather, population increase, and unbounded capitalism. 

     President Eisenhower warned us of the military industrial complex, but he never imagined how deep the foundation, how wide the reach the US military would become. 

      My main source today is The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives by Nick Turse, 2008.

       In his farewell speech Eisenhower warned us of the unwarranted influence of the military and the arms industry; now a thousand of times more entrenched, they reach into virtually every aspect of US life.  He labeled this pervasive domination the military industrial complex, and privately added Congress to make a triangle of power.    Now we must call the US System the military-financial—corporate-industrial-technological-entertainment-academic-scientific-media-intelligence-homeland security-surveillance-national security-imperial complex!  In countless, often invisible ways our lives are wrapped up in the militarized economy

       At the time of Eisenhower’s farewell address, 1961, the Pentagon was spending $23 billion a year for military goods and services.  In 2007 that would equal around $200 billion.  In 2007, the Pentagon’s budget  was $439 billion.  Adding the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the expenditure was over $600 billion.  Factoring in all the many related activities carried out by related agencies, actual US national security spending in 2007 was nearly $1 trillion per year.

      Back in Ike’s day, arms dealers and mega-corporations, such as Lockheed and General Motors, dominated the corporate side of the military-industrial complex.  Now they are dwarfed by the sheer number of contractors that stretch from coast to coast and across the globe.  By 1970, ten years after Ike’s address, 22 thousand prime contractors did business with the Pentagon.   By 2008 that number topped 47,000 with subcontractors reaching well over the 100,000 mark, making for one massive conglomerate touching nearly every sector of society, from top computer manufacturer Dell to Ace Hardware, AMF bowling alleys, Avis rent-a-car—try to imagine the size of the total list!   The Pentagon payroll is not only a who’s who of the top companies in the world—IBM, Ford Motor, Sony, Sara Lee, Procter & Gamble, Wal-Mart–, but through their retail outlets to most of the stores  in your town.  Just drive around and store after store is connected to Pentagon contractors—framed photos on Kodak paper, Budweiser beer, AT&T telephones, Duracell batteries.

        After WWII some Democrats, as a continuation of the full employment during WWII and an extension of their New Deal of the 1930s, proposed a program of full employment in which all able-bodied citizens could find work building the nation’s agriculture, towns and cities, the infrastructure of a thriving nation.   That did not happen; opposition to big affirmative government for the people was too strong. 

       But it did happen in another way:  the New Deal idea of universal employment was militarized.   In his departing speech, Eisenhower warned that the US had built “an immense military establishment” and  “a permanent arms industry of vast proportions” that imperiled democracy, and he called on the public to compel the peaceful meshing of that power with liberty.

     But by the time of Eisenhower’s warning, the military-industrial complex was already entrenched throughout economic and social life, and the public was not up to the task of reversing or even checking its power, especially in the Cold War world.  Today it’s impossible to think the public might even consider a change.   The emergence of a Complex of such epic proportions, composed of thousands and thousands of small town niche contractors, has almost entirely enveloped US culture, to such an extent few people are aware.

     Eisenhower at one point in his farewell did foretell our present fate.  “The total influence—economic, political, even spiritual—[of the conjunction of the military establishment and the large arms industry] is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government”– today’s omnipresent, all-encompassing, cleverly hidden system of systems that invades all our lives, in which we are all complicit.          

      And all of this occurred at the moment when the planet most needed a new kind of knitting together, at the moment when humanity’s future was at stake in ways previously unimaginable, thanks to its still increasing use of fossil fuels.   718

References for #30

Nick Turse, The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives. 

Tom Engelhardt, A Nation Unmade by War.

The following is the condensed 5-min. version of #30

KPSQ EDITORIAL #30: Nick Turse, The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives.  Broadcast May 26, 2018.

Title: The United States military establishment and the arms industry in US culture

       The main subject of my radio editorials is the convergence of ceaseless war, climate change and extreme weather, population increase, and unbounded capitalism. 

     President Eisenhower warned us of the military industrial complex, but he never imagined how deep the foundation, how wide the reach of the US military.

      My main source today is The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives by Nick Turse, 2008.

       In his farewell speech Eisenhower warned us of the unwarranted influence of the military and the arms industry; now a thousand times more entrenched, they reach into virtually every aspect of US life.    Now we must call the US System the military-financial-corporate-White House-congressional-industrial-technological-entertainment-academic-scientific-media-intelligence-homeland security-surveillance-secret-national security-imperial complex!  In countless, often invisible ways, our lives are wrapped up in the militarized economy

       At the time of Eisenhower’s farewell address, 1961, the Pentagon was spending $23 billion a year for military goods and services.  In 2007 that would equal around $200 billion.  In 2007, the Pentagon’s budget was $439 billion.  Adding the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the expenditure was over $600 billion.  Factoring in all the many related activities carried out by related agencies, actual US national security spending in 2007 was nearly $1 trillion per year.

      Back in Ike’s day, arms dealers and mega-corporations, such as Lockheed and General Motors, dominated the corporate side of the military-industrial complex.  But by 1970, ten years after Ike’s address, 22 thousand prime contractors did business with the Pentagon.   And by 2008 that number topped 47,000 with subcontractors reaching well over the 100,000 mark, making for one massive conglomerate touching nearly every sector of society, from top computer manufacturer Dell to Ace Hardware, AMF bowling alleys, Avis rent-a-car—try to imagine the size of this national, militarized jobs program.

     In his departing speech, Eisenhower warned that the US had built “an immense military establishment” and  “a permanent arms industry of vast proportions” that imperiled democracy, and he called on the public to compel the peaceful meshing of that power with liberty.

     But by the time of Eisenhower’s warning, the military-industrial complex was already entrenched throughout economic and social life, and the public was not up to the task of reversing or even checking its power, especially in the Cold War world, nor is it today. 

     Eisenhower at one point in his farewell foretold our present fate.  “The total influence—economic, political, even spiritual—[of the conjunction of the military establishment and the large arms industry] is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government”– today’s omnipresent, all-encompassing, cleverly hidden system of systems that invades all our lives, in which almost all of us are in the pay.

      And all of this occurred at the moment when the planet most needed a new kind of knitting together, a renewed, adequately funded United Nations.  That moment is humanity’s future at stake in ways previously unimaginable, thanks to its still increasing use of fossil fuels.    718  528  503

KPSQ EDITORIAL #31, Tom Engelhardt, A Nation Unmade by War. Haymarket, 2018.  Broadcast June 2, 2018.

     The main theme of these editorials is the convergence of ceaseless wars, climate catastrophe, voracious capitalism, and population increase.  My title today is: 5 Trillion Dollars Bombing Rubble.   My main source is A Nation Unmade by War by Tom Engelhardt (2018).

      A tiny group of jihadis attacked the Pentagon and the World Trade Center, and George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Condoleeza Rice, and other ruling warriors reacted with a “Global War on Terror,” invading and bombing globally.

     $5.6 trillion dollars is the cost of the US war on terror from September 12, 2001 through fiscal year 2018 estimated by the Costs of War Project at Brown University.    For what?   Did ceaseless war make the US people more secure?   What is sure is that it did enrich the owners of the military-industrial complex and give jobs to employees of the US National Security State evermore secure in Washington and spreading around the globe—the Pentagon, the National Security Agency and the other intelligence agencies, the US nuclear complex, the Department of Homeland Security, and the rest of the vast and vastly profitable state within a state.  

      But this is only part of the dollar costs.  What about the costs beyond the budget?   What about the cities of Ramadi or Mosul in Iraq, Raqqa or Aleppo in Syria, Sirte in Libya, or Marawi in the Philippines destroyed in the War on and of Terror?  And by the way murdering bin Laden.

     Mile upon mile upon mile of rubble in country after country.   What is the price on that?  What price the children whose lives were ended or twisted and mangled too horrible to imagine?    How can you put a dollars and cents value on the larger human costs of those wars?

     The hundreds of thousands of dead?  The tens of millions displaced in their own countries or sent as refugees fleeing across any border in sight?  How factor in the way those masses of uprooted peoples of the Greater Middle East Africa are unsettling other parts of the planet? 

     And seventeen years after the invasion Afghanistan, and fifteen years after the invasion of Iraq, how include the costs to our country’s neglected infrastructure, which has been crumbling while taxpayer dollars flowed copiously in what’s laughably called “national security.”   While our leaders repeated endlessly that the USA was uniquely greater than any empire that ever existed, they couldn’t find the $5.6 trillion dollars just for starters necessary for our roads, dams, bridges, tunnels, health care for all, and paying down the national debt incurred by the wars. 

     This on a planet where “extreme weather” is increasingly wreaking havoc on that same infrastructure, while the leaders of the one superpower, the exceptional nation USA, distracted by its ruinous wars and the terrorist groups they engender, refuse to mobilize against the drowning and frying of our world.   472

Mel Gurtov.  “The Number One Global Security Issue? Climate Change.” The Free Weekly (Fayetteville, AR, 8-20-15, p. 14, via PeaceVoice).

HERE I RETURN TO US WARS AND EMPIRE, 4 editorials

#34 Zinn on Spanish American War; #35 Zinn on WWI; #36 Worth on WWII Pacific; #37 Wood on WWII myths and Europe

KPSQ EDITORIAL #34, US Empire, 19^th Century, Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States; broadcast June 23, 2018. 

     Recent editorials discussed overpopulation, the military-corporate–congressional complex, ceaseless war, climate refugees, and collapse of civilization.  I’ll turn now to a series of commentaries on the injustice of the many US wars—the interventions, invasions, occupations.  My aim is to promote hope that once the people of the United States understand that their war taxes have funded wars not only illegal and immoral but unnecessary, and that those taxes for such wars diverted money that could have prepared for the climate catastrophe, they will rise up and end them.

      I will begin just prior to the Spanish-American War.  My main sources are Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States andGabriel Kolko’s Main Currents in U.S. History.  My title is: Where Have All Our Taxes Gone?

     Between 1798 and 1895, the US intervened in the affairs of other nations 103 times.  The Monroe Doctrine of 1823 claimed Latin America as under its sphere of influence.  In 1853-4 the US used warships to force Japan to open its ports to the US, and in 1859 to protect US interests in Shanghai.

     The California Native Americans had been decimated by the end of the 19^th century.  Back eastward, remnants of some 600 Indian nations were being mopped up.   In 1890, the year of the massacre at Wounded Knee, the Bureau of the Census declared the internal frontier closed.  The profit system, with its tendency for expansion, had already begun to look southward and westward, toward Cuba and the Philippines.      

      The Spanish-American War expanded US conquests both south-eastward and westward.  When Cuba revolted from Spain in 1898, US business and political leaders considered how the island could solve the disposal of surplus manufactures, and contribute to the building of the new US commercial empire.  Special economic interests would benefit directly from war: the arms-dealers, the iron industry, transportation.  The richest businessmen—John Jacob Astor, William Rockefeller, J. P. Morgan– were feeling militant.  And many feared the Cubans would win without us, producing another black republic in the Caribbean.

    On March 27, 1898, President McKinley presented an ultimatum to Spain that said nothing about independence for Cuba.   The rebels denounced US intentions to replace Spain, as a declaration of war against the Cuban revolution.  They were right.  When McKinley asked Congress for war on April 11, he did not recognize the rebels or ask for Cuban independence.

     Upon Spain’s defeat, Cuba became part of the US sphere, though not a colony.  However, as the result of the war, the US did annex, or colonize, several other islands   Puerto Rico, belonging to Spain, was taken over by US military forces.  Continuing US conquests westward from Jamestown, the Hawaiian Islands was annexed by joint resolution of Congress in July of 1898.  Wake Island, 2,300 miles west of Hawaii, on the route to Japan, was occupied.  And Guam, the Spanish possession in the Pacific almost all the way to the Philippines, was taken.  And quickly Spain turned over to the US Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines, for $20 million dollars.  

       President McKinley said he prayed to Almighty God night after night over taking the Philippines, until it came to him it would be cowardly and dishonorable to give them back to Spain.

     But the Filipinos did not get the same message from God.    Early in 1899, under the leadership of Emilio Aguinaldo, they rose in revolt against US rule.  It took the US three years to crush the rebellion, using 70 thousand troops resulting in thousands of US casualties.  For the Filipinos, from brutal battles and disease,

the death rate was enormous.   

      The taste of victorious battles, empire, and its racism, paternalism, and profit, its talk of destiny and civilization, stirred the nation. 

     Today, by its some 800 foreign military bases, its wars on 7 nations, and trillion dollars war budget, US military expansion has become a major source of the CO2 causing the climate catastrophe, and misdirection of tax funds away from urgent US adaptation to that catastrophe.                                                      652

References to #34 on Spanish-US War

Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States.  Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2005, chapter 12.

Support:  Gabriel Kolko’s, Main Currents in U.S. History. 

KPSQ EDITORIAL #35, World War I, Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States; broadcast June 30, 2018. 

      My subject today is WWI.   My title is:  The War to Start Wars and Silence Opposition.  My chief references are Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States and Michael Kazin’s War Against War.

          President Woodrow Wilson had promised that the US would stay neutral in the war.  But the US was shipping enormous amounts of war material to Germany’s enemies, which motivated the Germans to sink merchant ships, which Wilson denounced.    The British and the US were cooperating in other ways.  To take a notorious case, although the US denounced as a monstrous atrocity, Germany’s sinking the British liner Lusitania with US citizens aboard, the ship was heavily armed, her manifests were falsified, and the British and American governments lied about the cargo.

       That is, Wilson was looking for justifications for entering the war on one side, based not on law but upon historical allegiances, balance of power, and economic pressure.

      In 1914 a serious recession had begun in the US.   But by 1915 sales to the Allies were lifting the US economy, and by April 1917 more than $2 billion worth of goods had been sold to the Allies through loans at interest.  J. P. Morgan made huge profits, tying the US more closely to an Allied victory.

     And the Allies wanted the US in the war.  They had lost unimaginable numbers, dead and wounded.   And mutinies in the French Army were increasing. 

     But these motives for war against Germany, and there are more, tell only half the story.  The Wilson administration created possibly the most effective pro-war propaganda and coercion campaign in all US history.  Until 1917 a consensus against war prevailed, but in just a few months Wilson reversed it. 

     His genius propagandist was George Creel, who set up a Committee on Public Information to persuade young men ”to make the world safe for democracy.”  It sponsored 75,000 speakers, who gave 750,000 four-minute speeches in five thousand communities 

      In addition,a draft was instituted, with harsh punishment for those who refused.  A million men were planned for the “war to end all wars,” but in the first weeks after the declaration of war only 73,000 volunteered.  Then Congress voted for a draft.

    And then in June 1917 Congress passed and Wilson signed the Espionage Act, that provided penalties up to 20 years in prison for anyone during war who “shall willfully cause or attempt to cause insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny, or refusal of duty in the military or naval forces…or shall willfully obstruct… recruiting or enlistment…”   Today the Espionage Act is still the law, and US wars are multiple and ceaseless.

     Soon after the end of the war, most citizens believed it had not been worth fighting. And its bitter legacy led to the next world war and the beginning of a surveillance state that still endures today.  574, 472

References #35

Howard Zinn. A People’s History of the United States

C. Hartley Grattan.  Why We Fought.  1929; repub. 1969.

Adam Hochschild.  To End All Wars.  2011.

Michael Kazin.  War Against War.

KPSQ EDITORIAL #36, World War II in the Pacific, broadcast July 7, 2018,  No Choice But War: The United States Embargo Against Japan and the Eruption of War in the Pacific.  McFarland, 1995.

 by Roland Worth, Jr. (1995).
 

     My editorials investigate mainly the roots of the US warfare state and the climate catastrophe.  My method is, each week to represent the main thesis of a book.  Nos. 34 and 35 questioned the necessity and justice of the Spanish-US War and of WWI.   My subject today is WWII in the Pacific: the US against Japan– specifically: who started the war, and why did Japan bomb Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941?    My thesis is:   The United States-led economic embargo played a pivotal role in pushing Japan over the edge into overt hostilities against the West. And my chief source is No Choice But War by Roland Worth, Jr. (1995).
     The US decision to embargo 90 percent of Japan’s petroleum and two-thirds or more of its trade led directly to the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.       This is not to say the US is villain and Japan a victim.  Japanese militarism was brutally expanding its empire in East Asia.  Its aggressions deserve no sympathy.  But it was not seeking war with the US, and the embargo sealed off the possibility of a peaceful solution.

     The US could have avoided war.  No US security interests were affected.   Lobbying against aggression, bringing massive international shame on the aggressor, enacting limited restrictions instead of total embargo, could have gained more than did the war’s massive destruction and killing: in the Pacific War around 36 million people or 50% of the total casualties of the Second World War.

      The actual effects of the embargo were recognized by both sides of the war it would lead to.  The impact of the embargo was not a secret.  It was explicitly recognized by high ranking officials in both governments, and repeatedly discussed in the American press.  The US decryption program that the total embargo was devastating the Japanese economy and the opportunity for peace was evaporating rapidly. 

      We can only speculate about the alternatives to total boycott.  Because the US anti-communist crusade in East Asia probably never would have occurred, the massive slaughter of two major wars would not have happened.    Would a Japanese occupation of China been more brutal than was Mao’s revolution?   Would a Japanese occupation have led to the anti-communist Korean and Vietnamese wars? 

     The Korean and Vietnam Wars were among the deadliest wars in modern history.  In the Korean War, estimates put the full battle death toll on all sides at over 1 million, and NK and SK civilian casualties at a million and a half.    In the Vietnam War, some million and a half soldiers were killed, and as many as 2 million civilians on both sides.

      What is not speculative is the fact that the US knowingly and intentionally imposed economic strangulation upon Japan.  Furthermore, it persisted in that policy while being aware that the Japanese economy was being wrecked to a degree that would been intolerable to a US similarly threatened.  Few citizens of the US would have felt any guilt over “firing the first shot” against a nation imposing an embargo on the US, and few would have felt any compunction in initiating a war against the embargoing nation.   523

References #36 WWII in the Pacific

Roland H. Worth, Jr.  No Choice But War:  The United States Embargo Against
     Japan and the Eruption of War in the Pacific.  McFarland, 1995.

