militarism

Veterans For Peace Tells US Troops At Border Follow Your Conscience, Disobey Orders

November 18, 2018 Staff, Veterans For Peace Resist! militarism, Military Resistance

If you decide to follow your conscience and refuse to obey orders that you believe are illegal or immoral, you will not be alone. Veterans For Peace will support you, along with other organizations who have legal resources and know how to organize political support. If you decide it is time for you to get out of the military, we can put you in touch with counselors who can help you to be honorably discharged. Most of all, as veterans of multiple wars, we strongly advise you not to do anything that you might regret for the rest of your life, just because you were “following orders.”

West Point Can’t Hide Its Reverence For The Confederacy

October 26, 2018 Spenser Rapone, Truthdig.com Educate! Confederacy, militarism, Racism, West Point

Charlottesville, Va., triggered a movement. In the wake of a 2017 white nationalist “Unite the Right” rally that left one dead and several injured, activists across the country have worked diligently to exorcise the lingering ghosts of the Confederacy. Most recently, a coalition of anti-racist students at the University of North Carolina brought down a statue of “Silent Sam”—the latest in a series of victories over the chintzy reification of white supremacy. And yet from Seattle to Pennsylvania, totems of racial violence can be found just around the corner. Take the nation’s pre-eminent military academy—and my alma mater—the U.S. Military Academy, or West Point.

Feeding Militarism: The US Imperial Consensus

September 25, 2018 By Dr Binoy Kampmark, Countercurrents.org Educate! militarism, US Imperialism

The US military industrial complex reigns like a ravenous ruler in search of new funding prospects. It has done well this year, with the Trump administration pushing the sale that the imperium needs more ruddy cash and indulgent expenditure to cope with all manner of evils. Empire must be without equal. The dissenters to this program have been pitiably small, concentrated amongst such outliers as Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky. Those on the GOP side of the aisle have barely squeaked but relative to the Democrats, their sounds have been spectacularly noisy. There is, in fact, something to be said that, in the boisterous era of Donald Trump, the Democrats have shown very little by way of bucking any trend whatever in the continuingly expansive program that is US military spending.

The Big Business Of Drones, Who Is Profiting?

September 25, 2018 Christian Sorensen, Dissidentvoice.org Educate! Drones, militarism, Profit

Boeing’s main drone division is known as Insitu. It manufactures and assembles its products in Washington and Oregon along the Columbia River. Two of its bestsellers are the Blackjack and the ScanEagle. Boeing sold Blackjack parts worth roughly $9 million to the U.S. Marine Corps in July and again in August, capping off the summer by selling Blackjack drones and equipment worth $53.9 million to Poland. Poland wasn’t the only country that Boeing successfully courted this summer. At the end of June, Boeing sold Lebanon ScanEagle drones worth $8.2 million. This deal included helping set up the equipment and training the Lebanese military on how to operate it. Lebanon is a long-term Boeing customer.

Confessions Of A Catechumen And Ex-Marine

August 15, 2018 Micaiah David Dutt, Orthodoxyindialogue.com Educate! militarism, Veterans

War is hell. War is often unnecessary, but through the evil in our hearts we let it be and we encourage it, we engage it in fantasy primarily through Hollywood and gamer culture while imposing its deathly reality on people far weaker than us. We in these United States rarely see the suffering, the death, the disease, the famine that we impose on other nations. That we imposed on those peoples who are original to this continent. In the eyes of popular culture the soldier is not a harbinger of death, but a youthful soul seeking adventure who toughens up through the grim reality of combat. Nothing could be further from the truth. War is death. War is hell on earth. In war we all die. Some of us physically, some of us mentally, some of us spiritually. In war, death is the only guarantee.

[Act Out! 172] – Joyful Militancy Or Building Thriving Resistance In Toxic Times

August 10, 2018 Eleanor Goldfield, Occupy.com Resistance Report Activism, militarism

Activism so often gets the bad rep of being all about sacrificing – all about pain and struggle – never about joy. And yet as we find ourselves in a culture that preaches escapism, demands smiles, a Stepford Wife happiness that defies reality and central nervous systems, what does joy mean? Furthermore, what does activism mean – militancy, rigid radicalism, the toxicity of movement spaces and more? Well – let's dive in.

