Tag: Anti-War

And So It Begins?

We have had multiple attacks on the wealthy and it appears that the masses have decided they have had enough of the bullshit and want the country back.

When I returned from Vietnam I immersed myself in the antiwar movement and political activism that was in 1971 and I have been disappointed in the last few decades at the way people accept war and all its ugliness.

But recently I have become more optimistic about the role of veterans…..

Capitol Police arrested the protesters, who had gathered in the rotunda holding red tulips and signs reading “End the War on Iran” and “We Can’t Afford Another War.” Many had donned t-shirts with the message “Veterans Against Fascism.”

The action was organized by a coalition of groups, including About Face, Veterans For Peace, Common Defense, the Center on Conscience and War, the Fayetteville Resistance Coalition, Military Families Speak Out, and 50501 Veterans.

Video shared by Reuters showed officers handcuffing the demonstrators and leading them out of the building.

Among those arrested was the Center on Conscience and War’s executive director and Iraq war veteran Mike Prysner.

“The war I was sent to senselessly claimed the lives of thousands of Americans and a million Iraqis. Like the other veterans here with me today, I have spent the last two decades wishing I could turn back the hands of time and refuse to go,” Prysner said in a statement before his arrest.

“Service members have that chance right now. Conscientious Objection is your legal right, and we have professional counselors who will fight to ensure you are approved and kept from deployment,” he continued.

“I am getting arrested to raise awareness about that option, because now is the time.”

(tag24.com)

Bravo!

Do not let it stop there….keep up the pressure…..we have a nation to win back.

Now the so-called ‘anarchists’ are calling for mass protests as May Day approaches….

Anarchists have issued a global call to take to the streets and protest on May 1 in the name of anti-authoritarian solidarity for their annual May Day event.

They have called on groups and individuals “to reinvigorate May 1st.”

The radical demonstrators say that for the past decade, uncertainty, poverty and police “democracy” are dominating too many peoples’ lives.

“Austerity for all is now simply just the way things are. Ten years of worsening conditions, now it seems that cracks are beginning to form,” the anonymous writers said in their call for action on the open publishing platform autonomies.net.

The unsigned missive described how for many years, the first day of May was an opportunity to show “global revolutionary solidarity” through anarchist actions, parades, parties and global events that would inspire them to “move forward.”

“This moment in time is not sustainable. Brutal war, climate catastrophe and failing austerity economies are shared realities for a vast majority of people,” they said, asserting that people have “lost all faith in the global social and political order. Everyone is waiting and cheering for its end.”

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2026/apr/20/anarchists-call-fellow-radicals-around-globe-take-streets-may-1st

Anarchist is only a dirt word to those that are not smart enough to grasp what the movement is all about.

 

Joe McDonald–R.I.P.

The name may not mean much to the younger readers but I one served in Vietnam then Country Joe and the Fish was the anti-war song that meant the most.

The anti-war icon has died….

A voice that helped soundtrack the Vietnam era has gone quiet, USA Today reports. “Country Joe” McDonald, the frontman of Country Joe and the Fish and a defining figure of 1960s protest music, died Saturday in Berkeley, Calif., at 84 from complications of Parkinson’s disease, his band announced. He was “surrounded by his family,” according to the statement; no public memorial is planned.

Born Joseph Allen McDonald in Washington, DC, and raised in California, he served in the Navy before emerging in Berkeley’s folk and protest scene and co-founding Country Joe and the Fish in the mid-1960s. Their 1967 debut, Electric Music for the Mind and Body, helped cement San Francisco’s psychedelic rock sound, but McDonald became best known for his biting anti-Vietnam War song “I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-to-Die Rag” (a “talking blues” song done in the “deadpan” style of Woody Guthrie, the Guardian reports) and his expletive-laced cheer at Woodstock—moments he later said “changed everything in America.” NPR calls the song “a signature anthem of the 1960s counterculture,” and the Woodstock performance “one of the defining scenes of the festival.” The cheer, however, did once get McDonald arrested and fined after he used it at a Massachusetts show.

After his band broke up, McDonald continued to perform and release solo work for decades, often focusing on civil rights, environmental causes, and humanitarian issues, before retiring to focus on his family. He also expressed consistent support for the troops, and was involved with veterans’ issues throughout his life. He is survived by his wife of 43 years, five children, and four grandchildren; the family suggests donations to Swords to Ploughshares or the Michael J. Fox Foundation in his memory.