Bruce Russett, No Clear and Present Danger.

The Pacific War Online Encyclopedia. 
    http://www.pwencycl.kgbudge.com/C/a/Casualties.htm  

Darien Cavanaugh.    “Why the Korean War Was One of the Deadliest Wars in
      Modern History.”  The National Interest (May 2, 2017).

“Korean War.”  Wikipedia.    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_War#Casualties

See Bennett’s newsletters on US Empire Westward, #36 http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2017/11/omni-us-imperialism-newsletter-36.html

Additional argument against the embargo.

Whether one calls the US-led total boycott a “co-cause” of the Pacific war or “the” cause make little practical difference.  In either case, without the boycott the war would not have erupted when it did, if it had at all.  Tens of thousands of US and Japanese servicemen and Pacific civilians died needlessly.  In this we have an abiding lesson of Pearl Harbor: Beware inflicting upon another major military power a policy which would cause you yourself to go to war.  And don’t be surprised that, if they do retaliate, they seek out a time and a place that inflicts the maximum harm and humiliation upon you

This effort to economically destroy Japan virtually guaranteed the attack.   It was not just a matter of Japanese imperialism.

         Instead of giving full, realistic consideration of the consequences of the embargo in the present and future,  in war and future wars, the Roosevelt administration embraced a policy knowing full well its probable result.  Hence the Pacific war was at least equally caused by the US launching a policy of economic destruction against the Japanese nation.

       WWII in the Pacific ended with a US and allied victory.  One effect was the dedication of the people of Japan to peace.  Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution outlaws war as a means to settle international disputes involving the state.  The Constitution, under the auspices of the US occupy forces, came into effect on May 3, 1947.  This fervor for peace is also expressed by the Battle of Okinawa memorial, the Cornerstone of Peace. a monument containing the names of all who lost their lives in the Battle.    It was erected to: (1) Remember those lost in the war, and pray for perpetual peace; (2) Pass on the lessons of war; and (3) Serve as a place for meditation and learning.^[1][2]     The design, entitled ‘Everlasting Waves of Peace’, comprises concentric arcs of black granite stelai  inscribed with the names of over two hundred and forty thousand people who died, regardless of nationality and civilian or military status—US and UK soldiers, Japanese soldiers, Okinawan civilians, Korean slave laborers.  All were victims of the battle

KPSQ EDITORIAL #37, World War II, broadcast July 14, 2018.  Worshipping the Myths of World War II: Reflections on America’s Dedication to War by Edward W. Wood, Jr.  Potomac Books,  2006.

     As long as we believe that evil lies in others and that war is the only means to justice, we will continue to wreak havoc on the world.  My chief reference today is Worshipping the Myths of World War II: Reflections on America’s Dedication to War by Edward W. Wood, Jr.  2006.  This book relates closely to last week’s book by Roland Worth, Jr., about WWII in the Pacific, No Choice But War.

     Perhaps most of the population of the US believe there is great potential for evil in human beings, only war can bring justice, and the US is an agency of justice.  The US is impregnably armed with a black and white way of perceiving reality.  This arrogance rationalized the invasion of Iraq and quick overthrow of Saddam Hussein, who was equated with Hitler.  That faith in US exceptionalism fuels the US War on Terror–the terrorist “enemy” we fear, the enemy we must destroy, because it is “evil,”  although it necessitates our performing monstrous acts that deny all humanity.  Crushing terrorists performs the work of God.  Since “evil” exists outside ourselves, not in us but in other nations and people, violence and war are not only necessary, they become “good,” the only means to protect innocents from barbaric forces.

     And thus we can do with our dehumanized enemies as we please, hold them without trial as long as we like, torture them, bomb their cities and homes into rubble.

    This faith was virtually universal during WWII.   US goodness was crushing evil enemies.  The evil in the world was being eradicated by the forces of “good” that the US represented.   Total war, smash, kill, burn the enemy.  The Germans were killing the Jews.  Out of our purity we will destroy the Germans.

     But we have never looked carefully at our own propensities for violence, the hatred we bear the stranger, the dark-skinned.  Only now, centuries after the fact, are museums and books showing our destruction of Native Americans and African-Americans, though still almost nothing about the persons who profited from the slaughter, or from slavery, Jim Crow, and lynching.

      And only during the last ten years has occurred an outpouring of assessments of US aerial bombing during WWII.

    For example, in the summer of 1943, British and American bombers launched an attack on the German city of Hamburg that was unlike anything the world had ever seen.  For ten days they pounded the city with over 9,000 tons of bombs, with the intention of erasing it entirely from the map.  The fires they created were so huge they burned for a month, and were visible for 200 miles.

     Terrible acts of barbarity were committed during WWII.  The Germans had to be stopped.  But the US had committed and committed during WWII barbarities too.

     Thus we need to absorb the truth, that war may not bring justice, but instead the corruption of both the defeated and victor.  490

References #37

Edward W. Wood, Jr Worshipping the Myths of World War II: Reflections on
     America’s Dedication to War.  2006. 

John Dower.  Cultures of War: Pearl Harbor, Hiroshima, 9-11, Iraq.  Norton,
     2010.

Beau Grosscup.  Strategic Terror: The Politics and Ethics of Aerial
     Bombardment.  SIRD, Zed Books, 2006.

Keith Lowe.  Inferno: The Fiery Destruction of Hamburg, 1943.  Scribner, 2007.

Frederick Taylor.  Dresden: Tuesday, February 13, 1945.  Harper Collins, 2004.

TURNING NOW TO POPULATION, NOS. 38-39

KPSQ EDITORIAL #40, broadcast August 4, 2018, Carter and Woodworth, Unprecedented Crime: Climate Science Denial and Game Changers for Survival, 2018.

      My last two editorials specified the increasingly rapid growth of population as a main cause of the climate catastrophe.  Today I discuss the fossil fuels corporations.

       “…global warming is the primary moral harm violating the basic existential rights of all sentient beings,“  and fossil fuels are the  main source of that warming.

      My chief reference is Unprecedented Crime by Carter and Woodworth, 2018.  The title of my editorial is: The Criminal Corporate-Political Fossil Fuel Regime.

     It is becoming increasingly likely that the world will warm by 4 degrees Celsius or more within the next 500 years, which will transform the conditions of life on the planet catastrophically.   Scientists and the fossil fuel companies have known this and what must be done to prevent it since the 1980s, but the fossil fuel industry corrupted our political representatives and sowed confusion among the public.

     From 1977 to 1989, Exxon scientists advised their board of the atmospheric dangers caused by burning fossil fuels.  In 1996 ExxonMobil began its 20-year disinformation campaign of lies.    This ethically abhorrent, reckless disregard for truth constitutes a new kind of crime against humanity—the criminal negligence of funding climate denial.

      In consequence of this crime by the fossil-fuel companies, aided by government subsidies and tax shelters, business as usual consumption was shown by 2015, the year of the Paris Summit, the sales of SUVs and pickup trucks increased, by 2016 the average annual displacement of the world’s population from extreme weather events was 21.5 million, displacement of populations another crime against humanity, and by 2017 Trump pulled the US out of the UN Paris agreement. 

    The US failure to protect the people of the earth extends wide and deep. 

    A principle of climate ethics is that the countries who have benefited most from burning fossil fuels, should pay for mitigation and adaptation.   Global warming has already unjustly cursed the lives of millions of displaced people in southern countries, climate refugees who played little to no role in causing or increasing climate change.  At the 2009 climate conference in Copenhagen, the developed countries promised to invest $100 billion a year by 2020.  But as of 2017, those countries had committed only $60 billion, much of which had already been allocated.

     By failing to protect people from industry lies, by subsidizing fossil fuel companies, by complicity in displacing millions of people, and by reneging on the promise to aid the impoverished southern countries, the US government and fossil fuels companies have enabled and encouraged immoral and inhumane corporate policies for economic gain. 

     By not being responsible trustees of the atmosphere, our government officials, fossil fuels corporation CEOs, and the 1% super rich investors robbed our children and future generations of their constitutional and public trust rights, and should be prosecuted.  Young people are leading the way in Juliana v. United States et al. , led by Our Children’s Trust, with Dr. James E. Hansen, co-plaintiff on behalf of his granddaughter.  493

References to #40

Carter and Woodworth, Unprecedented Crime: Climate Science Denial and Game Changers for Survival, 2018.  Chap. 6 and Appendix.

Related
Paskal, Global Warring (e.g. 248-9).

Pearl Harbor Day Blog Post on Peace Dept. Newsletter:

https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2016/12/pearl-harbor-day-colonial-pacific-wwii.html

The following was removed from #40, use some else on media and war and warming

US mainstream media coverage of US deaths from loosely defined terrorism is enormous compared to climate change information, when there’s only one terrorism death for every 1,000 deaths from firearms.   Another example:         Contributing to these harms is US mainstream media complicity.    For example, during the three weeks of the 2016 United States presidential debates, cities in 34 states reported record high temperatures.    Yet there was not a single question asked about climate change in the six hours of debate (ch. 4).    

RETURN TO WARS

Dower, The Violent American Century

Quigley, The Ruses for War

Blum, Killing Hope, Rogue Nation

Grosscup, Strategic Terror

Dower, Cultures of War ??

McKoy? Korean War

Vietnamese War

 KPSQ EDITORIAL # 41, BROADCAST AUGUST 11, 2018, Climate Wars by Gwynne Dyer (2010) and Unprecedented Crime by Carter and Woodworth (2018).  

    My most recent editorials discussed the centrality to climate change  of rapid, “hockey stick” population growth and fossil fuels    Today’s editorial discusses warming and wars, and derives from the books Climate Wars by Gwynne Dyer (2010) and Unprecedented Crime by Carter and Woodworth (2018).    My title is: Climate Change, Declining Food Security, and Global Wars.

Climate Change and Declining Food Security

     There is a correlation between rising CO2 and temperature and decreasing food production.  Climate warming causes extreme weather events such as floods, droughts, and heatwaves.  Rising temperatures encourage weeds and pests and threaten fisheries.  

     Developing nations suffer the most because there, more people are already poor, and they depend most on agricultural production.  Climate change is widely seen as the greatest threat facing the estimated 500 million smallholder farmers around the world.

     Studies have also given the global North a wake-up call about its own food security.   A 2016 study recorded droughts and extreme heat significantly reducing cereal production.

     A study assessing extreme heat in the US projected a crop yield decrease by 30-46% at 2 degrees C and by 63-82% at 4 degrees C.   This constitutes a dire emergency for food security.

Now let’s turn to Climate Wars

     As a result of these studies, the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) anticipates the increasing frequency of violent conflicts like civil wars.

     The global human population is projected by the FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN)  to reach more than 9 billion by  2050—that’s 30 years from now–meaning that about 50% more food will be required.  Yet as climate warming and extreme weather deepen, so will lack of food and water.

     The UN reported in 2017 that world hunger is rising, driven by climate change, population, and conflict, which often go hand in hand.

        Six scenarios explore what could happen in a global struggle for scarce resources resulting from climate-induced chaos.  Although the scenarios mostly take place later in the century, much of what they envisage has started to come true already.

     There seems no doubt that economic and political dislocation will increase, followed by strife and war, if the world becomes a hungrier place.

     There seems also no doubt that facing the crisis now by transitioning now to renewable energy and thoroughly affirmative government for people will be much more orderly and economic, and much less destructive and painful for humanity, than the inevitable climate wars if we fail to come to grips.

      High-emitting national governments like the US are continuing to sacrifice our survival—and the survival of all future generations—for fossil fuel corporate profits that include oil for global military operations subsidized with our money.  These are unprecedented crimes.

        It is time for ordinary people who understand this crisis and love their children to demand now 1) the drastic reduction of the Pentagon imperial regime for resources, 2) the cessation of government subsidies of fossil fuels, and 3) a carbon tax on fossil fuels.  493

References to #41

Climate Wars by Gwynne Dyer (2010)

Unprecedented Crime by Carter and Woodworth (2018). 

KPSQ EDITORIAL #42 the Pentagon, US Militarism, broadcast August 18, 2018.  Ref: James Carroll, House of War: The Pentagon and the Disastrous Rise of American Power.  2006.      

      With the last editorial on climate wars, I retturned to another series on US militarism, empire, and climate change.      Today’s editorial , #42, discusses the Pentagon.

     My reference is, House of War: The Pentagon and the Disastrous Rise of American Power by James Carroll,2006.  

     What does the Pentagon mean, to the USA?   How is its influence felt, its power exercised?  Who decided to link US foreign policy to nuclear force?  Individuals made decisions of course, but for each fateful choice the Building made them.  What happened when the impersonal forces of mass bureaucracy, the Building’s culture, were joined to the critical mass of nuclear power?

     Nuclear weapons inform the tale from start to finish, but more as the gods of a new religion than as mere instruments of war.  Anti-Communism gave that religion its first theology.  But this nation’s bipolar mindset–good USA vs. evil others– survives the disappearance of Communism, as the Cold War bleeds into the Global War on Terror. Always, the Pentagon remains the nation’s sacred temple.  At the same time, the Pentagon remains a nuclear engine room, generating a current for war that flows inexorably toward the edge of an abyss.

      The Pentagon has been at the center of a profound militarization of US society.  Economic, political, martial, academic, scientific, technological, and cultural forces combined at the Pentagon to create the new phenomenon that was well established by the time Eisenhower warned of it at the end of his presidency.

     Money tells the story.  In the twenty years after World War II, the Pentagon spent nearly $100 billion– ten times the federal expenditures devoted to all aspects of health, education, and welfare in the same period.  By 1965, nearly six million Americans were employed in the enterprises administered from the Pentagon.  All aspects of US society were transformed by military contracts, the military-industrial complex Eisenhower warned about.

     By 1965, for the first time in the country’s history, military assumptions undergirded America’s idea of itself.  The military-corporate-congressional-executive-mass media-academic complex achieved a social fission, and the Pentagon was its reactor.    387

    By 1965 the militarization of Fortress America was well-entrenched.  Ironically but deeply revealing, the Pentagon declared that senior officers with their stars and eagles on shoulders who worked in the Building could wear civilian clothes to work

     The officer elite in business suits was the perfect emblem of the national transformation well under way.  Our nation became a garrison state that did not look like one. 

       The tremendous budget outlays of the War Department, softened by the illusion of defense under civilian control, and reinforced by con stant fear mongering, prevented any real public concern about US imperialism.      

     And our falsely labeled Defense Dept. hid the tremendous budget diversion for unnecessary wars from ithe urgent need to mitigate the onrushing climate catastrophe.    527

References #42

James Carroll, House of War: The Pentagon and the Disastrous Rise of American Power.  2006.

Related

Francis A. Boyle.  “The Unlimited Imperialists.”  Z Magazine (June 2018).  6-7.

Deleted from 42 at last minute as I performed the usual drastic cutting to fewer than 500 words.. 

    Since its founding, the Pentagon has operated beyond the control of any force in government or society, undermining the very national security it is sworn to protect. 

INCLUDE IN MY BLOG THESE RELATED REF MATERIALS ALONG WITH THE EDITORIAL—THEN DELETE THIS

House of War: The Pentagon and the Disastrous Rise of American Power. June 4, 2007 by James Carroll. 

In House of War, the best-selling author James Carroll has created a history of the Pentagon that is both epic and personal. Through Carroll we see how the Pentagon, since its founding, has operated beyond the control of any force in government or society, undermining the very national security it is sworn to protect.  From its “birth” on September 11, 1941, through the nuclear buildup of the Cold War and the eventual “shock and awe” of Iraq, Carroll recounts how “the Building” and its officials have achieved what President Eisenhower called “a disastrous rise of misplaced power.”

This is not faded history. House of War offers a compelling account of the virtues and follies that led America to permanently, and tragically, define itself around war. Carroll shows how the consequences of the American response to September 11, 2001 -– including two wars and an ignited Middle East -– form one end of an arc that stretches from Donald Rumsfeld back to James Forrestal, the first man to occupy the office of secretary of defense in the Pentagon. House of War confronts this dark past so we may understand the current war and forestall the next.

     Regarding US militarism, the best single study of which I am aware is James Carroll’s House of War: The Pentagon and the Disastrous Rise of American Power, and I would be glad to be in touch with anyone who has read it. Here’s one small part near the beginning of the book (p. 29):

“In the twenty years after World War II, the Pentagon spent nearly $100 billion, ten times the federal expenditures devoted to all aspects of health, education, and welfare in the same period.  By 1965, nearly six million Americans were employed in the enterprises administered from the Pentagon. . . .For the first time in the country’s history, military assumptions undergirded America’s idea of itself.  The combination of factors making this so had reached critical mass, an apt metaphor.  The military-industrial-academic-political complex achieved a social fission, and the Pentagon was its reactor.”  This is one of the subjects of his book. 

     To grasp the importance of 1965, remember that Eisenhower’s great Farewell Address against this Complex was spoken on TV in 1961.  Unfortunately, it failed to slow down the militarization he warned the nation about.

–Dick

Francis A. Boyle.  “The Unlimited Imperialists.”  Z Magazine (June 2018).  6-7.

The 20^th century opened with the “U.S.-instigated Spanish-American War in 1898,” when the US “stole their colonial empire from Spain in Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines; inflicted a near-genocidal war against the Filipino people; while at the same time illegally annexing the Kingdom of Hawaii and subjecting the Native Hawaiian people (who call themselves the Kanaka Maoli) to genocidal conditions. . . . over the next four decades America’s aggressive presence, policies, and practices in the so-called ‘Pacific’ Ocean would implacably pave the way for Japan’s attack at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.”  Today, US bipartisan “serial imperial aggressions” “threaten to set off World War III.”   Francis A. Boyle is a professor of law at the U of Illinois-Champaign.

