No to NATO, No to Bases, No to Wars in Distant Places

As I head over to Ireland for a conference on closing U.S. and NATO military bases around the world — and at which some of us will make plans for protesting NATO in Washington on April 4, 2019 — the presidents of France and Germany are talking up the need for a European military that can fight the United States, Russia, and/or China. There are three responses to this development, two of which will get us all killed more quickly than the other.

One is this. Down with the stupid, ungrateful, read more

Talk Nation Radio: Stephen McKeown on Armistice Day

Steve McKeown was a radio operator in the 4th Infantry Division of the U.S. Army in Vietnam in 1966 to 1967. He was a founding member of Veterans For Peace Chapter 27 in Minneapolis / St. Paul, and is the coordinator for their newsletter. Steve has spoken to hundreds of classes in elementary and high schools, colleges, churches, and community groups on matters of war and peace. And he has been part of organizing all kinds of peace activism including related to Armistice Day, the 100th anniversary read more

Tomgram: Rory Fanning, Will the War Stories Ever End?

This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To receive TomDispatch in your inbox three times a week, click here.

Death-by-ally: now that, by definition, is a fate from hell. You might at least imagine that such “insider attacks” — in which a member of the Afghan security forces turns his weapon on his American or NATO trainers or advisers and tries to gun them down — would be the rarest of events. After all, if you’re an armed Afghan who decides to try to kill such an read more

Dan Crenshaw Sounds Like a Propagandist for Mass Murder

What is more sick about U.S. society?

1) It’s totally 100% acceptable to make cruel stupid jokes about people’s appearance.

2) There’s an exception. You shouldn’t do it if the thing you’re making fun of relates to their participation in mass murder.

3) Violation of that exception is such a sin that you must publicly repent and grovel.

4) This is true even if the sin was committed on a steadfastly unfunny and unintelligent television program that nobody watches.

5) The repentance is incomplete read more

Provisional ballots: It’s All About Dealing with Voter Suppression

By Dave Lindorff

The Republicans, worried that the party may lose two Senate seats, a Governor’s mansion, and probably a bunch more close races for the House over the counting of disputed mail-in ballots and provisional ballots, are drumming up conspiracy theories now. I just drove through Trump Country last night and listened to Fox Radio as the host Laura Ingraham and her call-ins denounced the recount battles as Democratic corruption.

The biggest read more

A Tale of Two Marines

These two young men may have an infinite number of things in common, but the actions they took this week do not.

One used a pro-war ceremony at a professional basketball game to reject the celebration of militarism, and to protest war-profiteering advertising in sports.

One became the latest “mass shooter” — which I put in quotation marks only because he had already been a mass shooter, but he had been an acceptable kind of mass shooter.

On Tuesday evening, former U.S. Marine Josuee Hernandez read more

Thinking long-term about the election: Not a Blue Wave, but Perhaps a Foreshock of the Big Blue One that’s Coming

By Dave Lindorff

The 2018 election looks at first glance like a wash: Republicans gained seats in the Senate and Democrats regained control of the House with enough of a margin to ensure that they can put some limits on presidential power.

But longer term impacts of 2018 are, I believe, more significant. In this election, with President Trump as party leader pushing a rabidly racist claim that immigrants fleeing from the largely US-caused poverty, chaos read more

Another Amazing Coincidence: Man Trained to Mass Murder Commits Mass Murder

The suspect in today’s mass shooting (well, the biggest one I’ve heard of thus far this morning; the day is young) is a veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps.

Another mass shooter in Florida last week just happens to have been in the military.

The man who killed with a van in Toronto this year had been briefly in the Canadian military and promoted his crime on Facebook beforehand as a military operation.

The mass-killing in a Florida High School earlier this year was also promoted by the killer as read more