War & Peace

For Pakistanis It’s A Boston Marathon Bombing Nearly Everyday

"What a terrible and senseless tragedy. I can’t let myself think about it for too long without welling up inside. While my timing in saying what I’m about to say may seem harsh to some, now is the only time to make this point. For the people of Pakistan the Boston Marathon bombing happens nearly every day. Sometimes it’s a lesser bomb and fewer people are killed or injured. Sometimes it’s a much larger bomb like one example that left nearly seventy children dead at one time (that’s about three times the loss of children that happened in Sandy Hook). Can you imagine?" Continue reading →

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Is the Boston Bombing the “Moral Equivalent” of Drone Strikes?

"While Obama demands justice in the Boston bombing, he is silent about his own role in setting off bombs in overseas countries. If the U.S. drones have killed about 4,700 people abroad, then we are talking about something that dwarfs the horror of what happened at Boston. I am not speaking of tit-for-tat. However, I am sure that the horror that people in Muslim countries experience at a drone strike is every bit as awful as what people experienced in Boston yesterday. I do not believe that we are free to denounce the evil at Boston and cheer on the evil our government perpetrates overseas. We must denounce both or risk being the worst hypocrites on the planet." Continue reading →

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North Korea Is Like a Misbehaving Child—Ignore It

"Although at the official level, ignoring North Korean blustering, while taking adequate measures to defend the United States—not South Korea—from the future limited threat that North Korea might pose, the U.S. government should not discourage or have disdain for visits by private citizens, such as Dennis Rodman. These private visits help break the isolation that the Kim regime needs to survive and that U.S. government regularly haplessly provides with economic sanctions and counter bluster. Let’s show the publicity-hungry Kim Jong-un that his words and actions are a lot less important to the United States than he thinks." Continue reading →

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For Price Of Iraq War, US Could Power Half Country With Renewables

"Today, wind analyst Paul Gipe asks, how much renewable energy could we have gotten from what we spent on the Iraq War? The total cost of the Iraq War, including future costs to care for veterans, is $2.2 trillion. If we include the interest we have to pay on the debt we used to finance the war, that figure rises to $3.9 trillion by 2053." Continue reading →

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Leaked report: Nearly half of US drone strikes in Pakistan not against al-Qaeda

"A trove of leaked classified reports has confirmed what many had suspected – US drone kills in Pakistan are not the precision strikes against top-level al-Qaeda terrorists they are portrayed as by the Obama administration. Instead, many of the attacks are aimed at suspected low-level tribal militants, who may pose no direct danger to the United States – and for many there appears to be little evidence to justify the assassinations. The statistics illustrate the breadth of the US ‘drone doctrine’ – which has never been defined by consecutive US administrations." Continue reading →

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City of Yokohama Mistakenly Tweets of North Korean Missile Launch

"In this environment, it's easy to make a mistake and jump the gun. And that's precisely what happened in Yokohama, Japan. On Wednesday, city officials used Twitter to warn of a North Korean missile launch — one that never had happened. At 8:11 p.m. local time, the official disaster management Twitter account of the city prematurely announced: 'North Korea has launched a missile'. As it turns out, it was just a misfired tweet that was ready in case of a real launch. The tweet stayed up for approximately 20 minutes, when the city took it down and posted an official apology (Google Translate), saying the tweet was delivered by mistake." Continue reading →

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NATO air strike kills 10 children in Afghanistan

"A NATO air attack in eastern Afghanistan has killed 10 children, officials said Sunday, the latest case of civilian casualties which provoke great anger in the war-torn country. The children were killed during a joint Afghan-NATO operation in the Shigal district of restive Kunar province bordering Pakistan late on Saturday. An Afghan official involved in the operation who did not want to be named said air support was called in after local and coalition forces came under attack, resulting in the death of an American and injuries to several Afghan soldiers. The official said the force did not know there were women and children in the houses that were hit." Continue reading →

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‘Carrying the Future’ in Afghanistan

"The rest of the world does resist. It does not want our propagandistic textbooks, it does not want our drones, it does not want our support of radical Islamists, it does not want our soldiers, and it does not want our diplomats or NGOs engaging in all manner of manipulation of domestic affairs overseas. Sadly, until young Americans like this foreign service officer start to question the mythologies spouted by politicians and duly amplified by the corporate media about the indispensability of the US 'carrying the future,' there will be many more unnecessary deaths -- on all sides." Continue reading →

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The UN Declares War on Katanga — Again

"With the backing of both the U.S. and the Soviet Union, UN military forces were deployed to Katanga, where they carried out bloody punitive actions that killed scores of innocent people and prompted a widespread international outcry. A British inquiry documented acts of rape, plunder, and terrorism committed by multinational Blue Helmet forces. Echoes of the UN’s war to suppress Katanga five decades ago were heard last week when the UN Security Council passed a Chapter Seven resolution – the world body’s equivalent of a declaration of war – authorizing the deployment of a multinational military brigade to disarm and “neutralize” rebel groups in Congo." Continue reading →

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“State Control”: What the UN Firearms Treaty is All About

"For more than fifty years, the United Nations, with the enthusiastic support of the U.S. government, has pursued a vision of 'general and complete disarmament' in which the world body, or its successor, would claim a monopoly on the 'legitimate' use of force. Within that global monopoly, each national government would have an exclusive territorial franchise. It was in pursuit of that formula that UN 'peacekeepers' were deployed in Rwanda in 1993. Despite that country’s history of bloody ethnic conflict, Rwandans were assured that they had nothing to fear from a UN-approved government that claimed a monopoly on weaponry." Continue reading →

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