Military Recruiting and How to Confront it

This year the Army’s goal is to recruit 80,000 active duty and reserve soldiers. The Navy is trying to sign up 42,000; the Air Force is looking for 27,000, and the Marines hope to bring on 38,000. That comes to 187,000.  The Army National Guard will also attempt to lure 40,000.

These soldiers are needed to maintain the status quo for a year, aside from a last-minute increase of 6,000 additional Army soldiers added by President Obama.

The Pentagon is attempting to recruit somewhere around read more

Corbyn Defied Media Rules by Linking UK Wars and Military Sales to Terrorism

This article by DAVE LINDORFF was published first by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) at FAIR.org

When a terrorist killed 22 at a May 22 concert filled with young people in England’s Manchester, most journalists—especially US ones—assumed it would help the struggling Conservative Party and its standard-bearer, Prime Minister Theresa May, win the snap election she had called for June 8, just 17 days ahead.

That is, after all, the conventional wisdom: In times of crisis, like a terror read more

Tomgram: Danny Sjursen, Fighting the War You Know (Even If It Won’t Work)

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

In America’s Afghanistan, it’s all history — the future as well as the past, what’s going to happen, as well as what’s happened in these last nearly 16 years of war. You’ve heard it all before: there were the various “surges” (though once upon a time sold as paths to victory, not simply to break a “stalemate“); read more

The Fourth of July Like You’ve Never Seen It Before!

This year, sit back with your favorite beverage or herb, prop up your feet and open your head to consider Independence Day in a whole new way.

A historically critical article about the American Revolution would typically discuss how the democratic promises of the Declaration were left hanging at war’s end, followed by a decidedly undemocratic constitution six years later.

Examples of that would include abandoning ideals stated in the Declaration like: “all men (sic) are created equal” and read more

Sy Hersh, Exposer of My Lai and Abu Ghraib, Strikes Again, Exposing US Lies About Alleged Assad Sarin ‘Attack’

By Dave Lindorff

Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter Seymour Hersh, the journalist who exposed the My Lai massacre of Vietnamese women, children and old people by US troops, the Abu Ghraib prison torture scandal in Iraq, and many other critically important stories, has now obliterated the US government’s (and the US media’s) claim that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s military killed nearly 100 people with a Sarin nerve gas read more

A message from the U.S. to Iran

Submitted to the July 2, 2017, conference “United States, Human Rights and Discourse of Domination,” hosted by the University of Tehran and the Iranian World Studies Association.

I’m very sorry not to be there in person and am grateful to Foad Izadi for allowing me to submit this instead. I’m a critic of the institution of war and of all military violence, as well as of all antidemocratic government and all violation of civil liberties. People in Iran, the United States, read more

FOUR CITIZEN ACTIVISTS ARRESTED AT VOLK FIELD AS THEY ATTEMPT TO IDENTIFY THE BASE AS A CRIME SCENE

Wisconsin Coalition to Ground the Drones and End the Wars has held monthly vigils against drones at the gates of Volk Field for over five years.  This Wisconsin Air National Guard Base is a critical component of the whole drone warfare program being conducted by the US government in a number of countries in the Middle East and Africa.   At Volk Field personnel are trained to operate the RQ-7 Shadow Drone, which has been used for reconnaissance, surveillance, and target acquisition.  However, read more

Global Warming in a Nutshell

Last week the 29th anniversary of James Hansen’s historic appearance before the U.S. Senate’s Committee on Health & Natural Resources passed by virtually unnoticed.  Hansen, a climate scientist with NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies, testified back on June 23, 1988, that “Global warming has reached a level such that we can ascribe with a high degree of confidence a cause and effect relationship between the greenhouse effect and observed warming.”

Hansen added, ”It is read more