By Jay Powell
Weary.
That’s what they say we are.
The chicken hawk sabre rattlers
Are yellin’ at Obama ‘cause
He won’t put real boots on the ground
But they won’t say exactly that cause they know we are
(war) weary. [Read more…]
Is the Obama and EU Face-Off With Putin a New Cold War? What Forces Are Driving the Confrontation? Part II
Written by Frank Thomas (Part 1 can be found here.)
Some Questions Raised
As Germany’s gifted Chancellor Angela Merkel said recently: “Putin lives in a different reality.”
Putin’s brain, Aleksandr Dugin (the author of Eurasianism) has reinvigorated Putin’s policy for expanding Russia’s sphere of influence to Russian-speaking communities in bordering nations. Dugin is an unsparing advocate of the Russian insurgents working near or within the Ukraine.
Mervyn Bendle writes ,“Under Dugin’s influence, fear of Atlanticism now pervades the Russian defense establishment and Putin. Recognizing the limitations of traditional military action, Dugin advocates a program of ideological warfare, subversion, disinformation, demoralization, destabilization, and insurgency, with special forces, sponsored militias, and other covert services in the vanguard.” [Read more…]
Ferguson, Missouri: Racism, Riots and Reactions
By Doug Porter
In Ferguson, Missouri an unarmed young man was gunned down in the street last Saturday by a police officer. According to multiple witnesses 18 year old Mike Brown was shot multiple times, even after he faced the officer and raised his hands. His body lay in the street in the August sun for four hours after the shooting.
People who live in that community believe the shooting was just another example of the racism they face everyday. Ferguson’s population is near two-thirds African-American; just three of the 53 officers on the police force are not white. The authorities have done nothing but confirm their worst fears at every turn.
For the past four nights there have been confrontations between police and demonstrators. Last night things escalated. Following a announcement from a bulhorn on top of an armored vehicle saying “your right to demonstrate is not being obstructed” there were unprovoked police attacks on crowds and in the surrounding neighborhoods using smoke bombs, tear gas, stun granades and rubber bullets. [Read more…]
Two Billion At Risk: The Threat of Limited Nuclear War
Robert Dodge, Ira Helfand / Common Dreams
As physicians we spend our professional lives applying scientific facts to the health and well being of our patients. When it comes to public health threats like TB, polio, cholera, AIDS and others where there is no cure, our aim is to prevent what we cannot cure. It is our professional, ethical and moral obligation to educate and speak out on these issues.
That said, the greatest imminent existential threat to human survival is potential of global nuclear war. We have long known that the consequences of large scale nuclear war could effectively end human existence on the planet. Yet there are more than 17,000 nuclear warheads in the world today with over 95% controlled by the U.S. and Russia. The international community is intent on preventing Iran from developing even a single nuclear weapon. And while appropriate to stop the spread of nuclear weapons, there is precious little effort being spent on the much larger and more critical problem of these arsenals. [Read more…]
Video Pick: “So Long Mom, I’m Off to Drop the Bomb…”
“Remember, Mommy, I’m off to get a commie…”
By Staff
So long, Mom,
I’m off to drop the bomb,
So don’t wait up for me.
But while you swelter
Down there in your shelter,
You can see me
On your TV.
While we’re attacking frontally,
Watch Brinkally and Huntally,
Describing contrapuntally
The cities we have lost.
No need for you to miss a minute
Of the agonizing holocaust. (Yeah!) … [Read more…]
August 6 and 9: Launch of the Nuclear Age
By H. Patricia Hynes / Portside
On the anniversary of the U.S. dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, nine countries – the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France, Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea – possess the demonic capability to annihilate the human race and render the Earth uninhabitable.
Combined, these countries have 16,300 nuclear warheads, 93 percent of which are maintained and deployed by the United States and Russia, now locked in hostilities over the Ukraine. In fact, serious conflicts fester in every region of the other nuclear nations: South and East Asia, the Korean peninsula and the Middle East. [Read more…]
Video Pick: Archival Footage of Hiroshima-Nagasaki, August 1945
“At the conclusion of the screening there was utter silence.”
“In 1970, when I was the Manager of the “Center for Mass Communication,” (CMC), at Columbia University, we received an amazing letter from Japan. CMC was the branch at Columbia which produced and distributed educational and documentary films. The letter was from a professor of law at Tokyo University, and informed us that nine Japanese newsreel cameramen went to Hiroshima the day after the atomic bombs had been dropped and took several hours of 35mm film of the devastation.
They did the same after an atomic bomb was dropped over the city of Nagasaki. When General MacArthur and his staff occupied Japan, they screened this footage and felt that the actual shots of the results of the damage of the two cities, and in particular the injuries suffered by the survivors, was so horrible that it should be marked top secret, and withheld from the public indefinitely.