John Quigley.   The Ruses for War: American Interventionism Since World War II.    Prometheus Books, 1992.  (310p).   I read the review by Henry Rosemont, Jr., in Social Anarchism No. 22 (1996).  Rosemont “highly recommends” this “well documented” study of interventions in 26 countries.Also see: https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-87975-767-0

Lee Camp.  Trump’s Military Drops a Bomb Every 12 Minutes.  Truthout.  Jun 19, 2018

KPSQ EDITORIAL #43, THE DOOMSDAY MACHINE: CONFESSIONS OF A NUCLEAR WAR PLANNER BY DANIEL ELLSBERG.  2017.  Broadcast August 25, 2018

     My reference today is THE DOOMSDAY MACHINE: CONFESSIONS OF A NUCLEAR WAR PLANNER BY DANIEL ELLSBERG.  2017.   The title of my editorial is the question: Have We Prepared Omnicide? 

      Do We Still Have the Choice Today, as Martin Luther King, Jr., asked, of Nonviolent Coexistence or Violent Co-annihilation?

     Much the same inordinately powerful institutions and elites tenaciously obstruct solution to our two greatest existential challenges: global warming and nuclear war.   Today I’ll apply the question of my title to nuclear war.

     The Cold War supposedly ended, but the United States and Russia each have an actual Doomsday Machine.  Each machine is composed of their nuclear arsenals on such massive scale—sufficient to end human civilization.

        Each is an extremely expensive system of humans, machines, and institutions which could with high probability bring about the global destruction of civilization and of nearly all human life on earth.  The two systems are on hair-trigger alert, susceptible to a false alarm, a terrorist action, an unauthorized launch, or a desperate decision to escalate.  They would kill billions of humans and likely end complex life on earth.

     Does the United States need a Doomsday Machine?  Does Russia?   Does the existence of such a capability serve any national or international interest whatsoever to a degree that would justify its obvious danger to human life?

     Does any nation on earth have a right to possess such a capability?  A right to threaten—by its possession of that capability—the continued existence of all other nations and their populations?

      We can say NO, and we can dismantle the machines just as we constructed them.  And that, at a minimum, is what we must hasten to do.

          To move toward abolition of nuclear weapons, we should and could

+ institute no-first-use and no-first-strike policies,

+make Congress apply what’s known about the complete catastrophe of nuclear winter to present policies,

+eliminate our ICBMs,

+admit as delusory preemptive damage-limiting first strike ideas, +abandon the profits, jobs, and alliance hegemony based on these delusions;

+that is, dismantle the US Doomsday military industrial complex.

        But both US Parties, both the Repubs and the Demos, as currently constituted oppose every measure possessing the possibility of meaningful control of nuclear weapons.   The same type of heedless, shortsighted, and reckless decision-making and lying about it has characterized our government’s nuclear planning, threats, and preparations throughout the nuclear era, risking a catastrophe incomparably greater than all together the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, the failure to prepare for Hurricane Katrina, the Gulf oil spill, and financial disasters affecting millions and costing billions.   

     And yet, as demonstrated by the downfall of the Berlin Wall, the nonviolent dissolution of the Soviet empire, and the shift to majority rule in South Africa, all unimaginable just thirty years ago, unjust and dangerous misrule are not all-powerful.  466

Reference for #43

THE DOOMSDAY MACHINE: CONFESSIONS OF A NUCLEAR WAR PLANNER BY DANIEL ELLSBERG.  2017. 

I cut this repetitive par. at the last minute to reduce time to under 5 minutes

But both Parties oppose these remedies necessary to abolishing the nuclear weapons.   The situation did not begin with Donald Trump, and it will not end with his departure. The obstacles to achieving these necessary changes necessary to the eventual abolition of nuclear weapons are posed not so much by the majority of the US public, but by officials and elites in both Parties and by major institutions that consciously support militarism, US global hegemony, and arms production and sales. 

I SENT 44 TO MY GOOGLE PEACE LIST, THE FIRST ONE TO THE LIST (IN ADDITION TO MY EDITORIALS BLOG): REPLIES FROM Louise, Jeremy K,

KPSQ EDITORIAL #44, The Ruses for War: American Interventionism Since World War II, by John Quigley.  1992.  By Dick Bennett.   Broadcast 9-1-18.

My subject today is US militarism.

      My source is The Ruses for War: American Interventionism Since World War II, by John Quigley.  1992.  My title is: “Lies, the Main Foundation for US Wars.”

     Why did the US Marines land in the Dominican Republic in 1966?  To protect US citizens there, President Johnson argued falsely. Why did President Reagan send troops to Grenada in 1983?  For the same false excuse.

     US military actions taken over the last 70 years, offer an encyclopedia of lies, coverups, distortions, and manipulations by our country’s leaders for the purpose of deluding the public into war.

      The lying feeds itself.  The false stories become part of a whole body of spurious information to be drawn upon in future interventions.  When war broke out in Korea, President Truman argued that the Soviet Union was preparing to conquer the world.   The same argument drew us into the Vietnam War and dominated US decisions during the Cuban missile crisis.   False information bolstered a new false story, this one with catastrophic potential to the planet.

     Typically, presidents have been led to commit US troops to foreign soil for economic and strategic reasons, especially for oil.   However, as President Bush I learned in the Person Gulf in 1990, war for resources needs reinforcement.  When in 1990 Bush I’s call to citizens to go to war evoked placards saying “No Blood For Oil,” he switched to defense of Kuwait and lied that Saddam’s troops had  murdered a baby.   A succession of US administrations have argued falsely that we had to go to war to fight aggression to protect US citizens, or to combat a Soviet threat to our freedom and way of life.  And now it is the Russian threat—and Chinese, and N. Korean—countries completely surrounded by US or allied armed forces.

     Presidents have usually gotten away with their good/evil double standards.  The US invaded Iraq because it had invaded Kuwait, but we did not invade Israel with it invaded Lebanon in 1982, or when Turkey invaded Cyprus in 1974.  Our leaders’ stratagems and tricks, invasions and interventions, are accepted by the majority ignorant, credulous, and fearful public, at least at first, and protest is usually feeble.  

       Thus, if you add to these depredations the enormous catastrophic likely consequences of climate change, for decades neglected and even denied by profit-obsessed leaders, humanity faces an emergency from nuclear war and the warming world.

      What can we do at the least?   In a representative government, we can educate.  We can demand the right to know the real reasons for future US wars.  We can demand every child be taught the United Nations Charter, which prohibits national aggression.

        But the times are urgent. We must abolish nuclear weapons and stop serial war-making aggression and end fossil fuels emissions.  Until then, our young men and women will continue to be sent to their deaths overseas without knowing why but believing they are protecting the US from foreign aggression.   493

Refs. for 44

Some of the passages excised to reduce reading time to 5 minutes.

    My preceding two editorials marked a return from the subjects of global overpopulation and affluent nations’ overconsumption, to militarism.

The White House has gotten into difficulty only when—as happened in Korea and Vietnam—the military engagement dragged on for so long that the public realized they had been deceived and withdrew support.

    To say that the implications of such deliberate deception are severe, understates the reality, considering that millions of human beings and billions and billions of other species have been killed as the result, and that one of the basic premises of representative government—that our nation’s leaders be held accountable to the electorate—has been undermined. 

FINDING DICK’S EDITORIALS ON OMNI KPSQ FM 97.3

Streaming and online archives are accessible from anywhere in the world with internet access: http://www.kpsq.org/show-archives/

FINDING KPSQ PROGRAMS

Here is the link for listening to KPSQ archived shows:

http://www.kpsq.org/show-archives/

 Scroll down to Saturday and date, “Fayetteville Folkus” and look at the far right for a “Play” button. That should play the show.

TO FIND FUTURE PROGRAMS

Scroll down to date and time and click Play.

My editorial is last for 5 minutes, so begins about 8:50 to 8:55.

KPSQ EDITORIAL #45,  EMPIRE AND THE BOMB: How the US Uses Nuclear Weapons to Dominate the World by Joseph Gerson.  Pluto/AFSC, 2007.  Recorded 9-3-18.   Broadcast Sept. 8, 2018.

     Ever since the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the US has deployed nuclear weapons as the centerpiece of its strategy for global hegemony.

      My main source today is EMPIRE AND THE BOMB: How the US Uses Nuclear Weapons to Dominate the World by Joseph Gerson.  2007.   The title of my editorial is:  For World Peace and Preservation, Abolish Nuclear Weapons.

     The Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs set off a second chain-reaction: the proliferation of nuclear weapons.  Other nations sought to counter or to emulate Washington’s ability to practice nuclear terrorism.  Next came the Soviet Union and Britain, then France and China. They were followed by Israel, India, Pakistan, and North Korea.  President Obama called for the spending of a trillion dollars to expand the US arsenal, under the guise of updating it.  President Trump also increased the Pentagon budget.

     And US leaders of both Parties have used nuclear supremacy to achieve US foreign policy objectives.  From Truman to Trump, the threat of preemptive attack by nuclear weapons has been the cornerstone of the US doctrine of full spectrum dominance, of unmatchable   military   power.   

                The world knows that on at least 30 occasions since Hiroshima and Nagasaki, every US president has prepared and/or threatened to initiate nuclear war during international crises.  And in its typical double-standards practice, while insisting that other nations fulfill their Nuclear Proliferation Treaty obligations (except for India and Israel, which have not signed the NPT), the US government has never been serious about its Article VI obligations to engage in “good faith” negotiations for the complete elimination of nuclear weapons.

          Common to all US presidencies, regardless of Party, is their insistence on maintaining the hierarchy, funding, development, and deployment for new, more usable, extremely expensive, and of course extraordinarily lucrative nuclear weapons for nuclear terror.  Government after government prepared and threatened genocide, even omnicide, ostensibly to protect the nation, in reality to preserve the careers, power, prestige, and profits of a few.

    US war doctrines—full-spectrum dominance and mutually assured destruction, or MAD– have had enormously de-stabilizing effects, in that they provoked fear and resistance to US hegemony, resulting in a defensive drive by other countries to acquire nuclear weapons. 

      This national security obsession by our leaders to construct a National Security State costing trillions of dollars, also helps to explain why for three decades, comfortable with their weapons cash cow firmly established in every niche of US society, elites denied scientists’ warnings of dangerous warming the mitigation of which would compete with Pentagon budgets.

      And now the US faces the two global catastrophes of nuclear war and winter and climate warming and extreme weather. 

     What’s to be done with US nuclear full spectrum dominance and mutually assured destruction so replete with risk and expense?  There will be no security until the peoples of the US and the world push to abolish all nuclear arsenals.   477

References to 45

Joseph Gerson.  EMPIRE AND THE BOMB: How the US Uses Nuclear Weapons to Dominate the World.   2007.

Related:

Quigley. The Ruses of War.

Excisions    

For people don’t like double standards, by which the US leads the world and maintains its global hegemony, and for which it is known as the great destabilizer.  

     From Truman to Trump, administrations saw the key challenge of nuclear war, not as abolition of nuclear weapons, but as the prevention of nuclear proliferation.  Yet the nuclear powers—US, Russia, GB, France, and China–did not fulfill their side of the bargain.  Under the terms of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) non-nuclear nations agreed not to develop nuclear weapons in exchange for the promise from the five nuclear armed states, that the nuclear five would move toward nuclear disarmament.  That side of the bargain was never kept, which remains a great dis-incentive for compliance by non-nuclear nations.

Here I focus more closely on CLIMATE AND WARS  #46 Bannerman

KPSQ EDITORIAL #46,  “Is Climate The Worst Casualty of War?” by Stacy Bannerman    Common Dreams, July 31, 2018.   Peace in Our Times (Fall 2018).    Recorded Sept. 10.   Broadcast September 15, 2018.

     The preceding four editorials resumed the subject of the wars of the USofA (42 Carroll, 43 Ellsberg, 44 Quigley, 45 Gerson).   The cost of America’s post-9/11 wars has passed $6 trillion, and the price tag will continue to climb right along with temperatures, atmospheric CO2, methane, and sea levels.

       I am now transitioning to my crucial, linkage subject– the convergence of US wars, the nuclear danger, and the climate catastrophe.    My chief source today is the essay:  “Is Climate The Worst Casualty of War?” By Stacy Bannerman, published in   Common Dreams, July 31, 2018.   My title is: Pentagon’s War on the Climate.

     How do you end quickly a public meeting on the climate?  Start talking about war.  It’s not just environmentalists that leave. Mission accomplished by the US bipartisan War Party, which sends the military and their families to war, and the rest of the country to shopping malls and Disney World.  Mission accomplished by the War Party, for the public little realizes how massive is the carbon footprint of America’s endless wars, because military emissions abroad have a blanket exemption from national reporting.

     The Pentagon’s footprint is enormous.  It uses more petroleum per day than the aggregate consumption of 175 countries (out of 210 in the world), and generates more than 70 percent of this nation’s total greenhouse gas emissions.  “The U.S. Air Force burns through 2.4 billion gallons of jet fuel a year, all of it derived from oil.” Since the start of the post-9/11 wars, U.S. military fuel consumption has averaged about 144 million barrels annually.

     The money misspent on the continuing 27-year two Iraq wars alone—wars for oil, let’s not forget— could have purchased the planetary conversion to renewable energy. That figure doesn’t include fuel used by coalition forces, military contractors, or the massive amount of fossil fuels burned in weapons manufacturing.

     Following from this military footprint, we can look forward to an escalation in killing and warming, global food insecurity, massive refugees, and diseases, with children bearing the main burden. 

       Nevertheless, public health agencies don’t discuss what war costs our climate when they discuss what climate change will cost our children.  Religious communities and environmentalists are mobilizing on the behalf of healing and protecting the planet.  But the topic of America’s literal war on the world is still off the White House/Congress  table. 

     We’ve got wind farms to build and pipelines to stop. We’ve got solar panels to install and water to protect. But our leaders feed the fossil-fueled military beast chewing up nearly 60 percent of the national budget.  In order to achieve the massive transformations required for mitigating climate change and advancing climate justice, we must stop the violence of U.S. foreign policy that is pouring fuel on the fire of global warming.

      We have to de-frock the sacred bombers at the Pentagon, because climate may be its worst victim of all.  480

  References to #46

“Is Climate The Worst Casualty of War?” By Stacy Bannerman    Common Dreams, July 31, 2018.  

Related

See books and articles especially connecting Wars and Warming reviewed for these Editorials, including  Bertell, Chomsky and Polk, Dower, Dyer, Ellsberg, Gerson, Greer, Maddow, Parenti, Paskal, Quigley, Rifkin, Sanders, Smith and Vivekananda, Gar Smith, Wood.

Some passages excised to slim down from 550

The hands of the Doomsday Clock are two minutes from midnight from the two greatest dangers to our civilization. Life itself is on the line.         It is time to find your voice.  

And the big environmental organizations seem to have tacitly agreed that we won’t mention the U.S. military when we talk about the biggest contributors to climate change.

Bannerman’s COMPLETE ESSAY:

How do you clear a room of climate activists? Start talking about war. It’s not just environmentalists that leave; it’s pretty much everyone. Mission accomplished by the Bush Administration, which sent the military and their families to war and the rest of the country to an amusement park. The military-civilian divide has been called an “epidemic of disconnection.” But the biosphere doesn’t see uniforms, and the environmental devastation caused by bombs, burn pits, and depleted uranium cannot be contained to a combat zone. We haven’t counted the massive carbon footprint of America’s endless wars because military emissions abroad have a blanket exemption from both national reporting requirements and the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change. There will be no exemptions in the coming climate collapse. We’ve all got skin in the war game now.

The cost of America’s post-9/11 wars is approaching $6 trillion and the price tag will continue to climb right along with sea levels, temperatures, atmospheric CO2, and methane, a particularly potent greenhouse gas. We can look forward to an escalation in global food insecurity, climate refugees, and the release of long-dormant, potentially highly lethal bacteria and viruses. Research published in the journal Pediatrics in May, 2018, revealed that “children are estimated to bear 88 [percent] of the burden of disease related to climate change.”  

Nevertheless, public health agencies don’t discuss what war costs our climate when they discuss what climate change will cost our children.  Religious communities are mobilizing on the behalf of the healing and protection of the planet. But with few exceptions, such as MLK’s Poor People’s Campaign resurrected by a trio of ministers, the topic of America’s literal war on the world is still off the table.  Although he surely knows creation is God’s cathedral, His Holiness Pope Francis spent only a handful of words on the ecology of war in the beautifully rendered Laudato Si: On Care For Our Common Home.  And the big environmental organizations seem to have tacitly agreed that the U.S. military is the entity we won’t talk about when we talk about the biggest contributors to climate change.

The Pentagon uses more petroleum per day than the aggregate consumption of 175 countries (out of 210 in the world), and generates more than 70 percent of this nation’s total greenhouse gas emissions, based on rankings in the CIA World Factbook. “The U.S. Air Force burns through 2.4 billion gallons of jet fuel a year, all of it derived from oil,” reported an article in the Scientific American. Since the start of the post-9/11 wars, U.S. military fuel consumption has averaged about 144 million barrels annually. That figure doesn’t include fuel used by coalition forces, military contractors, or the massive amount of fossil fuels burned in weapons manufacturing.

According to Steve Kretzmann, director of Oil Change International, “The Iraq war was responsible for at least 141 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (MMTCO2e) from March 2003 through December 2007.” That’s more CO2e than 60 percent of all countries, and those figures are only from the first four years. We downsized the war in December of 2011, but still haven’t left, so the U.S. invasion and 15 years of occupation has likely generated upwards of 400 million metric tons of CO2e to date. The money misspent on that war—a war for oil, let’s not forget— could have purchased the planetary conversion to renewable energy. Just sit with that a moment. Then stand up and get back to work, please.