Israel Is Arming Neo-Nazis In Ukraine

August 8, 2018 Asa Winstanley, Electronicintifada.net Educate! Israel, militarism, Neo-Nazis, Ukraine

Israeli arms are being sent to a heavily armed neo-Nazi militia in Ukraine, The Electronic Intifada has learned. Azov Battalion online propaganda shows Israeli-licensed Tavor rifles in the fascist group’s hands, while Israeli human rights activists have protested arms sales to Ukraine on the basis that weapons might end up with anti-Semitic militias. In a letter “about licenses for Ukraine” obtained by The Electronic Intifada, the Israeli defense ministry’s arms export agency says they are “careful to grant licenses” to arms exporters “in full coordination with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and other government entities.” The 26 June letter was sent in reply to Israeli lawyer Eitay Mack who had written a detailed request demanding Israel end all military aid to the country. Azov’s official status in the Ukrainian armed forces means it cannot be verified that “Israeli weapons and training” are not being used “by anti-Semitic or neo-Nazi soldiers,” Mack and 35 other human rights activists wrote.

$717 Billion Defense Bill That Just Breezed Through The Senate Should Be A National Scandal

August 6, 2018 Lindsay Koshgarian, Inthesetimes.com Educate! Budget, Defense, militarism

With little debate or public attention, the Senate just followed the House in approving $717 billion for the nation’s military, meaning the bill is headed for the president’s signature. The passage is no surprise. The National Defense Authorization Act is one of the few pieces of federal budget legislation that sails through every year, without fail, on a bipartisan basis. Yet, the bill deserves fierce debate—and dissent. At $717 billion, the package provides a historically high military budget. By my calculations based on numbers from the Office of Management and Budget, in 1997, after Cold War spending was ratcheted down from its Reagan-era peak, military spending was $386 billion after adjusting for inflation. By the height of spending during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, it had more than doubled to $799 billion.

The Bipartisan March For Militarism

August 3, 2018 Staff, Economicfront.wordpress.com Educate! Electoral Politics, militarism, Party Politics, Ruling Class

Republicans and Democrats like to claim that they are on opposite sides of important issues. Of course, depending on which way the wind blows, they sometimes change sides, like over support for free trade and federal deficits. Tragically, however, there is no division when it comes to militarism. For example, the federal budget for fiscal year 2018 (which ends on September 30, 2018), included more money for the military than even President Trump requested. Trump had asked for a military budget of $603 billion, a sizeable $25 billion increase over fiscal year 2017 levels; Congress approved $629 billion. Trump had also asked for $65 billion to finance current war fighting, a bump of $5 billion; Congress approved $71 billion. The National Defense Authorization Act of 2018, which set the target budget for the Department of Defense at this high level, was approved by the Senate in a September 2017 vote of 89-9.

NATO: Time To Re-Examine An Alliance

August 3, 2018 Staff, Dispatchesfromtheedgeblog.wordpress.com Educate! militarism, NATO

One such detail is NATO’s “Readiness Initiative” that will beef up naval, air and ground forces in “the eastern portion of the Alliance.” NATO is moving to base troops in Latvia, Estonia Lithuania, the Czech Republic and Poland. Since Georgia and Ukraine have been invited to join the Alliance, some of those forces could end up deployed on Moscow’s western and southern borders. And that should give us pause. A recent European Leadership’s Network’s (ELN) study titled “Envisioning a Russia-NATO Conflict” concludes, “The current Russia-NATO deterrence relationship is unstable and dangerously so.” The ELN is an independent think tank of military, diplomatic and political leaders that fosters “collaborative” solutions to defense and security issues. High on the study’s list of dangers is “inadvertent conflict,” which ELN concludes “may be the most likely scenario for a breakout” of hostilities.

