A blog about a criminal enterprise
Evian is not just a bottled water company. And the town of Évian-les-Baines in France on the south shore of Lake Geneva is not just a location for luxury hotels. It’s also the location where, in July 1938, the first international effort was ever made (or feigned) to alleviate a refugee crisis.
The crisis was the Nazi treatment of Jews. The representatives of 32 nations and 63 organizations (plus some 200 journalists covering the
Jonathan R. Latham, PhD is co-founder and Executive Director of the Bioscience Resource Project and the Editor of Independent Science News. Dr. Latham holds a Masters degree in Crop Genetics and a PhD in Virology. He was subsequently a postdoctoral research associate in the Department of Genetics, University of Wisconsin, Madison. He has published scientific papers in disciplines as diverse as plant ecology, plant virology, genetics and genetic engineering. Dr. Latham is also the Director of the
Well, we tried a petition, and I tried a TED talk (in fact two of em), and the Daily Progress daily newspaper, and Channel 19 four times: one, two, three, four, and Channel 29 too. No opposition whatsoever has been voiced to the idea of putting up a peace monument in Charlottesville, a town famously full of war monuments, including several for a war that has fallen out of favor.
Finally, the Charlottesville City Council has listened. A peace monument is not only in the works but is already visible
Sun Tzu, whose book, The Art of War, was written some 2,500 years ago during a period of constant war, and popularized in the West some 100 years ago (just in time for industrialized warfare), is the leading example of what’s wrong with digging up ancient platitudes as guides for action today in the areas of war and peace.
“That the impact of your army may be like a grindstone dashed against an egg — this is effected by the science of weak points and strong.”
This “wisdom” provides nothing
Donald Trump is tweeting about a particular spot in Hawaii. He visited it recently on his way to threaten war in Asia. It’s a big feature this week in lots of U.S. magazines and newspapers. It has a lovely name that sounds like murder and blood because Japanese airplanes engaged in large-scale murder there in 1941: Pearl Harbor.
Pearl Harbor Day today is like Columbus Day 50 years ago. That is to say: most people still believe the hype. The myths are still maintained in their blissful unquestioned
If you haven’t seen Charlottesville on the news lately, you should know that the Lee Statue and the Jackson Statue still stand, covered with enormous black garbage bags so that nobody can see them, but everybody can know there’s something ugly there. The state of Virginia forbids localities from removing any war memorials whatsoever, at least if you apply laws retroactively and have no courage. Nobody has made any move to repeal that state restriction, principally because nobody wants to make
Shireen Al-Adeimi is a former middle school teacher and is currently finishing her doctoral studies at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She was born in Yemen and has lived in the United States for 10 years. She recently wrote an article published by Common Dreams titled “Only Americans Can Stop America’s War on Yemen.”
Total run time: 29:00
Host: David Swanson.
Producer: David Swanson.
Music by Duke Ellington.
Download from LetsTryDemocracy
Daniel Ellsberg’s new book is The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner. I’ve known the author for years, I’m prouder than ever to say. We have done speaking events and media interviews together. We’ve been arrested together protesting wars. We’ve publicly debated electoral politics. We’ve privately debated the justness of World War II. (Dan approves of U.S. entry into World War II, and it seems into the war on Korea as well, though he has nothing but condemnation
When I was teaching myself how to write, when I was about 20 to 25, I churned out (and threw out) all kinds of autobiographies. I wrote glorified diaries. I fictionalized my friends and acquaintances. I still write columns all the time in the first person. I did write a children’s book in recent years that was fiction but included my oldest son and my niece and nephew as characters. But I haven’t touched autobiography in more years than I’d been alive when I used to engage in it.
I’ve been