Tomgram: Rebecca Gordon, Justice for Torturers?
Posted by Rebecca Gordon at 7:25am, June 7, 2016. Follow TomDispatch on Twitter @TomDispatch. photo above: A composite showing some of the torture images from US military, among 198 photographs released in February. Photograph: Department of Defense (See: torture photos) an excerpt: In other words, one of the leading legal opponents of everything the war […]
The US Militarizes Children in (Their) Schools
ROBERT C. KOEHLER OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT photp above: alamosbasement an excerpt: The United States no longer has a draft because the nation no longer believes in war, except abstractly, as background noise. But it has an economic draft: It claims recruits largely from the neighborhoods of hopelessness. Joining the U.S. military is the only […]
Preparing for the Next Memorial Day
Wednesday, 01 June 2016 00:00 By Medea Benjamin, PINK Tank | Op-Ed an excerpt: The barbarism of targeting “suspects” by remote control from the comfort of an air-conditioned base in the United States, including in countries where we are not at war, should enrage all Americans who cherish the rule of law. As Army Chaplain […]
Limit the Next President’s Power to Wage Drone Warfare
image by Brian Stauffer By JAMEEL JAFFER and BRETT MAX KAUFMAN MARCH 8, 2016 And President Obama repeatedly vociferously calls for gun control in America! Obviously, only American lives matter to this murderous President. Though even there, exceptions are made! See below. Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert took on Attorney General Eric Holder’s legal justification for […]
Drone Strikes Reveal Uncomfortable Truth: U.S. Is Often Unsure About Who Will Die
By SCOTT SHANE APRIL 23, 2015 photo above: The rubble of a building that was destroyed in Yemen by a drone strike in 2011 against Qaeda militants, including Anwar al-Awlaki, the only one of eight American drone victims over all who was a target. Credit Khaled Abdullah/Reuters Can one deny the accusation that President Obama […]
Tomgram: Mattea Kramer, The Grief of Others and the Boasts of Candidates
photo above: An injured Afghan boy is put on a stretcher at a hospital in Jalalabad city, Afghanistan. Photograph: Nesar Ahmad Posted by Mattea Kramer at 7:01am, March 3, 2016. An excerpt from the introduction: Here’s a what-if that continues to haunt me. What if some disturbed “lone wolf,” “inspired” by the Islamic State’s online […]
Best of TomDispatch: Nick Turse, From the Missing Archives of a Lost War
Posted by Nick Turse and Tam Turse at 5:02pm, May 29, 2016. an excerpt from the introduction: On this Memorial Day weekend dedicated to remembering those who died in America’s wars, TomDispatch brings back a powerful 2008 Nick Turse piece about two civilians, two Vietnamese, who did not, in fact, die in the long ago […]
Jeremy Scahill: Corporations Are Making a Killing Off US Targeted Killing
Jeremy Scahill authored this recent book: , already covered in my blog here: The Assassination Complex. an excerpt from this most recent interview with the author: Laura Flanders: Let’s start with the meat of the matter, the book. It is based on a mountain of classified documents that you and your colleagues went through. Briefly, […]
Donald Trump Defends Bullying to Megyn Kelly, Advising Her to “Fight Back” 10 Times Harder
By Mark Karlin, Editor of BuzzFlash at Truthout Further to Donald Trump and the United Stats as consummate bullies. (See Bully Culture.) an excerpt: In a new book Bully Nation: How the American Establishment Creates a Bullying Society, authors Charles Derber and Yale R. Magress incisively explain the prototype that has resulted in a surge […]
CIA Torture Is Out in the Open – but Guantanamo Bay Detainees Are Still Going Nowhere
By Rebecca Cordell This article is a bit dated, but the realities remain the same. an excerpt: The recent release of a US Senate committee’s report on CIA interrogation methods during the War on Terror has sent shockwaves around the world. Detailing the extent and sheer brutality of the enhanced interrogation techniques used during the […]
US Army Chaplain Resigns in Opposition to Use of Assassin Drones by the United States
If only hundreds more U.S. army chaplains would do this! an excerpt: [US Army Reserve Chaplain Captain Christopher John] Antal wrote, “We have sanitized killing and condoned extrajudicial assassinations … war made easy without due process, protecting ourselves from the human cost of war. We have deceived ourselves … denying the colossal misery our wars […]
In Washington, Why Is Militarism the Only Option?