It’s Time For NATO To Go The Way Of The Warsaw Pact

July 28, 2018 By Conn Hallinan, Fpif.org Create! Europe, Inter-Imperialist Rivalry, militarism, NATO, Trump Administration

The outcome of the July 11-12 NATO meeting in Brussels got lost amid the media’s obsession with President Donald Trump’s bombast, but the “Summit Declaration” makes for sober reading. The media reported that the 28-page document “upgraded military readiness,” and was “harshly critical of Russia,” but there wasn’t much detail beyond that. But details matter, because that’s where the devil hides. One such detail is NATO’s “Readiness Initiative” that will beef up naval, air, and ground forces in “the eastern portion of the Alliance.” NATO is moving to base troops in Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, the Czech Republic, and Poland. Since Georgia and Ukraine have been invited to join the Alliance, some of those forces could end up deployed on Moscow’s western and southern borders.

Military-Intelligence Candidates Win Four Democratic Congressional Nominations

May 27, 2018 Patrick Martin, WSWS Educate! Democracy, Democratic Party, militarism

On Tuesday, candidates with links to the military or intelligence services won all four of the Democratic primary contests in which they were running. These results mark a significant advance in what amounts to the takeover of the Democratic Party by the national security apparatus. In the Sixth District of Kentucky and in three Texas runoff contests, in the 21st, 23rd and 31st Congressional Districts, candidates running on their records in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan defeated more traditional Democratic candidates, one backed by the party establishment and three linked to Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign. These results underscore the bankruptcy of the perspective advanced by various pro-Sanders pseudo-left organizations of turning the Democratic Party into a progressive party of “the people.”

Victory Over Military Cop Convention

April 7, 2018 Ann Garrison, Blackagendareport.com Resist! militarism, Police

Militarization of the police intensified after the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was folded into the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on March 1, 2003, just a year and a half after 09/11. FEMA had operated as an independent federal agency from 1979 to 2003, with an independent cabinet seat from 1993 to 2000, but the Homeland Security Act of 2002 turned it into a DHS sub-agency, despite the strong objections of its director, Michael Brown, who stated that the change would “fundamentally sever FEMA from its core functions, shatter agency morale, and break longstanding, effective, and tested relationships with states and first responder stakeholders.” Three years later, in 2005, DHS/FEMA’s overly militarized and inefficient response to Hurricane Katrina proved Brown to be prescient.

The Army Of The EU

February 16, 2018 By Will Podmore, Counterpunch.org Educate! Europe, European Union (EU), militarism

The current president of the European Commission wants it. So did his predecessors. And now the whole EU is taking steps towards the creation of a unified European military, along with unified defence research. Since our vote to Leave, the EU establishment has moved rapidly towards setting up an EU army with a single central command, without any national, democratic controls. Given the EU’s aggression in the past – look at Kosovo, Ukraine, and the bellicose stance against Russia – this is a dangerous development. It would give the EU, acting as a bloc, a free hand to beat the drums of war where it chooses in the world. Our governments act aggressively too, of course. But they are subject to control by the people, when we choose to exercise it. Brexit should bring increasing awareness and exercise of our power to do so.

Manufacturing Consent for War as a Public-Private Partnership

January 23, 2018 Nina Illingworth for NiniaIllingworth.com Educate! Media, militarism, Propaganda

The terrifying truth in all of this is that western military, government, media and economic establishments have spent the better part of the past fifty years creating a self-perpetuating political environment that can only and inevitably lead to endless imperial war. After all, if the entire ruling class always supports the business of military conflict, nobody ever suffers any consequences for advocating on behalf of war and public opinion can easily be swayed in favor of US intervention by sympathetic private interests, it would be objectively naive to assume America’s current state of “forever war” is some sort of unlucky accident – this is a feature of neoliberal imperialism, not a bug. Armed with the light of knowledge, is it really all that absurd to question if the elite American establishment is actively trying to manufacture consent for a large-scale conflict that would effectively eliminate Vladimir Putin’s influence in the Middle East by attacking Russian-allied Syria and Iran?

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