For me his voice and conscience will be missed for he help us antiwar protesters get through all the torment….

Thank you for your help and your voice in protest to a dumb ass war…..you and your morals will be missed.

Plus old farts like me will not forget what you did in our name.

His most famous antiwar song in remembrance of a great musician for the cause.

Thank you Country Joe and may you rest in peace.

chuq

Are You Willing To Die?

Before I go any further I want to state that I am antiwar (this is for those that may be visiting for the first time) and I have been since 1970….I do not support these petty wars of expansion and make no mistake that is exactly what it is.

The title is a question that has been asked of Americans…..Are you willing to die for other countries?

Now the answer is in….

A July poll shows that a majority of the American public does not support sending U.S. troops to defend Taiwan or Ukraine, sentiment that lines up with findings from other recent surveys on these heated subjects, which suggests that Americans appear to be warming to restraint and non-interventionism in international affairs.

Indeed, another poll, conducted by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs in February found that a majority of Americans (56%) do not believe that the United States should pick a side in Israel’s war on Gaza. And a more recent survey from Council this month found that just four in ten support the United States sending troops to defend Israel if attacked by its neighbors.

Similarly, Americans’ suspicions of foreign intervention were uncovered in a recent YouGov poll, which found that 79% said that they only support intervention if the U.S. were directly threatened (that number significantly dropped to 49% if an ally were attacked). In the same study, the only recent war that a majority of Americans viewed as justified was World War II.

Despite these findings, Washington continues to push forward with fanning the flames of war around the world, whether being slow to work toward peace settlements in Ukraine and Gaza, stoking conflict with China, or throwing gargantuan amounts of money, unnecessarily, at the Pentagon and thus, the weapons industry.

“The general through line of the polling data is there is a disconnect between official U.S foreign policy and the preferred policies of the American people,” Tucker Kass, spokesman at Defense Priorities which conducted the July survey, told Responsible Statecraft concerning their findings. “The policy coming out of D.C. is interventionist but the American people, at least based on the answers we received, support a more judicious, more discerning policy that would frankly be wiser than current policy.”

The Defense Priorities poll also found that just 22% of those surveyed support the United States defending Ukraine. Forty-six percent opposed while 32% were neutral. Thirty percent said they support America militarily defending Taiwan against China, while 37% opposed and 33% were neutral. Additionally, a plurality of Americans surveyed, 44%, agreed that avoiding war with China is more important than Taiwan’s autonomy.

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/america-polling-interventionism/

Please don’t get me wrong….yes the US has the right to defend itself when attacked….but we do not have the right to finance every little mash up on the horizon. 

That is money wasted.

So I am glad to see that Americans are starting to see the folly of intervention….but sadly that does not make a difference for us peasants do not have the monetary clout to make our wishes into reality.

The Congress, who is suppose to be the sole entity to intervene and is a corrupt entity that will do what the money tells them to do.

And that is the truth of it.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

“A Principled Libertarian Stance”

I have been critical of Israel in the past and I will continue to do so until they start acting like a civilized nation…..this Gaza thing has me being labeled all sorts of things like un-American or antisemitic or naive or a whole wealth of other small minds can come up with….but I soldier on.

I read an article from the Libertarian Institute that I wanted to share….I am no Libertarian….I do share some points with them especially on war but that is about as far as it goes for any support from me…..however I do read and I do share with my readers what I find.

Recently online Antiwar.com and some voices in the antiwar movement have come under criticism, accused of being “left” leaning or pushing an anti-Western agenda. It is nothing new for those who are consistent in their criticism of war to receive backlash from supposed philosophical allies or the usual pro-war beings. Collectivists however are seldom consistent when it comes to principles. They tend to lack an ability to discriminate nuance or to absorb criticism of their ‘side’ when it comes to injustices inflicted upon the innocent. Certain social media ‘celebrities’ in the American liberty movement have zeroed in on Dave DeCamp, Scott Horton and those at Antiwar.com.

To condemn those who would murder innocent children should be an obvious position for most people. The fact that such condemnation needs to occur at all and that so many children are often murdered reveals the cold hard fact that it is not that common a position to be held. For collectivists even the innocent must suffer and die. There is a savagery in the ideology of those who view a baby as fair game simply because it has been relegated into a specific demographic. A child from a familiar camp is viewed as sacred, precious and innocent. Those born inside the borders of a pariah or “insignificant” region are forfeit, they must suffer to satisfy the gods of foreign policy or ideology. The consistently antiwar, understand this. Tourists to the cause seldom do.

