A View From The Boston Left-WARS ABROAD, WARS AT HOME

WARS ABROAD, WARS AT HOME

MLK: “A true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of war, “This way of settling differences is not just.” This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.” Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence, April 4, 1967

Dwight D. Eisenhower: “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.  This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter with a half-million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. . . . This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.” 

The Chance for Peace, April 16, 1953, Washington, D.C.

UNITED STATES: FIRST IN WAR, TRAILING IN MODERN CIVILIZATION

In 2017 (the last year for which global figures are available), the U.S. government accounted for over a third of the world’s military expenditures―more than the next seven highest-spending countries combined. Not satisfied, however, President Trump and Congress pushed through a mammoth increase in the annual U.S. military budget in August 2018, raising it to $717 billion. Maintaining the U.S. status as “No. 1” in war and war preparations comes at a very high price.  That price is not only paid in dollars—plus massive death and suffering in warfare―but in the impoverishment of other key sectors of American life. After all, this lavish outlay on the military now constitutes about two-thirds of the U.S. government’s discretionary spending. And these other sectors of American life are in big trouble.  More

Let's Make Ending Militarism Our New Year's Resolution

It would begin with a restructuring of the entire legal framework for American war-making. US soldiers still kill and die – and bomb at least seven countries – under two outdated Authorizations for the Use of Military Force (AUMF). One, in 2001, authorized the president to battle the culprits of the 9/11 attacks, the Al Qaeda organization. The other, in 2003, approved the tragic-comic invasion of Iraq to remove Saddam Hussein. Neither resolution is relevant to the fights at hand, which, therefore are only of dubious legality. In 2019, the US Congress should reassert its constitutional primacy in warfare, overturn the old AUMFs, and demonstrate the courage to debate and vote on each of America’s ongoing wars. If the people’s representatives truly believe any of the ongoing shooting wars – in Syria, Libya, Niger, Iraq, Yemen, Pakistan, and Afghanistan – are worth fighting, then let them say so publicly and declare war. My guess is that most congressmen, knowing the prevailing public skepticism of ongoing overseas interventions, wouldn’t authorize the continuation of these disastrous campaigns.   More

All good, but war and military spending at the very end of a long list. . .

BERNIE SANDERS: A Bold, Progressive Agenda for a Happier and Healthier New Year

It goes without saying that 2019 will be a pivotal and momentous time for our country and the entire planet. As you know, there is a monumental clash now taking place between two very different political visions. Not to get you too nervous, but the future of our country and the world is dependent upon which side wins that struggle.  The bad news is that in the United States and other parts of the world, the foundations of democracy are under severe attack as demagogues, supported by billionaire oligarchs, work to establish authoritarian type regimes… "Our job... is not only to oppose Trump but to bring forth a progressive and popular agenda that speaks to the real needs of working people."  The good news is that, all across this country, people are getting politically involved and are fighting back. They are standing up for economic, political, social and racial justice.   More

Pentagon Rings in New Year With Joke About Dropping Massive Bombs on People

While people across the world celebrated the dawning of the New Year overnight, the US military thought it would be funny to celebrate and make light of one of the things they do best: dropping massive bombs on people and places.  In a since-deleted tweet, US Strategic Command (StratCom), which controls the nation’s strategic missile systems and coordinates offensive nuclear capabilities worldwide, joked that while people in New York City enjoyed the dropping of “the big ball” during the countdown to midnight, “we are ready to drop something much, much bigger.”  Among the reactions of outrage on social media, Walter Schaub, former head of the Office of Government Ethics, simply asked: “What kind of maniacs are running this country?”   More

'Like It Was Christmas All Year:'

GOP SUCCEEDED IN MAKING 2018 YET ANOTHER YEAR THE RICH GOT RICHER

With year two of Republicans' Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) now underway and the party touting the $1.5 trillion tax plan's supposed successes, critics of the unpopular law are spotlighting the party's broken promises and saying the so-called tax scam merely helped to make 2018 another year of bloated corporate profits and enriching the already wealthy.  In fact, the wealthy were "celebrating like it was Christmas all year, which it basically was for them," wrote Frank Clemente, executive director of Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF).

Or, as Patriotic Millionaires put it bluntly, "the rich only got richer in 2018."   More

"Prison Reform" Is Not Enough. In 2019, Let's Fight for Decarceration.

