KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- Being "The Decider" has its privileges. You can start wars and revise history about past conflicts.

You can pretend, as commander in chief, that you are addressing the Veterans of Fantasy Wars instead of, in Kansas City, the Veterans of Foreign Wars.

The foreign war vets are a swell group of courageous men and women who made huge sacrifices for their country.

Fantasy vets are bobbleheads who applaud while history is rewritten. They cross their magenta hearts and hope to die in an unnecessary war begun by a dunderhead.

If you're The Decider, better to pretend you're chatting up the fantasy vets because those other vets aren't fooled so easily. Real vets know that the emperor lacks clothes, despite their dutiful, crisp salutes.

They know their self-proclaimed "war president" lacks bona fides and has neither the capacity for truth and accuracy nor a sincere interest in veterans' affairs.

But if The Decider can fool some of the real vets some of the time, at least he can fool the fantasy vets all of the time.

“It is impossible for capitalism to survive, primarily because the system of capitalism needs some blood to suck. Capitalism used to be like an eagle, but now it’s more like a vulture. It used to be strong enough to go and suck anybody’s blood whether they were strong or not. But now it has become more cowardly, like the vulture, and it can only suck the blood of the helpless. As the nations of the world free themselves, the capitalism has less victims, less to suck, and it becomes weaker and weaker. It’s only a matter of time in my opinion before it will collapse completely.”
–Malcolm X

Striving with the unwavering dedication of true believers and slaves to the grind, those of us who exist within the geographic, social, cultural, economic, and political boundaries of the United States are collectively destroying the Earth.

Given the magnitude of the global crises we face, we'd hope the key nonprofits trying to address them would use every appropriate tool to maximize their impact.

Yet, Seattle's Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which does much good with its programs (particularly its global immunization efforts), is missing a significant opportunity by not aligning the foundation's investment commitments with its larger social goals. Its choices offer a lesson for other foundations, for pension funds, college and university endowments, and all other nonprofit institutions that control financial capital.

If Gates Foundation wanted to consider a different approach, it might learn from institutions like California's massive CalPERS (California Public Employees' Retirement System) pension fund, which has combined first-rate financial returns with investments that put its dollars in service of socially responsible values.

"Made Love, Got War" is the title of Norman Solomon's latest book, an autobiographical account of the peace and disarmament movements in the United States over the past half century.  Better than his other books, I think, this one achieves the level of artistic composition found in Solomon's brilliant and frequent columns on the media, war, and peace.  But the value of "Made Love, Not War" lies in the lessons it provides for current and future activism, the accounts of pitfalls and seductive detours encountered in the past, the insights gained, and the analysis of how one can push on without hope or optimism or the desire for them, all as told by one of the most morally decent people we are privileged to live alongside today.

 

As he heads for the office these days, Nouri al-Maliki should bid his family especially tender farewells. If the patterns of U.S. foreign policy are any guide, the Iraqi prime minister is a very poor insurance risk.

On Monday, Aug. 20, a leading Democratic senator, Carl Levin of Michigan and chairman of the Armed Services Committee, returned from a weekend outing to Iraq and declared publicly that Iraq's parliament should remove al-Maliki from power. "The Maliki government is nonfunctional," Levin declared, "and cannot produce a political settlement because it is too beholden to religious and sectarian leaders."

The next day, Hillary Rodham Clinton, front-runner of Democrats seeking the nomination of their party for the presidency, went before the annual convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars and reiterated her senate colleague's call. She said that al-Maliki should be replaced by a "less divisive and more unifying figure."

The final grim news for al-Maliki came on Wednesday when President Bush affirmed confidence in the prime minister, declaring him to be a fine fellow.