by Tom Engelhardt This is a brilliant, devastating piece that presents militarism in the United States as their current “drug of choice” worldwide, with devastating results for the global community: the very inverse of human rights, freedom, and democracy. And Obama was once awarded the Nobel Peace Prize?! How ridiculous is that? What a crazy […]
Inside the Assassination Complex: Whistle-blowing Is Not Just Leaking – It’s an Act of Political Resistance
by Edward Snowden in the foreword to The Assassination Complex: Inside the Government’s Secret Drone Warfare (see the previous blog article) an excerpt: The individuals who make these disclosures feel so strongly about what they have seen that they’re willing to risk their lives and their freedom. They know that we, the people, are ultimately […]
Jeremy Scahill and Glenn Greenwald Probe Secret US Drone Wars in New Book
The United States is a world-wide assassin. Plain and simple. They act with impunity as judge, jury, and executioner. They slaughter countless innocent civilians in their assassinations wake. It is morally utterly deplorable, with no end in sight. The book highlighted here is one of the exposés. An excerpt: Major revelations about the US government’s […]
Emperor Bush, Pirate bin Laden, Calvin College, and the Gospel
image above: webpages.uidaho.edu WN: Evangelicals were in bed with former President George W. Bush like never before. They of course are out of sorts with President Obama. The Christian Left however hugely welcomed Obama, who has hardly since in any way (if ever) shown desert of the Nobel Peace Prize. The paper, written during the […]
Chapter Sixty-Three
In 2007 I first published Chrysalis Crucible, a coming-of-age novel about young Andy Norton who goes off to West Berlin in the early seventies to evangelize – with all the answers. You can find a page about it on this website. I’ve republished it (2015) as Kindle eBook and Amazon print-on-demand. Andy discovers in West […]
Chapter Sixty-One
In 2007 I first published Chrysalis Crucible, a coming-of-age novel about young Andy Norton who goes off to West Berlin in the early seventies to evangelize – with all the answers. You can find a page about it on this website. I’ve republished it (2015) as Kindle eBook and Amazon print-on-demand. Andy discovers in West […]
Chapter Forty-Eight
In 2007 I first published Chrysalis Crucible, a coming-of-age novel about young Andy Norton who goes off to West Berlin in the early seventies to evangelize – with all the answers. You can find a page about it on this website. I’ve republished it (2015) as Kindle eBook and Amazon print-on-demand. Andy discovers in West […]
WAR AND HELL – and Exception-Clause Footnote Theology
WN: War and Hell is an interactive essay with a movie and a book. The movie: Saving Private Ryan. The book: The Other Side of The Good News: Contemporary Challenges to Jesus’ Teaching on Hell, Wheaton: Victor Books, 1992 (later published by one other at least). The current iteration of this document was prepared for […]
Is There A Place For Dreaming?
WN: The title was of a wonderful song by singer/songwriter, Ken Medema, from his album, “In the Dragon’s Jaws” (no date), that I played at the end of the presentation. The occasion?: The end of a six-month sabbatical (April to September 2007) wherein I was the first (guinea pig!) “Scholar-In-Residence” at the above university in […]
The Spirituality of Penal Abolition
ICOPA IX Presentation 2000 Noted Canadian Quaker activist and author Dr. Ruth Morris was the main organizer of the above annual event, that year in Toronto. She later was a recipient of Correctional Services Canada’s Restorative Justice Award, and of The Order of Canada. Her death from cancer (September 17, 2001) was a huge loss […]