A blog about a criminal enterprise
There was something quite odd about the very welcome news that some Google employees were objecting to a military contract, namely all the other Google military contracts. My sense of the oddness of this was heightened by reading Yasha Levine’s new book, Surveillance Valley: The Secret Military History of the Internet.
I invited Levine on my radio show (it will air in the coming weeks) and asked him what he thought was motivating the revolt over at Google.
I’m going to praise the heck out of yet another terrific book I’ve just read while yet again exclaiming (into a deep empty echoing canyon?) my bewilderment and outrage at the glaring omission it makes — the same one as all the other books.
George Monbiot’s Out of the Wreckage: A New Politics for an Age of Crisis is part familiar; part original, creative, and inspiring; and pretty much all right-on and necessary. Its first chapter should be required reading everywhere — with the
By Dave Lindorff
It’s July 4. Do you want fireworks? You’re in luck, because that’s what your militarist government wants to deliver.
You may have to wait a bit, but what’s in store is a new arms race, a new era of super instability with the chance for, or even likelihood of a catastrophic ending in the form of a global nuclear war.
It’s
William Geimer, author, peace activist, is a veteran of the U.S. 82d Airborne Division and Professor of Law Emeritus, Washington and Lee University. After resigning his commission in opposition to the war on Vietnam, he represented conscientious objectors and advised peace groups near Ft. Bragg NC. A Canadian citizen, he lives with his wife near Victoria, British Columbia where he is a member of the Vancouver Island Peace and Disarmament Network. He is the author of Canada: The Case for Staying
Tear gas is among the least of the problems facing those who care about the murder and destruction of war. But it is a major element in the militarization of local policing. In fact, it is widely deemed illegal in war, but legal in non-war (although what written law actually creates that loophole is unclear).
Like blowing people up with missiles from drones, shooting people for being Palestinian, holding people in cages for decades without charge or trial on a stolen corner of Cuba, or zapping
This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To receive TomDispatch in your inbox three times a week, click here.
Who could forget it? There were the $37 screws (no need to say who was getting screwed), the $2,043 nut (McDonnell Douglas made it specially for the U.S. Navy), the $7,622 coffee pot, the $74,165 aluminum ladder, and the $640 plastic toilet seats for the Air Force. All of those examples of Pentagon waste
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’ platform is dramatically better than many may realize. It tackles the greatest evil in existence in a way that no other big-2 congressional candidate’s website does and which most do not even mention. And in doing so, it makes serious much of the rest of her socialist platform in a way that even presidential candidate Bernie Sanders did not — a way promoted by the peace movement, the Poor People’s Campaign, and Black Lives Matter.
War and war preparations eat up
Within 30 minutes of my publishing this complaint that peace had vanished from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s website, the following appeared on her website:
Since the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the United States has entangled itself in war and occupation throughout the Middle East and North Africa. As of 2018, we are currently involved in military action in Libya, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Pakistan, and Somalia. Hundreds of thousands of civilians in these countries have been killed either
Newly popular Democratic politician hero and nominee for a seat in the U.S. Congress Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez used to have these words on her website:
“A Peace Economy
“Since the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the United States has entangled itself in war and occupation throughout the Middle East and North Africa. As of 2018, we are currently involved in military action in Libya, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Pakistan, and Somalia. According to the Constitution, the right to declare war
By Dave Lindorff
The wailing you hear from public sector unions and from trade unions in general in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Wednesday Janus decision banning the mandatory payment of fees to unions by workers who choose not to join them in the public sector is overwrought. In many states with strong public sector unions, this has been the case long before this ruling came down.
It’s