Israel has taken on a precious position inside the realms of Western, especially American ideology. To criticize specific Israeli government policies risks one becoming tarred with the brush of anti-Semite or even to be accused of inflicting hatred upon Jews. It is a tiresome slur that seems to have stood the test of time with the horrors of the holocaust and terrible spectre of Nazi Germany an ever present reminder to be used as a sword to justify violent foreign policy. Rarely do the defenders of collective punishment policies ever provide dignified nuance, instead the victims are either ignored, minimized or dehumanized. The crimes and injustices committed by the enemy are emphasized and at times exaggerated. Even if no exaggeration is required.  Take the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7th , it was a vile act of terror, yet extra claims have meandered into fanciful horror stories that will only devalue the suffering already felt.

(Read On)

https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/a-principled-libertarian-stance-amidst-israels-mass-slaughter-in-gaza/

Well said!

I do not expect to change any minds but at least this feeling is out there….

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Closing Thought–29Jan24

This will mean very little in this world of war monger midgets…..but it meant something to me and that is all I need….

Ever heard of the War Resisters League?

Silly question….of course you have not.

Why would you….you are too busy sucking down the propaganda and crap that the media and the War Department feeds you.

The War Resisters League has been opposing war for 100 years.

In her diary on October 19, 1923, the 48-year-old New York City educator Jessie Wallace Hughan (1875-1955) wrote, “Tracy [Mygatt] to dinner—had hair done—organized real War Resisters League …”
Hughan was describing the formal founding of WRL as the successor organization to the Anti-Enlistment League, which had opposed armed forces enlistment during World War I. Conscientious objectors (COs) had faced many trials during the war, especially those whose opposition to war was secular, not religious, but the war’s end did not bring about an end to their difficulties. All of the major national peace groups of the era had expressed strong political sentiment since 1898 against U.S. imperialist incursions, along with burgeoning interest about the new communist experiments in Russian and Eastern European “soviets” (which were established in 1923). Despite their politics, all these peace groups were religiously based. Hughan and her comrades realized the great need for a secular antiwar organization that would support those objectors whose main principle against fighting did not merely derive from a theological standpoint. The new “league” became a section of War Resisters’ International, a then-new European-based secular pacifist group. Hughan served as the organization’s chief funder and director, also serving for decades on the organization’s executive committee; during much of this time, the organization’s sole paid staffer was its Executive Secretary, the redoubtable Abe Kaufman.

https://www.warresisters.org/wrl-history

I got to know these people in the 1970s when I was active in the antiwar movement….not a more dedicated bunch on the planet.

If you feel that you have had enough of endless wars and the endless waste of taxpayer money and would like to try and get involved in the movement then these people are the place to start.

https://www.warresisters.org/

I have never regretted my association with the WRL….and you will not as well.

They are needed more than ever these days.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Is There A Russian Anti-War Movement?

Speaking of antiwar protesters….

I do go on and on about the evils of war and the war in Ukraine….I try to explain why the anti-war movement in the US is a limp dick.

That aside do the Russians have the nuts to stand up and protest this god awful war?

The easy answer is ….yes they do!  And it is more vocal than the Americans.

Given the Russian government’s brutal repression of dissent, the level of Russian resistance to the Putin regime’s war on Ukraine is quite remarkable.

Beginning on the evening of February 24, 2022, the date of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, many thousands of Russians, defying threats from the authorities, staged nonviolent antiwar demonstrations across their nation. On the first night alone, police made 1,820 arrests of peace demonstrators in 58 Russian cities. Over the ensuing weeks, the mass protests continued, with the intrepid demonstrators chanting or holding up signs reading “No to War.” As the authorities viewed any mention of “war” as a crime, even elementary school children were arrested when they said the forbidden slogan. Some peace demonstrators took to holding up blank signs, but they, too, were arrested. By March 13, according to OVD-Info, a Russian human rights group, the police had made at least 14,906 arrests of these and other Russian peace demonstrators.