We’ve got wind farms to build and pipelines to stop. We’ve got solar panels to install and water to protect. We need torchbearers from every tribe and nation to walk the green path and light the Eighth Fire. But to do so while continuing to feed the fossil-fueled military beast chewing up nearly 60 percent of the national budget is energy inefficient and environmentally self-defeating.  We cannot cure this man-made cancer on the climate without addressing underlying causes. In order to achieve the massive systemic and cultural transformations required for mitigating climate change and advancing climate justice, we’re going to have to deal with the socially sanctioned, institutionalized violence perpetrated by U.S. foreign policy that is pouring fuel on the fire of global warming.

The Department of Defense (DOD) has the largest carbon footprint of any enterprise on the planet. The DOD is the single greatest manufacturer and disseminator of tools and toxins like Agent Orange and nuclear waste that are inherently destructive to ecosystems. Nearly 70 percent of U.S. environmental disasters classified Superfund sites by the EPA have been caused by the Pentagon, which is a primary polluter of U.S. waterways. There should be no surprise, then, that at least 126 military bases have contaminated water, causing cancer and birth defects in service-members and their families.  (So much for supporting the troops.)

We have to replace the flawed patriotism desperately clinging to the idea that we can’t win without war (all evidence to the contrary) with a bipartisan paradigm so powerfully devoted to liberty and justice and freedom for all that creating an intelligent, muscular peace becomes a national priority. If we do not, we will never become the America we have said that we are. In the end, it’s what we haven’t included in the cost of war that may end up costing the most.

We simply cannot continue the moral, spiritual, fiscal, or environmental policy of benign neglect that underwrites the decimation of land, air, and water around the world. That, my green friends, is the single most unsustainable policy on this nation’s books.

I know a lot of folks have decided not to speak out about war in order to avoid being labeled a traitor, or accused of being anti-military. If we learn nothing else—and it seems we have not—from the Iraq War, we learn that silence is a luxury we cannot afford when lives are on the line. The hands of the Doomsday Clock are two minutes from midnight. Life itself is on the line. It is time to find your voice.

We have to de-frock the sacred cow grazing at the Pentagon, because climate may be the worst casualty of all. My whole existence was a casualty of the Iraq War, and too many of my friends have gotten a Gold Star. I don’t use the word “casualty” lightly. When I tell you the pain of losing everything you love because of war is a pain you do not want, I beg you to believe me.  We have to keep working to “Keep it in the ground,” but if we don’t get serious about stopping the United States War Machine, we could lose the biggest battle of our lives.

https://worldbeyondwar.org/is-climate-the-worst-casualty-of-war/?link_id=46&can_id=3d53bb64e2596ba3e930952f90ab3f2c&source=email-wbw-news-open-this-video-close-these-bases&email_referrer=email_399880&email_subject=wbw-news-open-this-video-close-these-bases

END BANNERMAN

KPSQ #47.  JEREMY RIFKIN.  BIOSPHERE POLITICS: A NEW CONSCIOUSNESS FOR A  NEW CENTURY.  CROWN, 1991.  Recorded 9-17-18.  BROADCAST 9-22-18.

     Global warming represents the final conflict in the war against nature. 

     My reference today is Biosphere Politics: A New Consciousness for a New Century by Jeremy Rifkin.  1991.   My title is:  Conversion of the US War on Nature.

     The war against nature, against our original, free commons, began with enormous enthusiasm just a few hundred years ago in the Industrial Revolution.  Its consequence and central meaning have been the warming of our atmosphere.  The war seemingly has been lost by being won.

     During the recent experiment in free markets, humans attempted to privatize, commodify, and consume the earth’s generous endowment.  Simultaneously we pumped up the planetary population extraordinarily.  And wars became increasingly destructive and expensive.   Now, in a final twist of historical irony, we find ourselves enveloped by an atmosphere we created.  We have  trapped ourselves under a thick layer of industrial gases that were emitted to run the machines, extract the minerals, grow the crops, graze the livestock, store the produce, and ship the goods.

     The greenhouse gases—carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, and methane—that now pollute the atmosphere are the chemical record of the lethal age of exuberant growth and consumption, the three-hundred-year war against nature.

          It need not have happened, but until recently few people foresaw the calamity inherent in burning fossil fuels.

     But perhaps the worst can still be avoided through a few obvious changes, particularly the conversion from a consuming commercial and military to a biosphere culture,

     For example consider the US and the Middle East and the first Iraq war in 1990.  If President Bush I and Congress had recognized the harms of free market capitalism and had raised the automobile fuel-efficiency standards from 27.5 mpg to 35,  raised the gasoline tax by fifty cents per gallon, and taxed large gas-guzzling automobiles, C02 would have been stabilized, and US  leaders could not have so easily argued and the populace would not so easily have believed the economy needed oil from the Middle East, and the US would not have risked US lives and wasted billions of dollars in military deployment around the world, money needed to prepare for the climate catastrophe.

     As the example of cars shows, the US must lead the way against harmful overconsumption and militarization of the planet to a biosphere culture at peace with nature.    The US must lead by restructuring its economy away from a consumerist and military-industrial complex and toward a sustainable bioregional infrastructure, because the threats of resource scarcity, global CO2 pollution, and nuclear war pose far greater threats to the security of the planet than do the traditional national rivalries.

     Thus we might reduce global warming and the severity of its effects, and even significantly delay the final conflict in the human and especially US war against nature.  462

 Deleted at last minute to be under 500 words.

Now, after a long and protracted battle to capture, enclose, and consume the global commons, we are, in turn, being enclosed by the discarded waste of our own consumption.    

… particularly by converting the Pentagon, the largest single institution emitter of greenhouse gasses in the world, from war to peace.

        And such a change will simultaneously pressure the nuclear nations to abolish their nuclear warheads and to provide the money needed to mitigate and adapt to the climate emergency.  We already know that the speed of intercontinental delivery of nuclear bombs has made military security a virtual technological impossibility.  As one Pentagon official said, “Speed is the tightening noose around our neck.”

     We have reached the conjuncture of our planet’s two greatest dangers that won’t be solved by wars.                 

KPSQ #48,

FIND ANOTHER 2 BOOKS ON US WARS/EMPIRE AND CLIMATE, scan my main biblio

CLIMATE AND WARS CONTINUED

Paskal, Global Warring   included already

 Gwynne Dyer, Climate Wars

Todd Miller, Storming the Wall, CC Migration and Homeland Security.  2017.

US CAPITALISM

William T.   Vollmann, Carbon Ideologies

VOLUME ONE,  No Immediate Danger.   624pp.

VOLUME TWO, No Good Alternative

Penguin Random House, Apr 10, 2018

ABOUT CARBON IDEOLOGIES

I read Jonathan Hahn’s review in Sierra (Sept. Oct, 2018).  The two books “document Vollmann’s quest to understand how capitalism, consumerism, and fossil fuels are ruining the planet.”  “We are all carbon ideologues…by way of the free market….We all bought what they sold.”   

In Vol. I Vollmann travels the modern world of carbon, ending with a analysis of nuclear Fukushima.    

Vol. II “turns his attention to coal, oil, and natural gas” destructively embedded in global culture.     –Dick

Ian Angus.  Facing the Anthropocene

Magdoff and Foster, What Every Environmentalist…

Magdoff and Williams, Creating an Ecological….

Klein, The Battle for Paradise, Puerto Rico Takes on the Disaster Capitalists

ISBISTER

Mary Wood, Nature’s Trust

“Ahmed, et al. “Merger-Acquisition Boom Raises Question of When It Will End.”  (Bloomberg News).  NADG (7-12-18).  “…2018 on course to be the biggest year on record for global mergers and acquisitions….on track to beat 2007’s $4.1 trillion….”

Fran Alexander, “This Land Is Whose Land?”  NADG (June 20, 2017). 

Ian Angus, Facing the Anthropocene: Fossil Capitalism and the Crisis of the
     Earth System

Ashley  Dawson, Extinction: A Radical History.  2017.

Foster, John Bellamy.  “The Long Ecological Revolution.”  Monthly Review (Nov. 2017).  Pp. 12-13 on waste.

Isbister, John.  Capitalism and Justice: Envisioning Social and Economic Fairness.  Kumarian, 2001.

Konczal, Mike.  “Monopolized.”  The Nation (June 6/13, 2017).

Michael Lowy, Ecosocialism: A Radical Alternative to Capitalist Catastrophe.   

Fred Magdoff and Chris Williams, Creating an Ecological Society: Toward a
      Revolutionary Transformation.  Monthly  Review P, 2017.

Smith, Richard.  Green Capitalism: The God That Failed.  World Economics Assoc., 2016

Stiglitz, Joseph.  The Price of Inequality: How Today’s Divided Society Endangers our Future.  2012.

Wallerstein, Immanuel.  The Human Costs of Economic Growth.

Del Weston, The Political Economy of Global Warming: The Terminal Crisis.
      Routledge, 2014.

Herman, Beyond Hypocrisy, see below

CLIMATE

Follow:

Jason Mark.  The Case for Climate Reparations.  Already included

Wainwright and Geoff Mann, Climate Leviathan

Eric Mann, Katrina’s Legacy: Genocidal Climate Crimes 

AND THEN BACK TO WARS

FULBRIGHT

COOK (SEE BELOW)

DOWER CULTURES OF WAR

BLUM (4 BOOKS)

JOHNSON (4 BOOKS)

COOK ON US WARS, EMPIRE, AND CAPITALISM

DICK’S KPSQ EDITORIAL #      .   FRED COOK.   THE WARFARE STATE.  Macmillan, 1962.   Recorded       Broadcast

     “…the ‘military industrial complex’ has become so powerful in the United States that it dominates the Government and is…so insane that it is quite ready to advocate what is called a ‘preemptive’ war against the Soviet State.”  

     My chief reference today is The Warfare State by Fred J. Cook.  1962.   Let that date sink in.  The resistance to nuclear weapons is as old as the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.   Cook’s book is therefore not very early in the abolition movement.   My title is:

     A main method of resistance is the exposure of lies by corporate, government, and media leaders.  Some of you remember the alleged “missile gap” of the 1960s giving superiority to the Soviet Union.  There never was any missile gap.

    Remember the even more shameful campaign to persuade the public that almost all of the people of the US could survive a nuclear war by means of shelters—individual or group.  Life magazine, the most popular magazine of the time, wrote: “You could be among the 97 percent to survive if you follow the advice on these pages.”   This reassuring advice regarding the safety of shelters from our military-corporate-congressional-executive-mainstream media patriotic Complex were certain to be ghastly death traps.

      For any nuclear attack by the US or by the then USSR now Russia would be met by massive retaliation sure to create a nuclear winter devastating to most living creatures on earth.

     This Warfarre State is new to the USofA—a way of life that has developed virtually unperceived and unrecognized.  Its justification? For both the warriors and the ignorant, timorous public, an ever-ready foreign menace.   Its appeal?   Patriotism and survival.   Its rewards? incalculable billions of dollars for the arms merchants and jobs in every congressional district.  The USofA has been changed, without any popular recognition of the fact, into a Warfare State whose real intent, is not, as claimed constantly the preservation of peace and law and order in the world, but the extension of our own capitalistic system throughout the world at the expense of communists, socialists, and any other cooperative economics. 

     This is not a policy of peace.  It is a policy of war.   And the US is committed to a policy of suicidal nuclear preemptive war.

     We have become imperialistic in the ideological sense of a claimed inevitable battle to the death between systems perceived as incompatible.  During the Cold War we were told the possibility of peaceful coexistence was a Soviet trap to rid us of our nuclear weapons.  So we targeted all of their ballistic missiles and their large cities, particularly Moscow, with hydrogen bombs.  Today it is no different except that the new Russia, China, and North Korea are tightly ringed by allies of the US and our nuclear arsenal on land, sea, and air.

     There is only one way of reversing the policy of preemptive war, and that is to make the truth known to the US public and to make nuclear abolition, along with climate change, our chief concern.  This is a difficult task since the Complex, the militarists, all who seek armed forced to solve international problems, control the major means of communication.   This was true in 1962; it is true today, as we will see in future editorials.    542

KPSQ #     J. WILLIAM FULBRIGHT.  THE ARROGANCE OF POWER.  Vintage, 1966.  Recorded        Broadcast

KPSQ #  LYDIA SARGENT, WE WON THE WORLD: Z READER ON EMPIRE.  Z BOOKS, 2013.  Recorded    Broadcast

KPSQ #     JOHN DOWER.  CULTURES OF WAR:  PEARL HARBOR, HIROSHIMA, 9-11, IRAQ.  Norton, 2010.    Recorded      Broadcast

THEN TO POPULATION

Charles C. Mann.  The Wizard and the Prophet: Two Remarkable Scientists and Their Dueling Visions to Shape Tomorrow’s World.   Knopf, 2018,

Firor and Jacobsen, The Crowded Greenhouse

KPSQ EDITORIAL #4, BEYOND HYPOCRISY: DECODING THE NEWS IN AN AGE OF PROPAGANDA BY EDWARD S. HERMAN.  1992.    Recorded 2018.  BROADCAST  SEPTEMBER   2018.

     Today’s editorial explains the transition from the WWII accord between labor and business to the widening gap between financial and corporate elite and labor as the background for the present US ceaseless wars and unchecked global warming. 

     My chief reference is BEYOND HYPOCRISY: DECODING THE NEWS IN AN AGE OF PROPAGANDA BY EDWARD S. HERMAN.  1992.  My title is:   USA Today Through Orwell??   Or Fear, Security, and the Anti-Democratic Shift to Endless War?

     During WWII, under Roosevelt’s Democratic Party New Deal, business, government, and labor leaders cooperated, business accepted unions and improved working conditions and wages, and government increased benefits and oversight of business for workers.   After WWII, especially since Reagan and the 1980s, corporations gradually rejected all those gains via an accretive counterrevolution, until by 2016 the extreme wing of the Republican Party dominated all three branches of government.

     Thus the hourly real wage of US workers was lower in 1991 than it was in 1973, and economic insecurity was endemic and worsening, while the richer propertied classes were being treated more solicitously by steadily shifting taxes and expenditures in their favor.   In Arkansas this week the Governor proposed to decrease taxes for the upper rich by over a hundred million dollars.

     This anti-democratic shift occurred also in the mainstream media, where control of language and information was most obvious.  An elite-dominated press would serve to protect property interests.  In the post-WWII era, the increasingly concentrated wealthy classes embraced a policy of scaring the masses by applying national security to a wide range of activities. 

     Political language came to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging, sheer vagueness, insincerity, hypocrisy, doublespeak, and doublethink.   Common gaps between declared and real aims were disguised by numerous propaganda devices.

     The growing designed inequality of US society was reported under the guises of reducing “entitlements,” pruning the “fat” in social budgets, eliminating safety nets that sapped the incentives of the ‘undeserving poor,” and “getting government off our backs,” while at the same time the nation was deregulating junk bond entrepreneurs, leveraged wheelers and dealers, savings and loan scammers, and Wall Street’s fake mortgages.

    In foreign and military policy, the military industrial complex was expanded to protect the “national security” with “Peacekeeper missiles” and other instruments of aggression and  overkill.  Pentagon contractors for Freedom Fighters and Freedom screw drivers proliferated.    The enormous buildup of weaponry was explained by the need to provide “bargaining chips” to allow us to reduce weaponry!  And all that money and talent and energy were diverted from the task of abolishing nuclear weapons to prevent nuclear winter.

      (And diverted later from confronting the equally catastrophic consequences of climate warming.)

     And there was no letup , for if immense profits were to be made by a few, there was no place for the New Deal for working people.

     After the Cold War threat of Communism came the threat of “terrorism,” of subversion, aggression, and naked aggression which is what the bad people do, to be dealt with by counterterrorism, counterinsurgency, low intensive warfare, 800 foreign military bases, 19 aircraft carriers, which is what we the good people do, because the US is the exceptional nation.  

      All of this behavior of lying and double-standards,  while believing, Orwell named Doublethink.   But in this world what is really essential is the ability to lie with impunity, the ability to use lies and facts selectively without the hypocrisy showing.

     For example, President George Bush condemned Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait not long after the Reagan-Bush administration had steadfastly supported Hussein’s aggression against Iran, and Bush had indulged in aggression against Panama.   But these truths were not the focus of the mainstream media.  The enemy commits war crimes, not the USA.  And inconvenient facts disappear into Orwell’s Black Hole.

       For a corollary to the doublethinking, doublespeaking society is the systematic avoidance and suppression of information by the sources of power, corporations and their government, and by the complicit mainstream media.  As the state always proclaims benevolent aims and defensive behavior, the “Defense” not the War Department as it truly is, evidence to the contrary is buried or softened in countless ways, and the leaders and the troops proclaim FREEDOM.

       Thus the failure of the US media to adequately disclose the truth about the US and Soviet and now Russian nuclear confrontation, and the US failure to respond to the climate catastrophe, and the public’s failure to revolt should surprise nobody.   690 words: I may be unable to shorten such a subject to 500

Ref.

EDWARD S. HERMAN.  BEYOND HYPOCRISY: DECODING THE NEWS IN AN AGE OF PROPAGANDA Including the Doublespeak Dictionary.  1992.

Related

John Quigley. 

STUDY HARTMANN MORE AND MAYBE DUMP THE BOOK.  Hartmann argues against extreme positions, against exaggerating effects of war and warming, softening the arguments, when the opposite seems necessary.

KPSQ EDITORIAL, BETSY HARTMANN, THE AMERICA SYNDROME: APOCALYPSE, WAR, AND OUR CALL TO GREATNESS.  Seven Stories, 2017.  Broadcast June 9, 2018.

Title:  Apocalypse, US Militarism, and US Call to Be Great Again.

     My main reference today is:  THE AMERICA SYNDROME: APOCALYPSE, WAR, AND OUR CALL TO GREATNESS by Betsy Hartmann, 2017.

      The United States is bombing 7 countries.  Its military budget is $1 trillion a year.  Its troops and planes and ships cover the earth.  Yet this so-called War on Terror was a response to the bombings of only three buildings, masterminded mainly by one man, carried out by 19 others, and costing around a half-million dollars.   And this War has become a War of Terror.   How explain these disparities?

