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If The Wars Go On
I suppose my title could have been couched in the singular form, as Hermann Hesse, the Nobel Prize winning German/Swiss author, did with his collection of anti-war essays about World War I (the war to end all wars that didn’t), If The War Goes On . . . Or more appropriately, I might have […]
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Profiteering Military Will Praise War and Parade During America’s Memorial Day of Solemn Mourning
U.S. Memorial Day, originally intended as a solemn day of mourning for families of dead veterans has long become an opportunity for jingoistic war celebration, deceiving politicians and recruiting officers to parade and glorify warfare as a means to entrap young volunteers for future wars. Instead of solemn mourning, on Memorial Day, war promoting corporate […]
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Keep on Rockin’ in the Free World
Iri and Toshi Maruki, XV Nagasaki, 1982, from The Hiroshima Panels. For Prabir, who is now out of jail. On the evening of 14 May, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken climbed onstage at Barman Dictat in Kyiv, Ukraine, to pick up an electric guitar and join the Ukrainian punk band 19.99. Ukrainians, he said, are […]
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Promising the Impossible: Blinken’s Out of Tune Performance in Kyiv
Things are looking dire for the Ukrainian war effort. Promises of victory are becoming even hollower than they were last summer, when US President Joe Biden could state with breathtaking obliviousness that Russia had “already lost the war”. The worst offender in this regard remains the United States, which has been the most vocal proponent […]
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Victory Days: Military without Militarism?
I could not have been a pacifist, if by that one means waiver of the use of physical force in disputes. The reason is simple. In my childhood I had to actually hit someone who threatened me or positioned himself as if he would in order to end at least two years of harassment, including […]
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Veterans to Biden: US Law Says No Weapons to Nations with A-Bombs if They’ve Not Signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty. That Means Israel
In a letter 18 April to President Biden and top members of his administration, Veterans For Peace cited existing federal law that gives the President “…no discretion whatsoever to allow any military assistance of any form to be delivered to Israel,” based on that country’s “serial violations of the Symington-Glenn Amendments, codified at 22 U.S.C. § […]
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Anzac and the Pageantry of Deception
On April 25, along Melbourne’s arterial Swanston Street, the military parade can be witnessed with its bannered, medalled upholstery, crowds lost in metals, ribbons and commemorative decor. Many, up on their feet since the dawn service, keen to show the decorations that say: “I turned up”. Service personnel, marked by a sprig of rosemary. The […]
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US Congress Makes Downpayment on World War III
The US Congress authorized a $95 billion military aid package for continuing the wars in Ukraine and Gaza as well as for war preparations against China. This represents, in effect, a downpayment on World War III. US President Joe Biden, reading from a playbook that could well have been scripted by George Orwell, announced: “it’s […]
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The Forgotten Element in Averting Nuclear Catastrophe
Image by Creative Commons 4.0 What will it take to end the nuclear nightmare that has gripped the world since the atomic bombings of 1945? For a time, that nightmare seemed to have abated for, in response to massive popular resistance to the prospect of nuclear war, governments turned to signing nuclear arms control and […]
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Last Nation Standing ─ Iran
By not responding to decades of Israel’s provocations with an attack on Israeli soil, Iran displayed patience. The Islamic Republic rulers realized the provocations were becoming harsher, more damaging, and without stopping; it was time to respond. Their response was notable; a mild rebuke that showed power and unwillingness to harm civilians, unlike the offensive […]
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