Prison reform is now in vogue, but police power remains as brutal as ever. Policing in the US continues to include the power to cage as well as the power to kill — a reality that is spectacularly evident at the southern US border. By all accounts, 2019 promises to be another brutal year in the arena of prisons and policing…  Radical critics of the prison system, including abolitionists and grassroots organizers in and out of prison, have a difficult—but familiar—task in 2019. It involves at least three simultaneous efforts. First, we need to advance our own policy platforms that can supplant the narrowness of the current prison reform agenda with an emphasis on mass decarceration, community reinvestment, full civil and human rights for currently and formerly incarcerated people, and non-punitive approaches to harm. Doing so means growing across movements as well as bringing new people into the fold.   More

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NEW WARS / OLD WARS – What Could Possibly Go Wrong

How U.S. Bombs Tore One Family to Shreds in Afghanistan

Civilian casualties resulting from U.S. military operations had declined significantly after measures were taken to stop them in 2009. This trend started to change after U.S. airstrikes picked up pace again in 2015, and the last year has seen a particularly acute reversal of it.

New data shows that many of the most recent strikes appear to be hitting buildings, despite U.S. rules placing significant restrictions on such strikes because of the risks to civilians.  The Bureau recently reported on how more than 60 buildings were destroyed by U.S. airstrikes in Afghanistan in October (only the second month that target information had been released). This analysis came after a report that month from the UN mission in Afghanistan found the number of U.S. strikes leading to civilian casualties had doubled.   More

On the Front Line of the Saudi War in Yemen: Child Soldiers From Darfur

The United Nations has called the war in Yemen the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. An intermittent blockade by the Saudis and their partners in the United Arab Emirates has pushed as many as 12 million people to the brink of starvation, killing some 85,000 children, according to aid groups. Led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudis say they are battling to rescue Yemen from a hostile faction backed by Iran. But to do it, the Saudis have used their vast oil wealth to outsource the war, mainly by hiring what Sudanese soldiers say are tens of thousands of desperate survivors of the conflict in Darfur to fight, many of them children. At any time for nearly four years as many as 14,000 Sudanese militiamen have been fighting in Yemen in tandem with the local militia aligned with the Saudis, according to several Sudanese fighters who have returned and Sudanese lawmakers who are attempting to track it. Hundreds, at least, have died there.   More

The U.S. put a Yemeni warlord on a terrorist list. One of its close allies is still arming him.

Last year, the Trump administration imposed sanctions on a powerful Yemeni Islamist warlord, accusing him of being a “prominent military instructor” and fundraiser for al-Qaeda who had also at one point “served with” the Islamic State and financed its forces…  By his own admission, Abbas continues to receive millions of dollars in weapons and financial support for his fighters from one of Washington’s closest Middle East allies, the United Arab Emirates, undermining U.S. counterterrorism goals in Yemen.  The UAE, along with Saudi Arabia, leads a regional coalition waging war in Yemen even as a humanitarian crisis there worsens. The coalition’s main goal is to defeat the northern Yemeni rebels known as Houthis and restore the country’s ousted government. The United States assists it with intelligence gathering, logistical support and the sale of billions of dollars in weapons and equipment — including several MRAP armored vehicles that have ended up in Abbas’s hands, according to one of the warlord’s top aides and photos publicly available online.   More

New Studies Show Pundits Are Wrong About Russian Social-Media Involvement in US Politics

The release of two Senate-commissioned reports has sparked a new round of panic about Russia manipulating a vulnerable American public on social media. Headlines warn that Russian trolls have tried to suppress the African-American vote, promote Green Party candidate Jill Stein, recruit “assets,” and “sow discord” or “hack the 2016 election” via sex-toy ads and Pokémon Go…  Based on all of this data, we can draw this picture of Russian social-media activity: It was mostly unrelated to the 2016 election; microscopic in reach, engagement, and spending; and juvenile or absurd in its content. This leads to the inescapable conclusion, as the New Knowledge study acknowledges, that “the operation’s focus on elections was merely a small subset” of its activity. They qualify that “accurate” narrative by saying it “misses nuance and deserves more contextualization.” Alternatively, perhaps it deserves some minimal reflection that a juvenile social-media operation with such a small focus on elections is being widely portrayed as a seismic threat that may well have decided the 2016 contest.   More