Peace and War

There’s a popular movement in Sicily called No MUOS. MUOS means Mobile User Objective System. It’s a satellite communications system created by the U.S. Navy. The primary contractor and profiteer building the satellite equipment at the U.S. Navy base in the desert in Sicily is Lockheed Martin Space Systems. This is one of four read more

Joy First reports from Mauston, Wisc., that Bonnie Block, a Madison grandmother and long-time peace activist, was found guilty of trespassing in a jury trial in the Juneau County Courthouse on Wednesday, April 1, 2015, and sent to jail.

Sadly, this is not an April Fool’s joke. Block, pictured at right, was compelled to either pay $232 or spend 5 days in the Juneau County Jail. Faced with that choice, Block said in court:

“Your Honor, I asked for a jury trial in this matter so I could read more

By David Swanson and Robert Fantina

Oh Canada, to thine own self be true, not to thine heavily militarized neighbor. Robin Williams called you a nice apartment over a meth lab for a reason, and now you’re bringing the drugs upstairs.

We write to you as two U.S. citizens, one of whom moved to Canada when George W. Bush became U.S. president. Every wise observer in Texas had warned this country about their Governor Bush, but the message hadn’t gotten through.

We need the message to reach read more

The image and caption at right are from the University of Virginia Magazine which wants you to know that Dr. Who has landed in Charlottesville.

Oh, and he brought along George Orwell. Now private employees of war-and-prisons-profiteer G4S — and possibly the very same people who serve the food and mow the grass and pick up the trash at UVa, all of whom need more than one fulltime job to make a living — will serve as “ambassadors” from the world of corporate Homeland population read more

10. This sort of argument for debunking Islam in the media as the best way to “defeat” ISIS/ISIL misses the fact that ISIS recruits from the United States make up almost certainly much less than 1% of recruits, so that 99% of the problem, even on its own terms, remains completely unsolved.

9. Even if failure to expose Islam and other religions as ancient myths lacking basis in reality were a significant cause of people joining ISIS, it would not approach the primary read more

Rosa Brooks’ article in Foreign Policy is called “There is no such thing as peacetime.” Brooks is a law professor who has testified before Congress to the effect that if a drone war is labeled a proper war then blowing children apart with missiles is legal, but that if it’s not properly a war then the same action is murder.

Rosa Brooks has apparently come to see the problem with that distinction. How can a secret presidential memo in a drawer somewhere, that she and her read more