     How explain the religious prophecies, sci-fi movies, doomsday TV shows, the worst-case national security scenarios, and the fear so many experience?  

     One explanation is the staggering number of the US population that believe war is inevitable and the world will end in an Armageddon, a final battle between good and evil.  2010 Pew poll reported six out of ten of the US population saw another world war as definite or probable by 2050.   A 2012 Reuters poll found that over one-fifth believed the end of the world will happen in their lifetime.  This is not surprising in a country whose beliefs about the apocalypse—the violent end of the world when good triumphs–derive mainly from Christianity, especially the Book of Revelation, which relates the grotesque violence and glories of divinely justified war

     It’s woven into our history of wars.   In WWI the US became world redeemer in a global war between good and evil.  Henceforth we became the defender of freedom around the world, and our national mission, bound tightly, increasingly to our military might, became our national identity.

    Until by 1961, President, formerly General Eisenhower, warned of the growth of the military-industrial complex, the conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry.  Since then, the power of the military-corporate-congressional-executive-mainstream media complex has become so pervasive that we have entered an era of endless war, in which we are always preparing for wars or fighting or both. 

             But this present arrogance of domination does not necessarily guarantee doomsday, even when we add to it climate change, which is intensifying the militarization of our nation.  The national security state capitalizes on the premise that because climate change will lead to violent conflict, the Pentagon’s budget must be increased.

      593, 543, 454   From Hartmann, The America Syndrome

I NEED TO READ THE REST OF THIS BOOK AND MAYBE NOT USE IT.

Some of the omitted material :

Now the Pentagon Complex has become so powerful that it operates as effectively another, independent government, impossible even to audit! 

And we are trapped in the America Syndrome: 

1) Widespread belief in US Exceptionalism as God’s chosen for the good of the world.

2) Exclusion and inequality of a chosen people who must distinguish themselves from those who are not and who must be crushed.

2) Consequent destiny of expansion, occupation, empire, and  extreme violence.

4) The subjection also of Nature as part of our providential mission to conquer and control the planet.

5) Finally, since our enemies are everywhere, our military must be also.

Following related to #25

ELLSBERG, THE DOOMSDAY MACHINE

Google Search, NUCLEAR WAR VERSUS ENVIRONMENT, 4-1-18.

How nuclear war would affect the world climate and human health

https://medium.com/…/how-nuclear-war-would-affect-the-world-climate-and-human-…

Aug 29, 2017 – To my knowledge, most of the changes in nuclear weapons technology since the 1950s have focused on making them smaller and lighter, and making delivery systems more accurate, rather than on changing their effects on the environment or on human health. So-called “battlefield” weapons with lower …

Nuclear bombs pose threat to environment, scientists warn …

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2006/dec/…/nuclearindustry.climatechange

Dec 12, 2006 – Read more. Alan Robock, the co-author of the study, told Guardian Unlimited: “Nuclear weapons are the greatest environmental danger to the planet from humans, not global warming or ozone depletion.” There are around 30,000 nuclear warheads worldwide, 95% of which are held by the US and Russia.

Environmental consequences of nuclear war: Physics Today: Vol 61 …

https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/full/10.1063/1.3047679

We do not consider the 1000 weapons held in the UK, China, France, Israel, India, Pakistan, and possibly North Korea. (Box 2 on page 40 provides information on the world’s nuclear arsenals.) The war scenarios considered in the figure bracket a wide spectrum of possible attacks, but not the extremes for either the least or …

Even a ‘minor’ nuclear war would be an ecological disaster felt …

theconversation.com/even-a-minor-nuclear-war-would-be-an-ecological-disaster-felt-t...

Aug 11, 2017 – The greatest concern derives from relatively new research which has modelled the indirect effects of nuclear detonations on the environment and climate. … In a war involving the use of the two nations’ strategic nuclear weapons (those intended to be used away from battlefield, aimed at infrastructure or …

Researchers to study environmental, human impacts of nuclear war

https://phys.org › Earth › Environment

Jul 19, 2017 – They were among the first scientists to formulate the “nuclear winter” theory, which indicated that a nuclear war between two countries could cool parts … and could arise from miscommunications, international panic, computer hacking or malfunction, terrorism or action by a rogue leader of a nuclear nation.

Researchers to study environmental, human impacts of nuclear war …

https://www.colorado.edu/…/researchers-study-environmental-human-impacts-nuclear…

Jul 18, 2017 – Researchers are calculating the environmental and human impacts of a potential nuclear war using the most sophisticated scientific tools available. … recently with the launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile believed capable of reaching Alaska or Hawaii—that was condemned by many nations, …

Computer Models Show What Exactly Would Happen To Earth After A …

https://www.popsci.com/…/computer-models-show-what-exactly-would-happen-earth-…

Jul 18, 2014 – In a new study, a team of four U.S. atmospheric and environmental scientists modeled what would happen after a “limited, regional nuclear war.” To inexpert ears, the consequences sound pretty subtle—two or three degrees of global cooling, a nine percent reduction in yearly rainfall. Still, such changes …

Small Nuclear War Could Reverse Global Warming for Years?

https://news.nationalgeographic.com/…/110223-nuclear-war-winter-global-warming-e…

Feb 23, 2011 – (Related: “‘Nuclear Archaeologists’ Find World War II Plutonium.”) Reversing Global Warming? The global cooling caused by these high carbon clouds wouldn’t be as catastrophic as a superpower-versus-superpower nuclear winter, but “the effects would still be regarded as leading to unprecedented …

How Nuclear Bombs Affect the Environment | Education – Seattle PI

education.seattlepi.com › College & Higher Education

Nuclear bombs are lethal weapons that cause cataclysmic explosions when energy is released by the splitting of uranium or plutonium atoms in atomic bombs or the fusion of hydrogen atoms in hydrogen bombs. A detonated nuclear bomb produces a fireball, shockwaves and intense radiation. A mushroom cloud forms …

A regional nuclear war with North Korea could alter Earth’s climate …

https://mashable.com/2017/08/09/north-korea-nuclear-war-climate-change-winter/

Aug 9, 2017 – A war between North Korea and the U.S. would likely involve fewer nuclear weapons than India versus Pakistan, which could limit the global environmental impacts. However, if it draws in China and Russia, which both border North Korea, then all bets are off, Robock says. North Korea is thought to have …

Searches related to nuclear war versus environment

how would a nuclear attack affect the environment

environmental effects of nuclear weapons testing

effects of nuclear war on environment

how would a nuclear attack affect humans?

nuclear war climate change

what would happen after a nuclear war

potential nuclear war

nuclear war aftermath

I have started the following book and think already it is urgently important and our Forum should discuss it asap.  3-6-18  To Forum committee 3-22-18.  LOLLY VOLUNTEERED TO MOD FORUM ON IT

Gar Smith’s The War and Environment Reader.

 Sun April 8 – 1:30 pm – Fayetteville Library Board Room

Because of earlier confusion with our dates with Easter falling on April 1, we will now have as presenter Dick Bennett and his book will be Gar Smith’s War and Environment Reader. For more info go to the OMNI Center website.

The War and Environment Reader explores the historical, political and psychological roots of war, the business of war, the environmental and social consequences of war, and the alternatives to war. While many books have examined the broader topic of military confl­ict, most neglect to focus on damage military violence in­flicts on regional—and global—ecosystems.

The War and Environment Reader, edited by Gar Smith, provides a critical analysis of the devastating consequences of “war on the environment” with perspectives drawn from a wide array of diverse voices and global perspectives.

Action   194 words

     What might a citizen do to decrease the domination of our military-corporate-congressional-presidential warfare state?  Its economic power (jobs!) and secrecy, and public compliance, make it extremely difficult to critically analyze and hold to account.  Our nation now is conditioned to a predisposition to warfare and the militarization of US society.   But we can resist, and at once:

1.  Break the military’s iron grip on our country by changing just one word: instead of Department of Defense, say Pentagon, or Department of War, or more pointedly the Department of War Profit.  No US war after WWII has been in defense, but its repetition ensures fighting posture.

2.  The Soviet Union is gone, but Russia has replaced it as chief menace (along with China), requiring us to ring Russia with military bases and NATO nations, all the while blaming Russia for threatening the US!    Don’t let anybody get away with this 70-year libel.

War #8.  Nuclear War: Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD).  Diana Johnstone, “Doomsday Postponed?” in Paul Johnstone, From MAD to Madness: Inside Pentagon Nuclear War Planning (2017).    276-   Seymour Chwast.  At War with War (2017).

Title:

Diana Johnstone, “Doomsday Postponed?” From MAD to Madness: Inside Pentagon Nuclear War Planning. 

Title: on RUSSIA, NK, and First Strike

Action   194 words

     What might a citizen do to decrease the domination of our military-corporate-congressional-presidential warfare state?  Its economic power (jobs!) and secrecy, and public compliance, make it extremely difficult to critically analyze and hold to account.  Our nation now is conditioned to a predisposition to warfare and the militarization of US society.   But we can resist, and at once:

1.  Break the military’s iron grip on our country by changing just one word: instead of Department of Defense, say Pentagon, or Department of War, or more pointedly the Department of War Profit.  No US war after WWII has been in defense, but its repetition ensures fighting posture.

2.  The Soviet Union is gone, but Russia has replaced it as chief menace (along with China), requiring us to ring Russia with military bases and NATO nations, all the while blaming Russia for threatening the US!    Don’t let anybody get away with this 70-year libel.

NORFOLK NAVAL BASE DROWNING, USE IN SOME EDITORIAL

Norfolk , VA, is the home to the world’s largest naval base and a major contributor to the state’s economy.   Sea levels are rising 1 foot every five decades.  The base floods when storm surges combine with high tide. The Navy is faced with either moving it, or building a new base on higher ground, either a financially immense undertaking.   Given the militarization of the nation and the popularity of the military, we might think one of these two options long ago had been chosen and the state of Virginia engaged.  But when the bill appeared in VA General Assembly in 2012 merely to establish a study of the potential of sea-rise, the Tea Party Republicans denounced the terms climate change and sea-level rise as liberal code words. (FROM Mann and Toles)

ANTI-SCIENCE DENIERS, A BARELY STARTED LIST FROM MANN AND TOLES

     Naming the anti-science deniers grouped by states.   My list is a tiny selection: Florida:  Republican Governor Rick Scott.   Virginia: Tea Party Republicans; Ken Cucinelli, former attorney general; Bob McDonnell, former governor. 

CONTENTS IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER

Source(s) of several are missing at first before I decided I wanted to publicize my sources.

WARS

#1 (4-9-17 ):    Wars #1.  My first “editorial” told about the Marshall Islands suit v. nuclear nations.  

#2 (   ):    Wars #2.  the US/NK nuclear threatening, and empathy.   J. W. Fulbright, The Price of Empire

#3 (7-29-17):  Wars #3.  the long remembrance in Fayetteville of the WWII nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  REF?

#4 (9-16): Bridging  nuclear war editorials to forthcoming on global warming   REF

WARMING

#5 (10-27):  Warming #1.   Conseq. of Warming, and Gore’s Inconvenient
     Sequel

#6 (12-1-17): Warming #2.   Richard Smith’s Green Capitalism: The God That Failed

#7 (12-6-17): Warming #3.   Richard Smith’s 6 Theses in Green Capitalism: The God That Failed  and Transition to US Warfare State. 

 (3pp. Jim suggested longer and more frequent editorials)

WARS

#8 (12-13-17).  Wars #4.    US vs. the World, Beres, America Outside the World

#9 (12-20-17).  Wars #5.  US Ceaseless Wars, the 70 Years War; Ref.: Feinstein, The Shadow World

#10 (12-27-17).  Wars #6.    Why US Attacks So Many Countries and accepted so easily by the public. Ref: Reasons Why Americans Choose to Kill by Richard Rubenstein.

WARMING

#11 (Jan. 3, 2018).  Warming #4, Corporate delay, distraction, denial.   Hoggan.  Climate Cover-Up.

#12 (Jan. 10, 2018).  Warming #5, US Capitalism vs. Climate.  Magdoff and Foster, What Every Environmentalist Needs to Know About Capitalism.

#13 (Jan. 17).  Warming #6, Resisting Trump and GOP, Klein, No Is Not Enough

TRANSITION: WARMING, WAR

#14 (Sat., Jan. 27)  Chomsky and Polk, Nuclear War and Environmental Catastrophe (2013)

WAR, ENVIRONMENT, WARMING

#15 (Sat. Feb. 3) War #7. Costs of War.  Gar Smith, The War and Environment Reader (2017)

#16 (Sat. Feb. 10) War #8.  US inclination  to war.  Rachel Maddow, Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power (2012)

#17  (Sat. Feb. 17) War #9.    Presidential/Media Complex for War.  Norman Solomon, War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death (2005).    

  #18 (Sat. Feb. 24).  War v. Environment. Barry Sanders, The Green Zone: The Environmental Costs of Militarism (2009)

#19 (Sat. March 3).   War #8.  Nuclear War: Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD).  Diana Johnstone, “Doomsday Postponed?” in Paul Johnstone, From MAD to Madness: Inside Pentagon Nuclear War Planning (2017).    276-   Seymour Chwast.  At War with War (2017).

WARMING, ENVIRONMENT, WAR

#20

#21

#22

WAR, WARMING

#23

#24

#25

DICK’S 5-MIN TALK FOR KPSQ, Jim Lukens demo for the program committee 4-9-17

 Series on NUCLEAR WAR AND WARMING

Editorial #1 ON NUCLEAR WAR: MARSHALL ISLANDS SUIT V. NUCLEAR NATIONS  386 words

Think globally, act locally.   Rather, Think globally, act locally, act globally

I.    2 Primary dangers: Nuc War and Warming

II.  Nuclear War

Think Globally

We must abolish nuclear weapons.   The nations possessing nuclear weapons have increased from one to 9.   So long as the weapons are available, nations will seek them.  Trimming the existing number will not stop their proliferation and bring us safety. 

Connect Local and Global

I expect you know that the US tested some 60 hydrogen bombs in the Pacific Ocean’s Marshall Islands during the 1950s.    And you know that the Marshall Islands community centered in Springdale is the largest outside the Islands.  Springdale is the home of Marshall Islands’ US consulate.   Not so well known is that nation’s legal suit brought against all of the nations possessing nuclear weapons.   In courts in the US and in the ICJ, the International Court of Justice, the Republic of the Marshall Islands is challenging the nuclear nations for violating the Nonproliferation Treaty, the NPT.    Specifically, the suit challenges their failure to initiate nuclear disarmament negotiations   in    violation   of   Article  VI  of the 1968 nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) and customary international law.  In fact to the contrary, the Pentagon and Obama administration in 2015 initiated a 10-year trillion dollar program to upgrade US nuclear weapons.

Think of that.  Already, each of the Ohio-class Trident submarines can carry up to 24  ballistic missiles (SLBMs) with multiple, independently-targeted bombs.  One of those subs alone is called a doomsday machine, and the US has 14 of them.  Add the bombs carried by our intercontinental airplanes and in the missile sites around the country.   And the bombs of the other 8 nuclear nations.   The danger is incalculably immense—from accident, fear, or malice. 

So congratulations to the government of the Republic of the Marshall Islands and to former Foreign Minister Tony de Brum for being voted the 2016 Arms Control Person of the Year by the Arms Control Association.    The award was given for taking the case to the International Court of Justice in The Hague against the world’s nuclear-armed states.

     The OMNI Center for Peace, Justice, and Ecology during its entire existence has warned against the proliferation of nuclear weapons with our annual remembrance of the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  A few years back we joined the international movement to Abolish the Bombs.   Check it out.  Get the links

EDITORIAL #2   

TO KEEP THE TALK WITHIN 5 MINUTES I EXCISED THis OPENING PAR on empathy/compassion

      Fayetteville nourishes many compassion advocacy groups.   Compassion is defined in one dictionary as “a feeling of deep sympathy and sorrow for someone struck by misfortune, accompanied by a desire to alleviate the suffering.”  No Empathy advocacy group exists here, by name at least, but it is close to compassion.  We might describe one mission of the UAF’s Fulbright College to be the enlargement of empathy, defined as “the identification with or vicarious experiencing of the feelings, thoughts, etc., of another.”  Let’s for a moment consider the feelings of empathy and compassion as two steps toward a moral life: empathic capacity to imagine another’s state of mind and compassionate capacity to sympathize with that other person.

TITLE of #2:  For World Peace, See the World as Others See It  (War #2)  432 words

      Usually discussion of empathy is personal and local.  But it is also important for national and international affairs, and for world peace.   Fayetteville’s native son, J. William Fulbright, exemplifies that belief.  Fulbright was briefly president of the Univ. of Arkansas and later a U.S. senator and chair of the Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee.  He is perhaps best known for his international educational exchange program, partly based upon a philosophy of empathy defined as “the identification with or vicarious experiencing of the feelings, thoughts, etc., of another.” In his book The Price of Empire Fulbright explained his commitment to empathy in the conduct of national relations.  His final chapter is titled “Seeing the World as Others See It,” and his “Afterword” describes “Changing Our Manner of Thinking.”   “Why is it,” he asks, “that so much of the energy and intelligence of nations is used to make life painful and difficult for other peoples and nations, rather than to make life better for all?”  His answer is:  insufficient ability to perceive and feel the experience, the outlook, the feelings of others, including official national enemies.  He notably opposed the Vietnam War and other US invasions, such as the Dominican Republic and Guatemala, and his opposition arose partly from his belief in the power for peace and justice in empathy.

