A blog about a criminal enterprise
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Here’s a cheery note for you: the last mass killing of 2017 took place moments before midnight on New Year’s Eve. A 16-year-old New Jersey boy picked up a semi-automatic rifle, “lawfully acquired” by a member of his family, and killed his father, mother, sister, and a family friend.
The nonprofit organization World Beyond War has put up a billboard in Baltimore stating that “3% of U.S. military spending could end starvation on earth.” Of course, a much smaller percentage could heat Baltimore schools, where students are attending classes in unheated rooms.
World Beyond War and several other organizations are planning a rally on January 12 and a conference January 12 to 14 in Baltimore on the subject of closing U.S. foreign military bases, a move that would save enough money
This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To receive TomDispatch in your inbox three times a week, click here.
If you want to know something about life in America these days, consider how New York Times columnist David Leonhardt began his first piece of the year, “7 Wishes for 2018”: “Well, at least it’s not 2017 anymore. I expect that future historians will look back on it as one of the darker non-war years in the country’s history…”
Think about that for a moment:
Jim Paul for 19 years was the exzecutive director of Global Policy Forum and was chair of the NGO working group on the UN Security Council. He is the author of the just-released book Of Foxes and Chickens: Oligarchy and Global Power in the UN Security Council.
The book is available free in English or German:
http://www.rosalux-nyc.org/of-foxes-and-chickens
Total run time: 29:00
Host: David Swanson.
Producer: David Swanson.
Music by Duke Ellington.
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Pacifica
By Dave Lindorff
Scroll through the Instagram account ‘@RichKidsofTehran’ or RKOT and ask yourself: Knowing how aggressively the Iranian regime has gone after those — particularly women — who flaunt their sexuality and expose themselves with hair uncovered and with parts of their body exposed that are supposed to be kept covered except at home, who would be putting these clearly inflammatory images of both semi-nudity and ostentatious financial excess online?
If anything
This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To receive TomDispatch in your inbox three times a week, click here.
Let me mention a small joy of my life. One afternoon and evening a week I take care of my 5½-year-old grandson, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that we take care of each other. We always stop for cookies — grandparents being allowed, according to The Official Rulebook of Child-Rearing (see p. 349), to shamelessly feed sweets to their grandchildren.
| Not only Congress but also the Maine Legislature is pressured by General Dynamics to provide tax relief. Maine Democrats Rep. Jennifer DeChant and Sen. Eloise Vitelli are sponsoring a bill to give GD $60 million from state coffers this year — because servicing corporations is a thoroughly bipartisan affair. |
Maine’s senators are wealthy people. Senator Susan Collins has just sent me a long email explaining why I should be delighted that she helped pass a tax bill that 78% of her constituents responding to a poll in the Bangor Daily News said will not benefit them.
Most of us allegedly represented by Collins are not at all wealthy, and her claim that we will benefit under the new tax laws is only true in the very short term.
This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To receive TomDispatch in your inbox three times a week, click here.
Mapping a World From Hell
76 Countries Are Now Involved in Washington’s War on Terror
By Tom Engelhardt
He left Air Force Two behind and, unannounced, “shrouded in secrecy,” flew on an unmarked C-17 transport plane into Bagram Air Base, the largest American garrison in Afghanistan. All news of his visit was embargoed until an hour before he was to depart the country.
More
By Dave Lindorff
I was in the grocery store a while back when, after my items were tabulated, the checkout clerk asked, “Would you like to contribute to the Wounded Warriors fund?”
I glanced at the line of people to my left — a little cross-section of America — and feeling a little skeptical about how they’d respond, I said, “No I don’t think so. I’d