Anti-War

Obama Re-Escalates Illegal War On Iraq: Bush’s War Crimes and Treason Continue

Barack Obama's horrific re-escalation of the war in Iraq gouges open the unhealed wounds of an illegal intervention perpetrated by a disgraced president who has never been prosecuted for his crimes against humanity.

Obama's renewed drone attacks, which may soon be joined by returning "boots on the ground," come as we hear definitive proof that Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger treasonably intervened to prolong the Vietnam War in 1968, resulting in seven more years of senseless war and countless thousands of American and southeast Asian casualties.

Will we now see the same in Southwest Asia that we once saw in the Southeast?

Obama's unconscionable actions remind us that George W. Bush's "shock and awe" invasion of Iraq was built on a foundation of deliberate lies and led to a horrible tsunami of senseless death and crippling expense.

And now it rips open the terrible untreated bleeding that began in 2003 and guarantees the prospect of endless murder and destruction that Obama long ago promised to end as part of his covenant of election.

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Here in Kabul, Sherri Maurin and I are guests of the Afghan Peace Volunteers’ recently formed live-in community for young women. Hollyhocks in the garden reach as high as the second floor of our living space. Rose bushes, morning glories and four-o-clocks have bloomed, and each day we eat tomatoes, mint and green onions plucked from the well-cared for garden. The water source is a hose and tank outside, (there’s no indoor plumbing) so that’s where dishes and clothes are cleaned. The latrine is also outside, --and unfortunately we’re sharing it with playful neighbourhood cats, but otherwise Zarghuna, Zahidi and Zahro complete almost every detail of housekeeping, each day, by 7:00 a.m.

Two additional rooms are filled with sewing machines and tables used by a group of local seamstresses.

The Legacy of World War II

 

 

June 6th came once more. D-day was a long time ago and I didn't intend to make anything of it.  I was surprised by the emotional turmoil I felt, by how I felt about that day in my gut.  I realized that while I was born after the war was over, D-day and World War II were a real and tangible part of my childhood.  It was part of my family's life, my teachers lives, my friends parent's lives. It wasn't just old men who remembered it, every adult in my youth had stories from that war. It was amputees on street corners selling pencils and people all around me still dealing with it. It was part of my life and it played a role in my enlistment for Vietnam.  Of course I felt this day in my guts. Why did I think it would be otherwise?

Mass Murderers Brazenly Hold Conference, Discuss Tools of Trade

A unique conference is planned in Charlottesville, Va., featuring the latest technologies for the practice of large-scale killing. The Daily Progress tells us that, "to allow participants to speak more freely about potentially sensitive topics, the conference is closed to the media and open only to registered participants."

Well I should think so! Registered participants? How does one get registered for such a thing?

"From a local perspective, this industry is really growing in Charlottesville," says one expert, speaking with great objectivity, as if this growth were a matter of complete moral indifference.

Exactly how many people will be there? "About 225 people are expected to attend the inaugural event, which is attracting government, business and academic leaders, said conference chairwoman and organizer Joan Bienvenue, who is also the director of the UVa Applied Research Institute."

Afghan Taliban’s Spring Campaign: A Test of American Policy

 

 

As events in Eastern Europe continue to unravel and occupy the Obama administration’s attention, questions surrounding Afghanistan have supposedly stabilized. The Bilateral Security Agreement, which involves an explicit, adumbrated relationship between the United States and Afghanistan after the scaling down of American troops, remains unsigned to this day. Afghan President Karzai refused to sign the agreement toward the end of last year and the U.S. has had to wait for Afghanistan’s Election results before proceeding further. Without a clear winner in the Presidential Election, however, the waiting will continue until June’s runoff election.

THE WAR TO END ALL WARS

“Peace, as we have seen, is not an order natural to mankind: it is artificial, intricate and highly volatile. All kinds of preconditions are necessary.” — Michael Howard, The Invention of Peace And here comes World War I, wrapped in World War II, wrapped in the Cold War: tremors on one of Planet Earth’s human fault lines. We have enough angry, manipulable people on this planet to carry out the game plan of the political ideologues and war profiteers, who are always on the lookout for the next war, the one that’s too volatile and “inevitable” to stop. As David Swanson, author of War Is a Lie, put it: “The search for a good war is beginning to look as futile as the search for the mythical city of El Dorado. And yet that search remains our top public project.” And the searchlight stops at Ukraine, full of neo-Nazis, corrupt oligarchs, nuclear reactors, an unelected government, a wrecked economy, a simmering civil war. God help us. Old animosities and ideological divisions come back to life. The United States and NATO stand off against Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Thirty-one people — maybe more — die in a burning building in Odessa.

A Turning Tide in Syria

As the death toll continues to ascend, now reaching over 140,000, Syria has entered its fourth year of war on a high stakes battleground. The distinction between the war’s dynamic three years ago and today, however, is stark. A once largely unified rebel faction has been reduced to infighting amongst radical Islamist forces and secular moderate elements. Whereas moderate tone and language initially defined the opposition in Syria, Islamist groups from neighboring countries seized the opportunity to implant their influence in the region. These groups then began to join rebel forces, offering supplies and strategy. After all, several of the Islamist fringe groups had already been involved in guerilla-style warfare in places like Iraq. Yet original members of the opposition cause, who also value the overthrow of Bashar Assad, part company with extremists when it comes to the system of government they prefer after Assad is removed. Fighting between rebel coalitions has thus become commonplace. Of all the potential setbacks for Bashar Assad, he has not had to worry about a unified opposition. Among other advantages for Assad belongs a steady flow of aid from Russia and Iran.

Space weapons coming to a small Ohio town near you

Space weapons lurking beneath the Ohio countryside sounds like a sci-fi nightmare only the Pentagon can conjure up, but an on-going environmental impact study may find the Buckeye state a great place for shooting down Russian or Chinese satellites as they orbit the planet. World War III would have erupted if the US were shooting down Russian or Chinese satellites, but the recent events in the Ukraine certainly make the future as murky as ever. But when it comes to space warfare, this “mad” future is now, and licking their chops is the Pentagon and their super-rich defense contractors who are eyeing Camp Ravenna in northeast Ohio for a “Ground-based Mid-Course Missile Defense” site, better known in missile defense parlance as a “GMD” site. Like nuclear missiles, GMD “interceptors” are stored and launched from underground silos. If the Pentagon were to give a green light for Camp Ravenna, the money spent on building and maintaining a GMD site would reach well into the billions, and most of it will go to defense contractors such as Boeing or Lockheed Martin.
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