Immediately upon learning of this, we at CMC asked the US Government to allow us to screen this footage, and the government denied that this film ever existed. [Read more…]
El Machete Illustrated: Dirty Hands
Known for mixing history and culture with contemporary themes, Eric J. Garcia always tries to create art that is much more than just aesthetics. Born and raised in Albuquerque’s South Valley, Garcia earned his BFA from the University of New Mexico and went on to get his MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. You can follow him on Twitter @garciaink or friend him on Facebook. [Read more…]
The Shooting Down of Malaysian Airliner Reminds Us When the U.S. Shot Down an Iranian Airbus in 1988
Navy Ship Responsible From San Diego
The shooting down of the Malaysian airliner over eastern Ukraine on Thursday, July 17th – allegedly by separatists fighting the Kiev government – killing all 295 people on board, has shocked the world, and has intensified the demands for sanctions on those responsible.
But if no sanctions materialize, it wouldn’t be the first time a civilian plane carrying hundreds of passengers was shot down by combatants – with nothing happening to those responsible.
In fact, a lot of the general elements are the same. But the incident that I am reminded about is the day – back in early July 1988, when two US military missiles fired from U.S. Navy ship Vincennes hit Iran Air Flight 655, killing all 290 passengers and crew members on board.
Nothing – I repeat – nothing ever happened to the U.S. because of this incident. It did go a long way in creating a deep distrust towards America by an entire generation of Iranians.
But nothing happened. No sanctions. No boycotts. No United Nations condemnations. Nothing. Most Americans alive then have probably forgotten about it. [Read more…]
San Diego For-Profit Universities Making Tons of Money Handing Out Worthless Degrees
Ashford University and University of Phoenix Worst Offenders Targeting Returning Vets
By John Lawrence
Everyone wants to better themselves, right, by getting a college education. Most of all the Iraq and Afghanistan vets transitioning into civilian life. To that end our politicians in Washington have crafted a GI Bill that allows them to do just that at taxpayer expense.
Problem is most of that money is being gobbled up by for-profit universities like the University of Phoenix and Ashford University which don’t even qualify for state financial aid. These universities attract and recruit students by advertising heavily and “selling” them on the value of one of their degrees.
When many of the students graduate, they can’t get a job based on a degree which potential employers say is worthless. And despite the GI bill, many of them take on additional student loan debt.
How the War on Drugs and the War on Terror Merged Into One Disastrous War on All Americans
The consequences are measured in lives, limbs and cash.
By Alex Kane / AlterNet
It was 1971 when President Richard Nixon declared drug abuse “public enemy number one in the United States.” With those words, Nixon ushered in the “war on drugs,” the attempt to use law enforcement to jail drug users and halt the flow of illegal substances like marijuana and cocaine.
Thirty years later, another president, George W. Bush, declared war on another word: terrorism. But the war on drugs hadn’t ended yet. Instead of one failed war replacing another soon-to-be-failed war, both drugs and terrorism remain targets for law enforcement and military action that have resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands and have cost billions of dollars.
In fact, the war on terror and the war on drugs have merged to form a hydra-headed monster that rapaciously targets Americans, particularly communities of color. Tactics and legislation used to fight terrorism in the U.S. have been turned on drug users, with disastrous consequences measured in lives, limbs and cash. And money initially used to combat drugs has been spent on the war on terror. From the Patriot Act to the use of informants to surveillance, the wars on drugs and terror have melted into one another. [Read more…]
Military Experts: Killer Drones Will Trigger ‘Slippery Slope’ into Endless War
The use of drones as a ‘pillar’ of military policy raises significant strategic, legal and ethical questions, warns a high-level panel of military and foreign policy experts.
Lauren McCauley / Common Dreams
The embrace of killer drones by the United States government is likely to increase anti-U.S. sentiment, erode national sovereignty and trigger a “slippery slope” into endless war, a prominent military and intelligence panel warned in a new report published Thursday.
Recommendations and Report of the Task Force on United States Drone Policy (pdf) is the result of a year-long study by a high-level task force of military, intelligence and foreign policy experts assembled by the nonpartisan Stimson Center.
In the report, the panel warns that the proliferation of killer drones as a “pillar of U.S. counterterrorism strategy” has enabled policies that “likely would not have been adopted in the absence of UAVs [Unmanned Aerial Vehicles],” particularly the “extraordinarily broad” interpretation of the Authorization for Use of Military Force, or AUMF.
Echoing the concerns of many anti-war groups, the panel notes that the increasing use of lethal drones “may create a slippery slope leading to continual or wider wars.” [Read more…]
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