     Thus it seems natural to ask how Fulbright might respond now to the confrontation between the United States and North Korea.  An aspect of empathy is that knowledge of the other is essential.  We must know the history, the feelings and thoughts of North Koreans.  But our leaders make no effort to see the world as Kim Jong Un sees it, or as his father and grandfather saw it, despite the ample evidence of their worlds.    Many books and articles give us the history of the ancient culture of Korea, by which we can know where the Kims are coming from, why for example they detest the Japanese who brutally occupied their country, and with whom the U.S. has formed a military alliance opposed to North Korea.  At least five books—by I. F. Stone, Bruce Cumings, Hugh Deane, Martin Hart-Landsberg, and Charles Hanley–and many articles explain why the Korean War and its horrendous decimation by the United States of N. Korea’s cities and towns have such a powerful hold over Kim Jong Un’s mind.  

    Armed with knowledge and understanding of the feelings and thoughts of the North Koreans, our leaders could break the present dangerous pattern of threatened invasion and nuclear devastation.

EDITORIAL #3  (War #3)  494 words

 “Facing Nuclear Madness from Hiroshima 1945 to North Korea 2017”   (for KPSQ’s Weekly Program Fayetteville Folkus aired July 29 hosted by Jim Lukens.  This recording was supervised by Mary Gillcoat.)

 My slogan for these thumbnail commentaries is: “Think globally, act locally and globally.”   We must cultivate our local gardens, but national and international problems require us to link local to national and international actions.   My chief assumptions are that our main dangers are the two catastrophes of nuclear war and climate warming, and our response should be nonviolent.  

     The second largest population of Marshall Islanders live in Washington County.  Thus my first editorial told about the Marshall Islands law suits versus the nuclear nations to make nuclear weapons illegal. 

     My second editorial summarized Fayetteville native and former Arkansas Senator J. William Fulbright’s concept of empathy in his book The Price of Empire.  ThenI applied his ideas to the challenge of ending United States/North Korean nuclear threatening today.

    Now my subject is the long remembrance in Fayetteville of the WWII nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  The commemoration was begun by the local Peace Organizing Committee during the 1960s, and held in the University’s Greek Amphitheater.  Each year we learned more about the bombs and their consequences from books like John Hersey’s Hiroshima and Robert J. Lifton’s Survivors of Hiroshima, and more about how to realize our slogan “Never Again” from speakers of campus and towns, from songs, and music.   The 1960s’s Peace Committee evolved into the OMNI Center for Peace, Justice, and Ecology in 2001.

     Our Remembrance has been enhanced by the addition to the university campus of the Fulbright Statue and Peace Fountain, and by the Peace Planet sculpture by Hank Kaminsky on the Fayetteville Square.  We have alternated our ceremony between the two locations.  And our program has also enlarged as part of the growing international desire to ban those bombs entirely.   We remember, and we join with others to abolish nuclear weapons.  It’s happening:  the United Nations General Assembly voted to make the bombs illegal, along with chemical and other weapons of mass destruction, and the Treaty is now being ratified, though not including the United States.

      On Sunday, August 6, at 6 p.m., at our location for this year–the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, 901 W. Cleveland–the OMNI Center for Peace, Justice, and Ecology invites you to attend our annual Remembrance of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  We remember the deaths of 230,000 innocents of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the victims of all indiscriminate air war, we renounce war and threats of war, join Global Nuclear Zero hopes of all humanity for the abolition of nuclear weapons, and celebrate the United Nations Treaty Initiative to ban nuclear weapons.  Music, poetry and speakers will reflect on the meaning of the day.  And a live-stream video with Hiroshima Mayor Kazumi Matsui or his representative is anticipated.

     This is always a deeply meaningful occasion for people who long for peace.  Please join us Sunday, August 6, 6:00 pm .

My intention was to air 3 editorials on war and then 3 on warming.  But instead I wrote a bridging editorial on the connection of pje.  

EDITORIAL #4 TEXT,   definitely under 500, around 468 WORDS

     I have given 3 editorials on US wars and especially on US nuclear bombing and threatening.  My next main subject is the approaching climate catastrophe.   In preparation, today I’ll speak about the connected global issues necessarily conditioning local perspectives.

      My chief assumption is that the US economic system, US empire, and US gender and racial arrangements are by their nature and practice unjust, justice defined as equity, a word meaning fairness.   

     Six years ago, supporters of Occupy Fayetteville/NWA, in association with Occupy Arkansas and Occupy Wall Street, walked in the name of justice and peace, and demonstrated on the Fayetteville Square to ban racism and nuclear bombs — for justice, for fairness.   Our leader in perceiving the link was of course Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.   When asked about nuclear weapons Dr. King said: “the development and use of nuclear weapons should be banned.  It cannot be disputed that a full-scale nuclear war would be utterly catastrophic.”  And he asked, “What will be the ultimate value of having established social justice in a context where all people, Negro and White, are merely free to face destruction by strontium 90 or atomic war?”  Air war, indiscriminate decimation of cities, destroys all achievements by their citizens of any color, and we ought to add: of any gender.

     “For King,” wrote Michael McPhearson, “Civil Rights was inextricably linked to [world] peace.”  King repeatedly connected what he called the triple evils of war, poverty, and racism, or war, the economic system of inequality, and racism. 

       The prominent writer, James Baldwin, made the same case.  When he spoke at a rally on “Security Through World Disarmament,” he was asked why he chose to speak at such an event, and he replied:  The fight for world peace and the struggle for civil rights are the same.  “It is just as difficult,” he said, “for the white American to think of peace as it is of no color.” 

     And again we should add gender.  Another important great source of injustice, perhaps even underlying war and racism, is patriarchy.   Domination is again the key.  To some white men in power, the accumulation of nuclear weapons to dominate and bully other nations is like the desire for power over women.   

     And perhaps the present greatest, the most dangerous domination is that of planetary warming, the result of human extraction of resources, particularly of fossil fuels.   From the beginning of the industrial revolution, the mostly masculine economy has been devoted to exploiting nature for human benefit but also producing too much overheating CO2.

     All our main struggles are inextricably linked.  Yours is mine, mine is yours.  Global is local is global.

     That is why we need a full-spectrum movement for peace, justice, and ecology—to ban the bomb, to end color and gender inequality and discrimination, and to defend the climate.

Ref.:  Michael McPhearson, “Peace at Home: Mourning Philando,” Peace In Our Time” (Summer 2017, p. 3).

Maria Mies, Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale: Women in the International Division of Labour.  1986. 

Editorial #8 (12-13-17):  Wars (#4), the US Outside the World by Louis Beres

    These commentaries explore the US role in the wars and warming engulfing the planet.  Today my very broad theme is “The US Outside the World.”  That is, despite the many good things our country has accomplished for humankind, they are undermined by our having become the leading warfare and warming nation.

         My last editorial reported on the power over the US and the world of what is called “neo-liberal” capitalism as the primary engine of the climate catastrophe.Today I will report on US imperial,  military power, from America Outside the World by Louis Beres.  President Eisenhower called the two powers the military-industrial complex.  The two main manifestations—warming and wars—are inseparable, and are the subject of these editorials.

      During the Cold War from the 1940s to 1980s, US warfare foreign policy—chiefly arising from the presumed need to maintain military superiority over the Soviet Union—exacerbated the economic system:  deficits in budget and trade, inflation and waste, commodity obsolescence, frequent product change, unstable markets, cost-plus pricing, and  large corporations and bureaucracies beyond public control.  The massive transfer of capital away from civilian industry to the military sector neglected the industries the people need.  Instead of stimulating productivity, competitiveness, and innovation, Washington’s commitment to war as foreign policy dislocated the productivity of the past, causing the lowest tiers of the middle class to fall into poverty, and many of the poor to become destitute.

       Military spending absorbs resources that might have been invested for the people.    While the budget goes to weapons, our country ignores essential research that could develop alternate sources of energy, increased food production, better housing, and improved public health.  These distorted priorities limit innovation and investment, and lead to the trade deficit and to the national debt, now $20 trillion .

     Also, military spending creates a debilitating shortage of professional talent in the civilian sector.   With the military sector claiming 30 to 50 percent of the scientists and engineers, US industry is unable to contend with foreign competition.   Pretending to solve the problem, our leaders exhort us to “buy American,” but the remedy is to end the wars, and to return our skilled workers from their Pentagon-directed laboratories and drawing-boards, and all else destructive of climate and environment, like the Pentagon, to the capital-starved solar and wind industries and all else beneficial to the people.

     I suspect all of this is obvious to most of our population, but now we are beaten down into acquiescence and conformity by the incessant propaganda machine for war, making it preeminent  everywhere in every nook and cranny of life.  With the support of the economic system, the military system crushes independent, alternative thought and action.  

     We might be rescued from this captivity of Sovietphobia, now Russophobia, of “war on terror,” and the many enemies contrived by the military-industrial system.   We might be liberated from the economic-military-political system’s manufactured, subjugating movie of the world.    We might restore the USA to the world by creating the conditions wherein citizens can become autonomous persons.   We might, each in our individuality, live in commonality and cooperation with others worldwide. 

     But I do not believe it will be achieved by some St. George defeating the Dragon.   Liberation from wars and warming depends upon self-liberation, people creating affirmative government of, by, and for all the people of the planet.      Only then will the nation pursue foreign policies that point not to the perils of nuclear war or climate catastrophe but toward planetization, seeking  communion with all other nations.  But that kind of education and culture is at present only a dream of those who repudiate the economic and military system ruling the country, those who refuse profit and conquest under the guise of providing safety and freedom, those who reject patriotism and national unity by means of endless slaughter. 

      My next two commentaries will survey specific events in the recent history of US wars.   651 words

References

Louis Beres.  America Outside the World: The Collapse of U.S. Foreign Policy.  1987.

Martin Crutsinger.  “Budget Deficit Tops $138.5 Billion.”  NADG (December 13, 2017).  Reported also the national debt of $20 trillion.

EDITORIAL #9 (Dec. 20, 2017) WARS (#5) , .  Andrew Feinstein’s book, The Shadow World: Inside the Global Arms Trade,p. 19

(MILITARIZATION OF US) CREATION OF THE US WARFARE STATE:  WWII TO PRESENT

     My last editorial sought communion and cooperation with all other nations, if we are to avoid climate or nuclear destruction.  Today let’s consider why control by armed force is the goal of the United States instead of international amity.  Andrew Feinstein’s book, The Shadow World: Inside the Global Arms Trade, is our guide.   

    US victory in WWII ironically eventuated in long-term defeat–the decline from a civilian to a militarized government.  Militarized Industrial output doubled between 1940 and 1943 to a level nearly that of Britain, the Soviet Union, and Germany combined.  The atomic bombs dramatically increased the power of the presidency and transformed the affirmative New Deal of, by, and for the people, into a National Security State.    The US populace learned to accept militarization as its way of life:  an increasing proportion of US national resources was directed into the military; a closeness grew of US military, government, the presidency, and corporations.  While it won the war, victory by war lost the peaceful future. 

      Particularly unprecedented was the increase of presidential power. 

Under Franklin Roosevelt power of command and secrecy increased while under demands of war accountability decreased.   By exterminating two civilian city populations, the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki ordered by President Harry Truman exceeded anything ever imagined for the executive branch, and that bomb power influences our foreign policy to this day.   The secrecy and military discipline of the Manhattan Project that created the atomic bombs became a model for the covert operations and overt authority that have defined US government in the nuclear era.  The wartime emergency put in place during WWII extended into the Cold War and the war on terror, the Middle East war, and the pivot to encircle China.    For over 70 years a state of continuous war has dominated the US and therefore the world.

     After WWII when the “Cold War” as it was called with the Soviet Union heated up, the Truman Doctrine created the most significant expansion of US foreign intervention since the Monroe Doctrine.  Truman set in motion the militarized response to Soviet communism as a threat to free people everywhere requiring US protection everywhere, and permanent military preparedness.  The National Security Act of 1947 increased the war-making power of the president in specific ways; including the unification of the armed forces, changing the Department of  War to the Department of Defense (a title that has bumfuzzled the public ever since), the creation of the CIA and the NSA/National Security Agency, and diminishing the foreign policy power of the State Department.  The CIA created an invisible, new layer of secrecy and reduction of accountability.   The US national security state had been formally launched.

       The main beneficiaries  were the arms industry.  Since 1947, the Pentagon has become the center of a vast system of recruitment centers, propaganda centers, military bases, laboratories, testing grounds, command centers, intelligence centers, corporations, and academic institutions, for which one thing is certain: it spends more on war than on human needs.  Now the military and industry share an unprecedented level of cooperation, compounding their cumulative level of influence over policy–the MIC OR military-industrial complex as described by President Eisenhower—or as he might say today: the corporate, military, intelligence, presidency, Congress, mainstream media, national security state.

      In 1953 President Eisenhower delivered his “Chance for Peace” speech:  “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”  Alas, despite these truths, Eisenhower’s administration conducted its foreign policy as did Truman before him and as did all subsequent US presidents—through covert operations in foreign countries, most notoriously Guatemala and Iran. 

     All under the guise of saving the world from communism, that gigantic octopus reaching around the world and knocking over national dominoes, mixed metaphor disregarded, while never mentioned by the ruling elites, Increasingly, corporate stockholders’ profits soared.   Another general told the truth about corporate profit and US empire.  Major General Smedley Butler, two-time Medal of Honor recipient and the most decorated marine in US history, said of his own participation in profit-driven US military actions around the world:  “I spent 33 years and four months in active military service, and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business.  In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.”  And that was long before General Eisenhower made his “Chance for Speech” speech.  As I said at the beginning, Big Business has always been in the war racket, and all the time Big Business has grown Bigger and Bigger.   774 words

References

Feinstein, Andrew.  The Shadow World: Inside the Global Arms Trade. 2017.
     (Feinstein drew from Eugene Jarecki, The American Way of War (2010),
      for the section I used.)

Wills, Gary.  Bomb Power: The Modern Presidency and the National Security State.   2010.

EDITORIAL #10 (Dec. 27, 2017) WARS (#6), WHY THE US CHOOSES WAR SO EASILY, THE US OUTSIDE THE WORLD QUICK TO WAR (p. 22)

     My broad subject comes from the title of the book  America Outside the World by Louis Beres.   On the climate catastrophe rushing upon us, President  G. W. Bush rejected the Kyoto Climate Treaty and President  Donald  Trump rejected the Paris Climate Agreement.   On nuclear weapons, against 122 nations, President Trump rejected the UN General Assembly’s treaty abolishing nuclear weapons.  And Trump formally recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, in defiance of the world’s nations.   Actually, “outside” the world is a euphemism; rather let’s say outlaw against the world.   

     Today’s subject continues the theme of US wars, continuing my alternation of wars and warming.   My source today is Reasons Why Americans Choose to Kill by Richard Rubenstein.

       The 9-11 murder of thousands of innocent men and women in the NYC Trade Towers is an unforgiveable atrocity.  But it does no good to call terrorist acts senseless or cowardly, when we need to understand why the NYC buildings were attacked.  Malice and fanaticism were in the terrorists’ heads, but so also was opposition to US policies in the Middle East.  Osama bin Laden had made that emphatically clear.  If we think of the bin Ladens as devils, then consideration of options, of complexity, of thought, are impossible. 

      Hence Bush and Cheney in furious thoughtlessness invaded all of Afghanistan, defeated the Taliban and killed many civilians, then occupied the country while killing many more civilians and our own troops, in a country where only a handful of Afghans had participated in the bombings of the NYC Towers, while the actual perpetrator, bin Laden, escaped.  Two years later George and Dick ordered shock and awe against Iraq based on a pack of lies, and hundreds of more US troops and thousands of Iraqis perished, and the occupation and killings continue in both countries.  

     The first two questions we might ask is, who are these despicable leaders, and how did they get elected?  But leaders are not my purpose. They have received much, though hardly enough, study.  Similarly, why would the people of the US elect such leaders, so quick to attack and bomb and destroy?  How could they have been so thoughtless?  But again that question has been often studied.
 Rather let us ask more specifically: Why did so many of the public so quickly accept the Bush administration’s assertions that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction (which he did not)?  Why was there no public uprising when respected General Powell lied at the UN about Iraq’s wmd on the flimsiest of evidence?  Why did the public so willingly believe that invading and occupying and destroying Iraq should be the first instead of the last response?  The UN Security Council had refused to authorize the invasion.  Why, before sending to war and possible death our young men and women, did the people not insist upon the strongest of evidence?  Why, given such absence of justification, did so many accept the most violent, cruelest action over peaceful communication, diplomacy, and negotiation?  

      The full reply is multiple, but it must include this truth:  the majority fell for the oldest of war justifications: the alleged enemy was a super-enemy, he was capital E EVIL who sought to harm the US, that is us.  Thus we had a sacred right to violate the standards of clear thinking and of ethics, and to shred international laws, including the UN Charter, by invading and occupying two sovereign nations that had not threatened the US.  Later our leaders claimed our moral duty to liberate the people of Afghanistan and Iraq and to create democratic republics.   How?  By by invading, bombing, destroying the countries and killing their people.  

        These are familiar arguments by the leaders of the US:  from the wars against Mexico, Spain, two World Wars, Korea, Vietnam, Persian Gulf War to Libya and Syria.   Their purpose?  To create fear.  By causing the people to abandon critical thinking and ethics and instead to embrace authority for truth and protection.   To create fear by stressing defense against Evil Enemies.  Bush’s Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice tried to scare everyone into invading Iraq by saying “we don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.”     She put the final nail in the war hysteria begun in 1947 when the Department of War was renamed the Department of Defense.      And our troops have been fighting abroad for the longest continuous stretch in their history: over two decades if one starts with the first Persian Gulf War in early 1990s and the sanctions that killed a half-million Iraqi children.

            Many cried out for peaceful and honorable alternatives to war, but the invasions moved forward.  A minority of voices declared that war would destabilize the Middle East and even the world, and harm the US, and that proved true.   Conflict resolution reason was drowned out by the ruses of war deployed by the highest officials to secure mass approval of yet another war, most of the population acquiesced,  and the slaughter in Yemen and the threats of slaughter against North Korea continue the derangements of violent force.

