Over the past weeks, multiple crises have merged: a crisis of democracy with the most significant attack on voting rights since Reconstruction; a climate crisis with lives and livelihoods upended in the Gulf Coast and the Northeast by extreme weather events and in the West by a stunning fire season; and an economic crisis in …
Read More »Monthly Archives: September 2021
Humanity’s Call to Eliminate Nuclear Weapons
Citizens around the world are calling on their governments to ratify the Nuclear Weapons Ban Treaty—and the United States has a leading role to play. Sunday marked the International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons. This 8th year commemorating the day was declared by the United Nations as a …
Read More »America’s Unpleasant Fate: Oligarchy or Autocracy
Chris Hedges: The political and economic disempowerment that is the consequence of oligarchy infantilizes a population. The competing systems of power are divided between alternatives which widen the social and political divide—and increase potential for violent conflict. The competing systems of power in the United States are divided between oligarchy and …
Read More »What I Know After 50 Years of Covering Foreign Policy: War and Empire Are Bad
After half a century studying the issue, here’s lesson number one: Wars are bad and empire is folly. For over 50 years I have been writing about foreign policy—mostly America’s, but those of other nations as well. I think I have a pretty good grasp of places like Turkey, China, …
Read More »Biden’s Appeal for Global Diplomacy at UN is Rank Hypocrisy & Travesty
U.S. foreign policy under Biden is essentially one of reviving the Cold War that existed with the Soviet Union to the current period against China and Russia. Wouldn’t it be fun if delegates to the United Nations General Assembly had buttons at their seats to gauge audience reaction in real-time …
Read More »End US War-Making Everywhere
We need a reinvigorated anti-war movement. The U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, after 20 years of brutal occupation, should just be the beginning. The United States must also end the disastrous ”War on Terror,” including the bombing campaigns targeting Somalia and Yemen. And it must also put a stop to the brutal sanctions …
Read More »The Space Force Is Transforming the Final Frontier Into a Battlefield
With outer space being, as anyone over the age of 25 or so knows, the Final Frontier, is it any surprise that the Pentagon is rushing full speed ahead to turn it, against the general desire of almost everyone on Earth, into a battlefield? To borrow science fiction parlance, Afghanistan …
Read More »How Corporate Profiteers Won the War on Terror
The Post-9/11 years have been an unmitigated disaster for nearly everyone—but not the weapons makers and other Pentagon contractors. The costs and consequences of America’s twenty-first-century wars have by now been well-documented — a staggering $8 trillion in expenditures and more than 380,000 civilian deaths, as calculated by Brown University’s Costs of War …
Read More »SHADOWDRAGON: INSIDE THE SOCIAL MEDIA SURVEILLANCE SOFTWARE THAT CAN WATCH YOUR EVERY MOVE
The tool is the product of a growing industry whose work is usually kept from the public and utilized by police. A MICHIGAN STATE POLICE CONTRACT, obtained by The Intercept, sheds new light on the growing use of little-known surveillance software that helps law enforcement agencies and corporations watch people’s …
Read More »After Defeat in Afghanistan, Can US Envision a Future of Peace?
We must unite and dismantle this American Empire before it dismantles us. Yoda, the Jedi Master in the Star Wars films, once pointed out that the future is all too difficult to see and it’s hard to deny his insight. Yet I’d argue that, when it comes to the U.S. military and its …
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