San Diego Free Press

Grassroots News & Progressive Views

You are here: Home / Archives for Government / Military / War and Peace

Trump’s Dim-witted, Ill-founded Immigration Ban

by

Ignoramus-In-Chief Is OK With Allies Who Sponsor Terrorism

Why did Trump try to impose tighter vetting on 7 nations in the Middle East without including Saudi Arabia and Egypt? Could it be that it’s because Saudi Arabia which is a hotbed of terrorism is also an ally of the US and an enemy of Iran?

Fifteen of the nineteen 9/11 hijackers were Saudis. Osama bin Laden was a Saudi. The machete wielding attacker at the Louvre recently was Egyptian. Neither Egypt nor Pakistan nor Afghanistan were included on the so-called President’s list. Pakistan harbored bin Laden. Afghanistan is the home of the Taliban. If Trump had wanted to keep terrorists out of the US, surely he should have included these countries in his ban. But terrorism is more about US alliances than it is about morality or human rights.   [Read more…]

Russian Hacking and the 2016 Presidential Election

by

Serious People are claiming that news accounts about Russian meddling in US elections are somehow equivalent to the Weapons of Mass Destruction stories peddled in the run-up to the US invasion of Iraq. Or a liberal version of the group-think on the Trumpian right about millions of illegal aliens voting for Hillary Clinton.

And then there are others on the right, like the Heritage Foundation, who would have us believe the special relationship between two oligarchs is somehow a good thing. They find much to admire about having a strongman in charge, as opposed to an imperfect democracy.

The reluctance of the FBI/Homeland Security report to disclose sources and methods along with the Obama’s administration’s reliance on the (often meaningless) tactic of diplomatic expulsions as the public side of their response to Russia are cited as reasons to doubt the official account.
  [Read more…]

Veterans For Peace Statement on Syria

by

By Veterans for Peace

The war in Syria has been ongoing for five years, with the situation in Aleppo, once Syria’s most populous city, having deteriorated over the past four years into a multi-proxy war and a humanitarian disaster.

We have seen strong disagreements within the peace movement on the reasons behind this war, and on what our response should be. Those disagreements even exist within our ranks. As we struggle through the complexities of the war, we recognize that most of us are far removed from it, fortunate to be safe in our homes and able to voice these disagreements without fear of reprisal.

However, our mission at Veterans For Peace has not changed. We oppose war. We are against the targeting of, as well as the failure to protect, innocent civilians caught up in war, or any other conduct by an individual, group or nation that could be classified as a war crime. We oppose U.S. military involvement in other countries that violates international law.   [Read more…]

Readers Write: Military Too Small?

by

Regarding the proposed expansion of the military–

Good thinking!

By all means we must ramp it up, for the following rational reasons, in no particular order:

The weapons manufacturers are in dire need of further enrichment,

and Congress needs the various kinds of kickbacks available in order to avoid being poverty-stricken;   [Read more…]

Standing Rock: Longest Running War for US

by

Prayer gathering and vigil in San Diego on December 5

San Diego Free Press asked Stan Levin and Gil Field of San Diego Veterans for Peace to let us know about local involvement at Standing Rock. Over two thousand veterans are currently providing support and protection at the Standing Rock Sioux nation camp near the Dakota Access Pipeline in North Dakota.

Stan and Gil put us in touch with Veteran for Peace Will Griffin whose work can be found at the Peace Report. Will provided us with the video below from his October 2016 trip to Standing Rock with Matthew Hoh, Advisory Board Member of Veterans For Peace.   [Read more…]

Police Shootings: Law, Policy, and Accountability

by

By William John Cox

From amongst themselves, the people of the United States have empowered some of their members to enforce their laws and to police their society, but things have gone terribly awry.

The police are killing those they are sworn to protect and they themselves are becoming the target of public anger over racial inequality and discrimination. Video images of recent police shootings in Louisiana and Minnesota were followed by the mass murder of police officers in Dallas and Baton Rouge, apparently in response to these shootings

The killing of an unarmed mentally-disturbed man last week by El Cajon, California police officers—and resulting civil disturbances—once again raises the question of the use of deadly force by law enforcement officers. The question involves complicated issues of law and policy, but the decision to shoot must often be made in a nanosecond.   [Read more…]

Readers Write: Taking Exception to Clinton’s Exceptionalism Speech

by

Yesterday, August 31, speaking to an audience at The American Legion convention taking place in Cincinnati, Hillary Clinton offered remarks about “American exceptionalism,” a statement she often uses, and one to which I am compelled to take exception.

A moment later, and what I found particularly disturbing, she explained her meaning of the term: “It means that we recognize America’s unique and unparalleled ability to be a force for peace and progress”.
  [Read more…]

San Diego Veterans to Protest Miramar Air Show

by

“Bannering” against upcoming airshow on August 18

By San Diego Veterans for Peace

Each year, San Diego hosts the giant Miramar Air Show, which is attended by up to 500,000 people. This air show is typical of many other air shows around the country in that it attempts to glorify and glamorize war and militarism, as well as being an excellent opportunity for defense contractors and the overall military industrial complex to sell products which lead to the deaths and injuries of so many people on earth.   [Read more…]

Bang! Pow! Boom! 2016 Independence Day Fireworks

by

There are 14 (15 if you count SeaWorld’s nightly show) fireworks displays on the 4th of July, plus a couple of others earlier in the weekend.

Despite the fact that fireworks of just about every kind are illegal in America’s Finest City, I can just about guarantee the knuckleheads down the street will have their own show planned.

No matter where you go, parking will be a bother as will be the traffic after the event. It’s all part of the thrill…   [Read more…]

Chomsky: Corporate Globalization Is Not Inevitable

by

Interview conducted by James Resnick / E-International Relations

Noam Chomsky is Emeritus Professor of Linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Seen by many as “the father of modern linguistics”, his work as a theoretical linguist from the 1950s revolutionized the field of linguistics by treating language as a uniquely human, biologically based cognitive capacity. Through his contributions to linguistics and related fields, including cognitive psychology and the philosophies of mind and language, Chomsky helped to initiate and sustain what came to be known as the “cognitive revolution.” Chomsky has also gained a worldwide following as a political dissident for his analyses of the pernicious influence of economic elites on U.S. domestic politics, foreign policy, and intellectual culture.

The author of more than 120 books, Chomsky is widely recognized as a paradigm shifter who helped spark a major revolution in the human sciences, and is one of the most cited scholars in the last few decades. His most recent documentary, Requiem for the American Dream, focuses on the defining characteristic of our time—the deliberate concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a select few.   [Read more…]

Veterans Talk Pathologies of Hate and Violence After Orlando Nightclub Tragedy

by

By Brian Trautman

It is becoming increasingly clear that one of the shooter’s perceived justifications for perpetrating the murderous rampage may have been intense psychological and emotional pain over his sexual orientation – a catastrophic blend of deep shame, humiliation and bitterness over his possible queerness.

Besides his apparent queer inclinations, there were several noteworthy details about the shooter’s life that were omitted during many discussions about motives: his history of domestic violence, both as a victimizer and a witness to it in childhood; his employment with, one of the largest private security firms in the world, for which he rendered services that included the imprisonment and mistreatment of juvenile offenders; and, his fascination with the NYPD, which he apparently idolized as a would-be police officer.   [Read more…]

©2010-2017 SanDiegoFreePress.org

Code is Poetry