         But the human search for a just and therefore peaceful society has not been defeated.  We have yet to get at the root of such violent history.   Let’s grasp this deplorable shift to ceaseless mass bloodshed as the opportunity to reconceive our public education K-12, above all as the time to learn critical thinking, ethical reflection, healthy skepticism, questioning authority, and demanding evidence before we give our assent to mass killing.

     Our leaders tell us we must choose war for freedom, national security, the flag.  Instead, let us urge our school superintendent, our principals, teachers, librarians, and ourselves at home, to teach clear thinking, ethics, and alternatives to war.   And we must act now, because our country is outside the world, and the next shock and awe is being planned.    

References to #10

Richard Rubenstein.  Reasons Why Americans Choose to Kill.

Stephen Zunes.  “Trump’s Reckless Action on Jerusalem.”  Z Magazine (Jan. 2018).   

5 essays on Trump and Jerusalem in WRMEA (Jan./Feb. 2018). 

OMNI CRITICAL THINKING NEWSLETTER #3, March 16, 2013.

http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2013/03/critical-thinking-newsletter-3.html

END EDITORIAL #10 

EDITORIAL #14, WARS AND WARMING, Bridging Editorial #2, JANUARY 27, 2018, Noam Chomsky and Laray Polk, Nuclear War and Environmental Catastrophe (2013)

Twin Planetary Threats:  Nuclear War and Warming   

 My overall topic is War and Warming, the emphasis alternating back and forth. The last three editorials were about warming.   Today we transition to wars, or I say, war, singular because for several decades the US has invaded and bombed, or threatened to invade and bomb, many other countries. My title is: Nuclear War and Climate Change.   My main reference today is Nuclear War and Environmental Catastrophe byNoam Chomsky and Laray Polk. 

     Humanity and all species face the twin catastrophes of nuclear war and climate change.   I say twin, because they  are  inseparable.  There will be no limited hydrogen nuclear war, which will immediately kill millions and destroy numerous whole cities, which will significantly increase more warming and more war.  And very soon, unless extraordinary alterations are made in our economic and energy system, climate change will become rampant.  Already occurring extraordinary weather extremes, will worsen, lead to more hunger, more refugees, and more wars, more hunger, more wars.  Even a nuclear war between the nuclear powers Pakistan and India, for example, threatened almost daily by their military clashes in and on the borders of Kashmir, would significantly disrupt the Middle East and Asia and the climate by spreading millions of tons of smoke and debris into the atmosphere, disrupting agriculture worldwide.

       The world knows we would do it, based on US history and the double-standard that rules our foreign policy.  We are the only nation to use nuclear weapons, and we have threatened their use a dozen times, because of that double standard that we apply to other countries but not to ourselves.   For example, President Kennedy was willing to risk nuclear war with the Soviet Union based on the principle that the US had the right to ring the USSR with military bases, missiles, and nuclear bombs, but they do not have the right to place their missiles in Cuba, even to defend Cuba from US terrorist attacks then occurring and invasion being planned by the US.  

     A decade later, Henry Kissinger called for a nuclear alert to warn the Soviets not to interfere when he was informing Israeli leaders they could violate a cease-fire established under US/Soviet auspices.  President Reagan risked nuclear war when he sent air and naval probes near Soviet borders and military bases, causing Russia to fear a nuclear attack was imminent.  And many more examples.

     To these macho risks, US political and business leaders added the denial or downplay of global warming while increasing consumption of fossil fuels, and consumption of the dirtiest tar sands oil and offshore drilling.  It was profit first, short-term profit.    The war/warming twins are still racing toward environmental catastrophe, deliberate nuclear war or by accident, the seas engulfing the coastal cities, hurricanes ravaging entire countries, fires sweeping millions of acres.  

     We need to ask ourselves: what aspects of our society caused this madness.  Why have our leaders not engaged in an Apollo moon-shot size, or Manhattan Project crash program, or another Marshall Plan, to build a sustainable energy future, for their and our grandchildren, with good jobs for sustainable energy?  Why do we not move to save ourselves, our children and children’s children?  Why are we so blind, so paralyzed?   The answer must be:  our ruling economic system of capitalism more than in any other country in the world not only permits but encourages all-out extraction and development and growth until all the fossil fuel is exhausted and heat has desertified our land and acidified our oceans.

     The principal architects of this system—from Wall Street and the Chamber of Commerce to Congress and the White House– the business/political elite make  sure  their  interests, their ideology of short-term gains,  succeed, including permanent war, whatever the consequences, no matter how grievous the effects on the entire world and future generations. 

     These principal architects include media allies who have successfully immunized the population against their common interests, against international amity, mutuality, cooperation, sharing, the values of the United Nations.

      To conclude, let’s look to the past to see an avenue to the future.  Remember the Magna Carta?   It’s really two Charters.  This great British statement of rights in the year 1215 inspired protections for civil and human rights in Britain, then the US Bill of Rights, and eventually the UN Declaration of Human Rights (UNDHR).  But it also stressed saving the commons from autocratic destruction and privatization, by its Charter of the Forests. The Charter of the Forest was the first environmental charter incorporated in a government. It was the first to assert the rights of the property-less, of the commoners, and of the commons.

     To be continued next week.  769                     

References to #14

Chomsky and Polk.  Nuclear War and Environmental Catastrophe, especially chapter 8.

Chomsky.  “How the Magna Carta Became a Minor Carta, Part 1 and 2.”  Guardian (July 24-25, 2012); “Carte Blanche,” TomDispatch.com (audio) July 21, 2012.  (Cited by Chomsky). 

NOAM CHOMSKY. Magna Carta Messed Up the World, Here’s How to Fix It.  The “logic” of capitalist development has left a nightmare of environmental destruction in its wake. CLIMATE CHANGE MARCH 23, 2015

NOAM CHOMSKY.  It’s Time to Get Serious About Climate Change. Seriously.  Our dysfunctional political system is now a threat to the existence of all mankind. CLIMATE CHANGE JUNE 13, 2016

NOAM CHOMSKY.  It Is a Wonder We Are Still Alive.   Sixty-nine years ago today, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima, beginning a countdown toward the inglorious end of our species.  NUCLEAR ARMS AND PROLIFERATION AUGUST 5, 2014

Graham Allison.  “The Cuban Missile Crisis at 50: Lessons for U.S. foreign Policy Today.”  Foreign Affairs (July-August 2012).  Allison predicted the deaths of 200 million US and Soviet citizens.

Lawrence M. Krauss.  “Judgement Day.”  New Humanist (March-April 2010).   

National Security Archive Electronic briefing Book No. 281, s.v. “Documents 8A-D: DEFCON 3 during the October War.”

Stephen Rabe.  The Most Dangerous Area in the World: John F. Kennedy Confronts Communist Revolution in Latin America.  1969.

(Allison, Krauss, and Rabe were cited by Chomsky

END #14

Editorial #15, War, Saturday, February 3, 2018 (broadcast date).    Gar Smith, ed., The War and Environment Reader (2017). 

Title of Editorial: “US Permanent War, Terracide, and Ecolibrium”

     The preceding three editorials described aspects of the warming planet with connections to continuing war.  The last editorial summarized the catastrophic twins of warring  and  warming and, as in other editorials, suggested a resistance–the Magna Carta’s Charter of the Forests in defense of the commons.

     A recent special issue of The Nation magazine is devoted to, “The Resistance,” the dissenters to the powers presently ruling the US.  John Nichols praises Bill Moyers as the “Most Valuable Modern Pamphleteer,” and compares him to Tom Paine in the 18^th century, both of whom advocated revolutionary ideas, radical proposals, and transformational movements.   Let’s keep them in mind.

     Now we return to the subject of war.  My main reference is The War and Environment Reader, edited by Gar Smith (2017). 

Permanent War

        The  history  of  the  world  has  never  seen a Palace Guard even near this size and destructiveness.  The Pentagon justifies such expenditure as the protector of the largest empire in history, its population, its freedom.  So let’s ask first, What is the cost of all this militarism?  In later editorials we’ll assess the military-industrial complex.

         By the 1960s the industrial-military-congressional-White House merger already seemed too large and too profitable to reverse.  That complex of power controlled not only the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, but the countless other secret or hidden national security departments: NSA, CIA, Energy Dept. (nuclear weapons), Veterans Affairs, State Dept., Treasury Dept.    By 2017 the budget was nearly $1 trillion: over half of all the military expenditures of all countries in the world combined.

      Today the US maintains tens of thousands of troops at some 800 bases in more than 60 foreign countries, and has troops in about 150 countries, total.  It has nineteen aircraft carriers, and ten carrier battle groups.   And thousands of combat aircraft.   In Arkansas, in Fort Smith, drones.  In Little Rock, the C-130Js.  In Camden, Lockheed Martin, Northrup Grumman.

     Five of the world’s largest war-profiteering companies call the US home.  Lockheed Martin is the world’s largest arms dealer, responsible for nuclear weapons, Trident submarines, Hellfire missiles.   The next four are Boeing, that makes B-52 bombers and smart bombs.  Raytheon:  Tomahawk long-range missiles, munitions.  Northrop Grumman: Global Hawk drones, laser weapons.  And General Dynamics: jet fighters, tanks, missiles, guns. 

      In 2014 total sales for the top six US arms makers topped $241 billion.   Two-thirds of the world’s arms makers are based in the US or Western Europe, and they control more than 84 percent of the global arms trade.

     In addition to its combat bombs, tanks, and fuel consumption, according to the Pentagon’s FY 2010 Base Structure Report, its global empire included more than 539,000 facilities at nearly 5,000 sites covering more than 28 million acres.   The Pentagon burns 320,000 barrels of oil a day, and that estimate ignores fuel consumed by its contractors and weapons producers.  And the Pentagon is exempt from reporting its actual total pollution, that might arouse the public. 

         Even when not engaged in outright war (but when was that?), the Pentagon’s far-flung operations damage the environment at home and around the world.  Inside the US exist more than 11,000 military dumps containing explosives, chemical warfare agents, toxic solvents, and heavy metals.  The military is responsible for at least 900 of the country’s 1,300 super-toxic “Superfund” sites.

Abroad, the scale of environmental destruction wrought by the US military tops all the other military powers. 

       Think of the Pentagon as the greatest institution for export for profit.  At home:  a few people, especially investors and CEOs, making a mountain of money.  Abroad: all of these weapons to ensure global control of investments, natural resources, and transportation– exporting war and threatening war to ensure perpetual profit.  The motto of the military-industrial complex is: War is good for business.  War profiteering is the USA.

      Let’s pause a moment for two of the ironical features of this egregious weaponizing.   First, the greatest linguistic coup in all history occurred in 1947 when President Truman and Congress changed the name of the War Department to the Defense Department, and used that misnaming to manipulate the US taxpayers to pay for unceasing intervention, invasion, and occupation.   Second, now the Pentagon and its contractors realize that winning wars is not their goal, but much more profitable is fighting unending wars.  Hence the some 40 wars since the end of WWII and the unwinnable, undefinable, infinitely expandable “war on terror.”

     It should not surprise then that the Pentagon Secretary in 2001, Donald Rumsfeld, confessed: “We cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions.”  (The Pentagon is the only federal agency exempt from annual audits.)    What should surprise is the   silence   of the public in every town in the nation that cannot find enough money for good health, water, roads, and education. 

    War on Planet/Terracide

     If one takes time to reflect about this gargantuan military encroachment throughout the world, one can begin to imagine how much of nature it destroys

      Thus, with its thousands of facilities and dumps, its intervening, invading, and occupying countries around the world, and possessing the world’s largest air force and navy, the Pentagon is the world’s greatest institutional consumer of oil and a leading producer of climate-changing CO2.  That is, the US military does unparalleled environmental harm to the planet.  

     In 2016, National Geographic warned that new perils were likely to arise from the collision of war and nature.  Wars, and other acts of violence will likely become more commonplace in coming decades as the effects of global warming cause temperatures to flare worldwide.   A team of researchers predicted personal violence, civil unrest, and war could increase 56 percent by 2050 as the planet warms–accelerating droughts, floods, disease, crop failures, and mass migrations—and violence and wars.

     And President Trump endorsed President Obama’s plan to spend $1 trillion improving the US nuclear arsenal.

     Equilibrium/Ecolibrium

     In contrast, the peace movement hopes, by exposing the incentives, structures, and facts of war and warming, to explain the cascading dangers of terracide, to resist directly the war and warming profiteers, and to convert war profits to ecolibrium—to life for all species in harmony with nature.  To this end the movement is pushing for Green Constitutions, a Green Geneva Convention, a U.S. Department of Peace, End of Invasions and Occupations, Green Marshall Plan, Earth Federation, Cultures of Peace, Peace Journalism, Planetary Citizenship, a Nonviolent Peaceforce, Military Accountability and Restoration, Peacebuilding Programs in the State Department, National Budgets for People, Abolition of Nuclear Weapons, Abolition of Arms Trade, Common Security System, Institutions of Nonviolence, Demilitarized National Security.

     Next week we’ll continue the environmental costs of militarism.     1105 (radio reading cut to 800)

References:

Gar Smith, ed., The War and Environment Reader (2017). 

Numerous books reinforce Smith’s picture of US aggression.  Two books by William Blum: Killing Hope and Rogue State.  Derber & Magrass, Bully Nation.  See any of the many books on US conquest of continental N. America and near-extermination of the indigenous people.  Additional books catalog the decimation of nature by these aggressions; e.g., Barry Sanders, The Green Zone: The Environmental Costs of Militarism.  I will discuss these and more books in later editorials.  

FOREIGN POLICY MAY 9, 2016

Who Rules the World?

The standard convention for answering this question often misses the point.

NOAM CHOMSKY

RETURN TO WARS, EDITORIAL WARS  #7

Editorial #16, War, Saturday, February 10, 2018 (broadcast date).   

Rachel MADDOW, Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power.

Title:  How US Leaders Led Us Into Endless Wars.

     My broad subject is US culpability or complicity in most of its wars and for warming since WWII.   Today I’ll ask again (see #10) how the US became a nation of wars, how we became so quick to war.   My main source is Rachel Maddow, her book Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power (2012).

     In foreign affairs George Washington sought primarily to keep the United States neutral.  He was not only successful, but set a precedent for U.S. foreign policy for many years to come. How the US rejected that policy is a long history. In late 19^th century, the US brutally invaded and occupied the Philippines.  But the US was reluctant to enter WWI, a war already three years in duration before the US joined the allies in combat. 

      So how did the US in recent years become a nation of frequent wars?  Why has it become so easy for our leaders to choose war rather than diplomacy?  What happened to the constraints keeping us from going to war first established by George Washington?

          Let’s start with August 2, 1990.  The Soviet Godzilla was dead.  There was talk of a peace dividend.  We could now convert the trillions of dollars for war preparation to human needs at home and abroad.  Dick Cheney, Secretary of the Pentagon, and Colin Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, had been working feverishly to head off a congressional effort to reduce the military budget. 

     And then Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait replaced the Soviet Union as the enemy, while Cheney and his deputies, like Paul Wolfowitz and Scooter Libby, refitted the US military for this New World Peril, as they claimed: without increasing expenses.

       What magic was this?  Cheney expanded the old pillars or criteria of military capability from 4 to 6 to make it appear to do more with less, by increasing employment of contractors under the new pillar of  infrastructure and overhead.

          In the 1990s, with many wars behind us, the double expense of a standing army and R&D led the Pentagon to consider private contractors, who, it was argued, would be less expensive and more efficient in ensuring US military preeminence  in the coming century. 
      The first private contractor under this program was signed in 1992.   It was a company called Brown & Root.  And then Cheney became CEO of B&R’s parent corporation, Halliburton.   By the time of the Bosnian war of the Clinton administration in 1995, the private military industry had come of age, and an equal number of private company employees went with the troops. 

       The 1996 Defense Science Board Task Force on Outsourcing and Privatization declared that private contractors should be expanded throughout the military.  In Clinton’s 8 years in office military privatization exploded with massive cost overruns—from a few hundred million dollars to $300 billion when he left office, but not labeled military spending.  The militarization by corporations happened so fast and so enormously that the Pentagon could not say whether 125,000 or 600,000 employees were on the payroll.

            But what the profit-seeking privateers had not warned the government about was the criminal behavior of the contractors.  As one investigator wrote about DynCorp in Bosnia: they were a secretive, unregulated, well-paid, lawless, band of mercenaries guilty of  malfeasance, fraud, bilking, and purchasing live-in sex slaves.

     DynCorp illustrates the creep to full, unaccountable privatization.  By the time Clinton left office, the Pentagon was also outsourcing information technology, payroll, mapping, aerial surveillance—even intelligence gathering.

     What had happened, with acute and lasting harm, was the  unmooring of our wars from politics, from the decision to go to war to public debate about that decision.   Thomas Jefferson’s citizen soldiers made it harder to go to war.  Privatization made it easier.         The move from a somewhat restricted military to unrestricted private contractors occurred without the public much noticing, which helps explain public acquiescence and silence.

      James Madison understood well the consequences of war:  “Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other.”  685  (8 minutes?? Shorten next to 7 or 600 words)

References to #16

Rachel Maddow, Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power (2012).

A sample of books cited by Maddow:  P. W. Singer, The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry; Robert Griffith, Jr., The U.S. Army’s Transition to the All-Volunteer Force, 1968-1974;  Steven Hayward, The Age of Reagan: The Conservative Counterrevolution, 1980-1989;  David Sirota, Back to Our Future: How the 1980s Explain the World We Live in Now; Tom Gervasi, Soviet Military Power: The Pentagon’s Propaganda Document ; Lawrence Walsh, Firewall: The Iran-Contra Conspiracy and Cover-up; Charlie Savage, Takeover: The Return of the Imperial Presidency and the Subversion of American Democracy;  Joseph Cirincione, Bomb Scare: The History and Future of Nuclear Weapons.

Editorial #10 is also partly about why the US chooses war so quickly.

Forthcoming editorial:  Norman Solomon, War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death .

 EDITORIAL #17 (Sat. Feb. 17 broadcast date) War #9.    Presidential/Media Complex for War.  Norman Solomon, War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death (2005).  

