William Astore: Is Democracy Going Down?
"Pentagon spending is expected to exceed $7.3 trillion over the next decade. Never in the field of human conflict has so much money been gobbled up by so few at the expense of so many."
A Come-to-Jesus Sermon from the Rev. Chris Hedges
"The Bible has been used by systems of power to perpetuate all sorts of injustices and persecution since the Christian Church was institutionalized in the third century by Constantine, who was a brutal dictator,” says Hedges.
DN! “Humane”: Yale Historian Samuel Moyn on “How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War”
"...when Biden gave his two speeches the other week defending the pullout from Afghanistan, he made utterly clear that while giving up on failed counterinsurgency, he is turning to, and maybe will intensify himself, the real fruit of 9/11, which is kind of endless counterterror, no matter what the constraints of international law say, unless they require the drones to strike or the special forces to visit with care for the victims."
NY Times Op-Ed Denounces Daniel Ellsberg and Edward Snowden on 50th Anniversary of its Publishing the Pentagon, by Barbara Koeppel
In one piece, former New York Times foreign correspondent Elizabeth Becker says that, when the Pentagon Papers were exposed, “the nation was stunned. Responses ranged from horror to anger to disbelief.”
Celebrating Fifty Years of an Individual’s Courage in an Era of Apathy, by Danny Sjursen
"Still, there stands Daniel Ellsberg – and others like him; living and breathing correctives to any temptation towards apathy."
Remembering Father Daniel Berrigan, a Prophet of Peace
Advice to parents, teachers, priests, ministers, et al: The young people will be different if you are different. They are moved by example, as I have been.
Martin Luther King: Breaking the Silence, Riverside Speech
MLK's unheeded prophecy that has come true: "The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit, and if we ignore this sobering reality…and if we ignore this sobering reality, we will find ourselves organizing “clergy and laymen concerned” committees for the next generation. They will be concerned about Guatemala — Guatemala and Peru. They will be concerned about Thailand and Cambodia. They will be concerned about Mozambique and South Africa. We will be marching for these and a dozen other names and attending rallies without end, unless there is a significant and profound change in American life and policy."
Memory Loss in the Garden of Violence: How Americans Remember (and Forget) Their Wars
"The payload of bombs unloaded on Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos between the mid-1960s and 1973 is commonly reckoned to have been between seven and eight million tons -- well over 40 times the tonnage dropped on the Japanese home islands in World War II. Estimates of total deaths vary, but are all exceedingly high."
“The Minnesota Conspiracy to Save Lives” by Chuck Turchick
"Move and you're dead!" What? Who was this fellow? By Chuck Turchick July 14, 2020 "Move and you're dead!" What? Who was this fellow? With a cut-off sweatshirt, jeans, loafers without socks, I noticed he also had a gun pointed at me. Following him were a phalanx of about a dozen others. Who were they? More
Danny Sjursen: Undercover Patriots Trump, Tulsa, and the Rise of Military Dissent
"Then there was the powerful visual statement of Marine Corps veteran Todd Winn, twice wounded in Iraq, who stood for hours outside the Utah state capitol in the sweltering heat in full dress uniform with the message 'I Can’t Breathe' taped over his mouth."
Honoring the Warrior: Jim Northrup 1943 – 2016, by Craig Wood
"Despite his political edginess, PTSD and success as a writer, Northrup remained a warm, folksy man who continued to tell his stories in a straightforward and humorous way until his death. In 2016,"
Andrew J. Bacevich, The All-American Way: MLK’s Giant Triplets
"What I am suggesting is that those calling for fundamental change will go badly astray if they ignore Dr. King’s insistence that each of the giant triplets [racism, extreme materialism, militarism] is intimately tied to the other two."