Global
World BEYOND War has just released an updated 2018 mapping of militarism in the world. The map system can be explored and adjusted to display what you’re looking for, as well as display precise data and its sources at http://bit.ly/mappingmilitarism
Here are some examples of what it can show:
Where wars are present that directly and violently killed over 1,000 people in 2017:
Where wars are present and where wars come from are two different questions. If we look at where money is spent on wars and where weapons for wars are produced and exported, there is little overlap with the map above.
Here’s a map showing countries color-coded based on the dollar amount of their weapons exports to other governments from 2008-2015:
Here is a little known but extremely relevant fact: The first campaign to “Stop the Stigma of Mental Illness” was launched many years ago by the psycho-pharmaceutical industry (Big Pharma) that makes tens of billions of dollars annually by selling unaffordable, often highly addictive, brain-altering drugs that are then promoted by psychiatrists and family physicians as being necessary for the rest of the drug-taking patient’s lives.
Why doesn’t that surprise anybody? The norm for all capitalist enterprises is to make money by hook or by crook.
With a seemingly altruistic agenda of understanding and compassionately dealing with unfortunate people that are somehow different than the rest of us, the fact is that the campaign is all about marketing a product rather than ending the “stigma” of so-called “mental illnesses”.
I’ve written many hundreds of columns. The one below has caused me the most uncertainty about going public with it.
I’m accustomed to writing about facts, quotes, documented history, while offering assessments. But this piece extrapolates from the current zeitgeist, going into realms of events that must be speculative and—until too late—unprovable.
Diary
So lucky to be here. Tiny island of dreams.
The serenity is unbelievable, except I want to believe it. Bluest waves with silver froth. Sun through the palms is damn near orgasmic. And solitude! If I can’t finish the book here, it’ll be my own fault.
***Sort of knew I shouldn’t bring the shortwave. That’ll teach me to donate to NPR. Just can’t resist a “thank you gift.” Will crank it tomorrow.
***Wish I hadn’t turned on the radio. BBC World Service all there is. Downbeat.
Swim, then write. Plenty of sunblock. As for writer’s block, perish the thought.
***Latest newscast unnerving. Need to concentrate. I blow this deadline, I’m seriously screwed.
For those of us who fully expected most U.S. peace activists to vanish once Barack Obama became president but expected them to come back once Donald Trump ascended the throne, the failure of our second expectation has been hard, crushingly hard. But there are a few silver linings.
While many European parliamentarians have been outspoken in their disgust at the “horrific” one-sided atrocity being clearly observed in the Israeli slaughter of Palestinian demonstrators last week, most of their U.S. counterparts appear to have lost their ability to express themselves over the egregious human rights violations being committed by the Israeli Army in Gaza. Sixty-two unarmed Palestinian demonstrators were shot dead and nearly three thousand more were injured by gunfire and tear gas versus no Israelis killed or wounded while a leading Knesset parliamentarian has assured the public that the Army has plenty of bullets left to kill all the Gazans if necessary.
Photo by Truthdig.
On Monday I was arrested along with many other people in the street in front of the U.S. Capitol, participating in the new Poor People’s Campaign, the first multi-issue coalition we’ve seen in years that properly takes on militarism rather than indulging the fantasy of a $1 trillion a year military coexisting with decent humanitarian and environmental policies.
Yet it was hard at this peaceful gathering and in the “training” before it not to notice people’s habitual shouts of “fight back!” and “go to war!” and “we must be warriors!” — not to mention the handing out of U.S. flags.
By David Swanson
Virginia ought to be in the running for worst U.S. senators in the country, a couple of walking catastrophes empowered in part by their status as Democrats and, in one case, the status of rightful Vice President if not for various outrages, real (the Electoral College, vote suppression) and imagined (Vladimir Putin’s evil manipulation of the time-space continuum). While Senator Mark Warner loves him some torturers he can confirm to high office, Tim Kaine has bigger plans.
It has been over a decade since I came to the realization that the entire profession of medicine had been bamboozled by the propaganda coming from the Big Pharma drug and vaccine maker Merck & Company that its so-called “fracture-preventative” drug Fosamax had defrauded us doctors and our patients by falsely claiming a “50% efficacy rate” in the prevention of bone fractures in osteopenic/osteoporotic women.
I had always been suspicious of pharmaceutical sales reps and the Big Pharma corporations that they worked for, and I had wondered exactly where they got the 50% effectiveness figure. So I finally got around to actually digging into and studying the clinical study statistics that were in the FDA-approved product insert that all drug and vaccine makers are forced to publish and include with the product (and which only a few physicians ever take the time or inclination to read).