Title:  Challenging US Pro-War Myths

      The US is a nation of war.  It began by war; it conquered continental USA–some 500 Indian nations–by war; it grabbed a third of Mexico by war; it subdued the Philippines by war; in WWI it joined one side in a colonial war of massive slaughter; since WWII its wars—some 40 interventions and invasions– have been virtually ceaseless.  As one historian wrote, the US has killed thousands of “enemy” soldiers and millions of civilians by war.

      How was that possible?    When a warrior hawk president and his advisors, whether liberal or conservative, want war, the president begins by besieging the public.  From the outset, warrior leaders, all of whom represent themselves as the commander in chief, seek the impression of consensus behind the president.

     His main weapon is media spin.  A media campaign for hearts and minds at home, means going all out to persuade us that the next war is as good as a war can be—necessary, justified, righteous, and worth any number killed.

     US leaders follow 2 steps to war: The first is this battle over public opinion, and support  for  war  is  the  first  victory.  Conquest is the second—since WWII, to name a few of the invaded countries:  Haiti, Guatemala, Dominican Republic, Chile, Grenada, Nicaragua, Panama, Afghanistan, Iraq, War on Terror!  The people of the US have been sold a succession of wars, in their names and with their tax dollars, time after time. 

    Among all the methods of propaganda, one of the most obvious is fear-mongering.  The president’s interventionists,  his congressional supporters,  and mainstream media enablers   insist that military action is necessary to prevent a whirlwind of calamities.

     Less obvious is the deployment of unexamined myths repeated so often for so many years, for so many generations,  most citizens take them for granted.  The march to war has been a 24-7 advertising campaign inseparable from the constant US self-aggrandizement and cultural reinforcement for war.  Here are a dozen of the many MYTHS that keep us ready for war:

The US is a Fair and Noble Superpower

Our Leaders Will Do Everything they Can to Avoid War

Our Leaders Would Never Lie to Us

The Enemy Is a Modern-Day Hitler

The US Stands for Human Rights

The War Is Not about Oil or Corporate Profits

We Had to Invade to Protect US Citizens

The Enemy Is the Aggressor, Not Us

Opposing the War Means Siding with the Enemy

Even if the War is Wrong We Must Support Our Troops

The Pentagon Fights Its Wars as Humanely as Possible

Our Soldiers Are Heroes, Theirs Are Inhuman

Withdrawal Would Cripple US Credibility

     These have been features of US self-branding as a good nation and people, and therefore as good war-makers.  But they have not always been successful, especially if the war is lengthy.  The US was defeated in Vietnam after over fifty thousand US troops and some 3 million Vietnamese were killed.   The US invasion of Cuba was stopped at its shores, which intensified the US economic invasion. 

     Hermann Goering offers a partial explanation of public war acquiescence:   “…of course, the people don’t want war. . . .But it is a simple matter to drag the people along. . . .the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders [for war].  That is easy.  All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce [opponents] for lack of patriotism.”

     But Goering was generalizing from a nation lacking robust democratic institutions.  The US has had those institutions, and Goering unintentionally suggested how we might strengthen them to prevent or stop wars, at least to make it less easy for our leaders to be sheepherders. 

     Challenging fear-mongering wherever and whenever by vigorous application of knowledge through the First Amendment can be a safeguard against falsehoods and manipulations by war demagogues.   Sturdy critical thinking in the public schools, questioning all the leaders and myths that grease the wheels of war, can be another bulwark against the Democratic/Republican War Party.  674  the editorial we recorded today is 7 minutes 14 seconds long.

References:

Norman Solomon, War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death (2005).  

Film based on the book  directed by Loretta Alper and Jeremy Earp.

War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death. Written and directed by Loretta Alper and Jeremy Earp. Produced by Loretta Alper. Based on the book by Norman Solomon. Narrated by Sean Penn. 

The Military-Industrial-Media Complex | FAIR

But on the large TV networks, such voices were so dominant that they amounted to a virtual monopoly in the “marketplace of ideas.” This article is excerpted from Norman Solomon’s book, War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death (John Wiley & Sons, 2005). The first chapter of the book can …

Norman Solomon: War Made Easy – YouTube

Nov 3, 2008 – Uploaded by University of California Television (UCTV)

William Blum.  Killing Hope and Rogue State.  Gives a chronology of US interventions and invasions.  Source of my statement regarding millions killed by US aggressions.

  #18 (Sat. Feb. 24 broadcast date).  War v. Environment. Barry Sanders, The Green Zone: The Environmental Costs of Militarism (2009). 

Title: 

#19 (Sat. March 3, broadcast date).   War #8.  Nuclear War: Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD).  Diana Johnstone, “Doomsday Postponed?” in Paul Johnstone, From MAD to Madness: Inside Pentagon Nuclear War Planning (2017).    276-   Seymour Chwast.  At War with War (2017).

Title:

EDITORIAL #19

Diana Johnstone, “Doomsday Postponed?” From MAD to Madness: Inside Pentagon Nuclear War Planning. 

Title: on RUSSIA, NK, and First Strike

EDITORIAL #20, Climate Change and War.  Ref.: Christian Parenti, Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence (2011).

USE THE FOLLOWING IN ANOTHER EDITORIAL

Action   194 words

     What might a citizen do to decrease the domination of our military-corporate-congressional-presidential warfare state?  Its economic power (jobs!) and secrecy, and public compliance, make it extremely difficult to critically analyze and hold to account.  Our nation now is conditioned to a predisposition to warfare and the militarization of US society.   But we can resist, and at once:

1.  Break the military’s iron grip on our country by changing just one word: instead of Department of Defense, say Pentagon, or Department of War, or more pointedly the Department of War Profit.  No US war after WWII has been in defense, but its repetition ensures fighting posture.

2.  The Soviet Union is gone, but Russia has replaced it as chief menace (along with China), requiring us to ring Russia with military bases and NATO nations, all the while blaming Russia for threatening the US!    Don’t let anybody get away with this 70-year libel.

Verses vs War: A Webinar With the Poets George Elliott Clarke and Gary Geddes

Start: Thursday, February 24, 2022 • 7:00 PM • Eastern Standard Time (US & Canada) (GMT-05:00)

End: Thursday, February 24, 2022 • 8:30 PM • Eastern Standard Time (US & Canada) (GMT-05:00)

Sign up to get the link: https://actionnetwork.org/events/verses-versus-war-a-webinar-with-the-poets-george-elliott-clarke-and-gary-geddes

Host Contact Info: David, david@worldbeyondwar.org

How well are the US media reporting US imperialism and militarism?  Here’re some fundamentals.

Out Now: The State of the Free Press | 2022

Online Debate: Can War Ever Be Justified?

Nick Turse, A Blank Check for Endless War??????

BOMBS OVER YEMEN

By Gerald Sloan, January, 2022

“Here come the planes. They’re American planes,

made in America.” –Laurie Anderson

The stern nurse in a jet-black burka,

like some inverted angel of mercy,

returns each day to the hospital ward

though she hasn’t been paid in months,

ministering to children shrunken

and emaciated beyond belief.

Through a translator she visibly loses

patience with the blonde reporter

inquiring about covid vaccines.

“Forget about covid,” the nurse retorts.

“Where is the vaccination against war?

That’s what is killing these children.”

As usual, glimpsed through our toxic lens,

we keep asking all the wrong questions.

Tomgram: Karen Greenberg, Sunsetting the War on Terror?

WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS #89

Inbox

Hi Art, 

Austin said this on April 24, 2022.  His exact words were:  “We want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine.”

Rand cranked out a study a few years ago saying basically the best way to wreck Russia wads to involve it in a war in Ukraine.  I can find a link to the Rand study, if you like.  

Hillary Clinton, immediately after the Russian invasion, was on TV and spoke excitedly about the prospect of miring down the Russians in Ukraine in an Afghanistan-like quagmire.  Her analogy, Afghanistan, not mine.  As if 20 years of war and death and chaos in Afghanistan were a positive thing.  

Hedges is mostly spot on, as he almost always is.  It may be worthwhile reminding people that he was once the New York Times’s Middle East Bureau chief.  He is an Arabic speaker.  He has covered over the course of his career the numerous wars in Central America in the 80s and the war in Yugoslavia.  The Times essentially showed him the door because he spoke out—during a commencement speech—against the Iraq war.  That should tell you everything you need to know about our nation’s “paper of record.”  As terrible as our media’s coverage of that conflict was, coverage of the war in Ukraine is probably going to go down in history as the worst ever.  One would think that Liberal Democrats might show a little bit of skepticism about coverage of the war in Ukraine, given  the WMDs, the yellow cake uranium, the aluminum tubes, the meetings between Saddam and al Qaueda in Prague that never took place.  One would be wrong. From day one we heard tales about the heroic defenders of Snake Island and the Ghost of Kiev, and they’ve been lapping it up ever since. I’ve never seen anything like it.   Worse than the media’s laughably one-sided, completely decontextualized, inflammatory coverage is the way anti-war voices and voices critical of American foreign policy are being smeared as “Russian propagandists” and are being silenced.  

I seriously doubt that the collective west thought that the Russians were bluffing when Putin made clear (years ago!) that Ukraine was never going to join NATO.  “Nyet means nyet”, as our former ambassador to Moscow, William Burns, put it, concerning Russia’s red line over NATO expansion. Putin said the same thing about Georgia.  Ask the Georgians how that ended.   We knew exactly what we were doing in provoking  the Russians.  We did not, on the other hand, know what we were doing when we unleashed the sanctions war on Russia.  Even anti-Russian outlets are admitting that it has boomeranged.  Europe has committed economic suicide and our economy will be dragged down—how far, I don’t know—along with it.

Peace, 

George

On Aug 31, 2022, at 1:03 PM, Art Hobson <ahobson@uark.edu> wrote:

Can anybody point me to references that document what Gerald Sloan says below?   – Art

From: Gerald H. Sloan <gsloan@uark.edu>
Date: Wednesday, August 31, 2022 at 12:37 PM
To: Art Hobson <ahobson@uark.edu>, Dick Bennett <j.dick.bennett@gmail.com>, OMNI Peace & Climate Newsletter <omni-peace-climate-newsletter@googlegroups.com>
Cc: Abel Tomlinson , <abeltomlinson@gmail.com>, Bob Billig , <bobbillig@gmail.com>, Chris Huggard , <CHUGGARD@nwacc.edu>, Dick Bennett <j.dick.bennett@gmail.com>, Evan Burr Bukey <ebukey@uark.edu>, George Paulson , <gppaulson2@gmail.com>, gladystiffany <gladystiffany@yahoo.com>, Jean T Gordon , <jeantgordon@att.net>, Joanie Connors , <jvcphd@gmail.com>, Joseph Neal <joeneal@uark.edu>, lolly tindol , <lollytindol@yahoo.com>, Pauline ficheux , <paulinefich@gmail.com>, pdtooker@yahoo.com <pdtooker@yahoo.com>, Sonny San Juan , <philcsc@gmail.com>, Stillonthehill , <still@stillonthehill.com>, Ted R. Swedenburg <tsweden@uark.edu>
Subject: Re: WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS #89

Lloyd Austin (SecDef) stated at the outset that the Pentagon’s plan was to draw Russian into a war of attrition. Nothing secret about our intentions.

Get Outlook for iOS

From: Art Hobson <ahobson@uark.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, August 31, 2022 11:43:20 AM
To: Dick Bennett <j.dick.bennett@gmail.com>; OMNI Peace & Climate Newsletter <omni-peace-climate-newsletter@googlegroups.com>
Cc: Abel Tomlinson , <abeltomlinson@gmail.com>; Bob Billig , <bobbillig@gmail.com>; Chris Huggard , <CHUGGARD@nwacc.edu>; Dick Bennett <j.dick.bennett@gmail.com>; Evan Burr Bukey <ebukey@uark.edu>; George Paulson , <gppaulson2@gmail.com>; Gerald H. Sloan <gsloan@uark.edu>; gladystiffany <gladystiffany@yahoo.com>; Jean T Gordon , <jeantgordon@att.net>; Joanie Connors , <jvcphd@gmail.com>; Joseph Neal <joeneal@uark.edu>; lolly tindol , <lollytindol@yahoo.com>; Pauline ficheux , <paulinefich@gmail.com>; pdtooker@yahoo.com <pdtooker@yahoo.com>; Sonny San Juan , <philcsc@gmail.com>; Stillonthehill , <still@stillonthehill.com>; Ted R. Swedenburg <tsweden@uark.edu>
Subject: Re: WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS #89

Dick and others – 

I agree with Hedges on most or all of this.  I have always suspected that the US might have intended all along to lure Putin into this war which he would not be able to win because the US would then send massive military aid to Ukraine and bog Putin down for years until Russia finally gets fed up and gets rid of him.  Putin is not really fighting Ukraine, he’s fighting Ukraine and NATO, or at least Ukraine and the US.  We certainly seem to be planning for a long war, and I’m sure that the US military-industrial complex finds this quite satisfactory.   Is there any evidence for this US “conspiracy theory”?    If there is such a plan, it seems to be working.  It will continue working until either Americans or Russians, or both, get fed up with it.   Putin made a huge mistake by invading, but the West made huge mistakes in the lead-up to this beginning with the collapse of the USSR.  

– Art

From: omni-peace-climate-newsletter@googlegroups.com <omni-peace-climate-newsletter@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Dick Bennett <j.dick.bennett@gmail.com>
Date: Wednesday, August 31, 2022 at 9:51 AM
To: OMNI Peace & Climate Newsletter <omni-peace-climate-newsletter@googlegroups.com>
Subject: WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS #89

WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS, #89, AUGUST 31, 2022   https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2022/08/omni-war-watch-wednesdays-89-august-31.html

Chris Hedges.  “Ukraine and the Politics of Permanent War.”  
World Beyond War.  The War Abolisher Awards of 2022.
Dick Bennett.  “Finding Hope.”

Chris Hedges.  “Ukraine and the Politics of Permanent War.”  
The prosecution of permanent war requires permanent censorship.

No one, including the most bullish supporters of Ukraine, expect the nation’s war with Russia to end soon. The fighting has been reduced to artillery duels across hundreds of miles of front lines and creeping advances and retreats. Ukraine, like Afghanistan, will bleed for a very long time. This is by design.

On August 24, the Biden administration announced yet another massive military aid package to Ukraine worth nearly $3 billion. It will take months, and in some cases years, for this military equipment to reach Ukraine. In another sign that Washington assumes the conflict will be a long war of attrition it will give a name to the U.S. military assistance mission in Ukraine and make it a separate command overseen by a two- or three-star general. Since August 2021, Biden has approved more than $8 billion in weapons transfers from existing stockpiles, known as drawdowns, to be shipped to Ukraine, which do not require Congressional approval.

Including humanitarian assistance, replenishing depleting U.S. weapons stocks and expanding U.S. troop presence in Europe, Congress has approved over $53.6 billion ($13.6 billion in March and a further $40.1 billion in May) since Russia’s February 24 invasion. War takes precedence over the most serious existential threats we face. The proposed budget for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in fiscal year 2023 is $10.675 billion while the proposed budget for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is $11.881 billion. Our approved assistance to Ukraine is more than twice these amounts. 

The militarists who have waged permanent war costing trillions of dollars over the past two decades have invested heavily in controlling the public narrative. The enemy, whether Saddam Hussein or Vladimir Putin, is always the epitome of evil, the new Hitler. Those we support are always heroic defenders of liberty and democracy. Anyone who questions the righteousness of the cause is accused of being an agent of a foreign power and a traitor.

The mass media cravenly disseminates these binary absurdities in 24-hour news cycles. Its news celebrities and experts, universally drawn from the intelligence community and military, rarely deviate from the approved script. Day and night, the drums of war never stop beating. Its goal: to keep billions of dollars flowing into the hands of the war industry and prevent the public from asking inconvenient questions.   MORE  https://scheerpost.com/2022/08/29/chris-hedges-ukraine-and-the-politics-of-permanent-war/

Attend Online Presentation of War Abolishers of 2022 Awards.  World BEYOND War ( 8-15-22).
The War Abolisher Awards of 2022 will be presented, and we’ll hear from the recipients, at a free, public online event on September 5, 2022.

RSVP HERE.

Find the timing and the answers to most questions at the link.
We’ll be announcing the winners on August 29th.

Save your spot. It’s free and takes a few seconds.

World BEYOND War is a global network of volunteers, chapters, and affiliated 
organizations advocating for the abolition of the institution of war.
Donate to support our people-powered movement for peace.

2022 War Abolisher Awards to Go to Italian Dock Workers, New Zealand Filmmaker, U.S. Environmental Group, and British MP Jeremy Corbyn

Dick: Finding HOPE, all around and in us.  

Despair: to lose hope, to be without hope.

To a Christian, despair denies Jesus.  Through Jesus and a God of love we can understand the universe and solve human problems   With Jesus we cannot despair.

To a humanist, despair abandons reason and science and the other affirmations of human thought and action by which we understand the universe and solve human problems.  The colleges of the arts and sciences exemplify humanist hope.

These two ways to truth are not essentially, inevitably antagonistic.  The Dalai Lama led the Tibetan nation and faith while affirming all religions and science and social sciences.  Both can agree with Thomas Hardy’s way to truth:  “If way to a better there be/It exacts a full look at the worst.” ( “In Tenebris II”)  Both eschew denial of reality, evasion, naiveté, wishful thinking, ignorance, partial thinking, inadequate perception, bigotry, jingoism, xenophobia, which generate illusions.  Both seek action based on full reality.  And both are imperfect, always to be improved.

The present confluence of wars, threat of nuclear war, planetary heating, global racism, population growth, economic inequality, and pandemics exacts a full look at the worst, if we are to act wisely for peace.

OMNI’S WWW AND CMM and its anthologies seek to provide parts of this full reality.

Ref.
The last page of every number of Free Inquiry provides “The Affirmations of Humanism: A Statement of Principles” by Paul Kurtz.