Russian war resisters also engaged in numerous other activities. Marina Ovsyannikova, an editor at Channel One Russia, disrupted the station’s main news program by holding up a sign reading: “NO WAR. Stop the war. Do not believe the propaganda.” Prominent cultural figures and politicians spoke out publicly against the war. By March 1, an online petition protesting the invasion had drawn a million supporters. Signers of open letters that called for stopping the war included 30,000 technology workers, 6,000 medical workers, 3,400 architects, more than 4,300 teachers, more than 17,000 artists, 500 scientists, and 2,000 actors and other creative figures. Other activists posted antiwar stickers in neighborhoods, replaced supermarket labels with protest statements, and even wrote peace messages on currency. Most startlingly, Russian soldiers began refusing to fight in Ukraine.

Naturally, the authorities were infuriated by this resistance and determined to crush it. Demonstrations were brutally suppressed through arrests, huge fines, and violence against activists. To bolster the legal basis for repression, the Russian parliament passed laws that provided 10 years imprisonment for spreading “fake” news about the armed forces and 5 years imprisonment for “discrediting the army.” In mid-March, Vladimir Putin publicly denounced “the scum and the traitors” who opposed his war policy and promised that the Russian people would “spit them out” like insects who had flown into their mouths. This “necessary self-cleansing of society will only strengthen our country,” he promised.

Homage to Russian War Resisters

I am glad to see that there are those with principles and nuts that will stand up to the policies of Vlad the Invader….

Maybe the US will find its guts and take to the streets….that is if they can back away from the game console or Twatter or Tki Tak long enough to make a difference.

I have my doubts.

Any thoughts that you would like to share?  (Please make it about antiwar protesters)

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Principles Are Forever

I have stated many times that in my politics I have formulated my principles and I have never wavered from them….until too many that ‘go with the flow’…..I am antiwar, I think we all deserve health care, and adequate education…on and on….

This is a open letter from Roger Waters that says it so well….

Roger Waters?

Pink Floyd you barbarians!

Today, we are standing on the edge of a precipice, staring into the abyss. The end of all life on earth is a very real possibility. The reins of power have been purchased by the oligarchs and ideologues and they are hell bent on the end of times. Make no mistake. This is not a drill.

Some say the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 is the closest we have come to a nuclear catastrophe, but at least then, JFK and Nikita Khrushchev were in communication. In our current crisis, our leaders are not even talking to each other. We human beings must communicate with each other if we are to survive. We here in the West are drowning in a sea of pro-war propaganda and presumably the Russians are too. How are we the people to make sense in this maelstrom of misinformation? SUPPORT ANTIWAR.COM!!!!!!

“The Powers That Be,” our “Masters,” the self appointed “Ruling Class” want to keep us squabbling, at each other’s throats, to be used us as cannon fodder or slave labor. When a great journalist and truth-teller like Julian Assange is imprisoned for sharing vital information, the time has come to man the barricades, to stand shoulder to shoulder with all our brothers and sisters all over the world in defense of our beautiful planet home.

As I told the audience on every night of my recent tour of the United States and Canada and Mexico we will never sell out. We, and here I include my brothers and sisters at ANTIWAR.COM, will keep speaking Truth to Power.

Sincerely,
Roger Waters

No matter how much one hates the idea of diplomacy….there needs to be more concern for crap than the wars we start and we seem to start a new one every year.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Stumbling Toward War

Do not be fooled!

The Dems are just as much  warmongers as the GOP!

I know I am a hard Leftists and yet I still read and write about thoughts coming from the Right….most times it is the American Conservative…..why?

They seem to be one of the few that sees the fruitlessness of war and try to point out the way out of the vicious cycle that the M-IC and its paid agents has kept this country in conflict since the end of WW2.

Biden has made his statement on Taiwan and the media is having a field day analyzing what he really meant…..I believe it was not a gaff…it was Biden reassuring his handlers that the money will continue to flow…..

The AC has made its thoughts known…..

So much for strategic ambiguity. Speaking at a news conference in Tokyo on Monday, President Joe Biden committed the United States to militarily defend Taiwan in response to a potential Chinese invasion. A reporter asked Biden, “Are you willing to get involved militarily to defend Taiwan if it comes to that?” To which the president replied, flatly, “Yes.” The reporter followed up: “You are?” The president was adamant: “That’s the commitment we made.”

Pardon me if I sound unduly alarmed, but can we please not go down this road? For the love of God, can America avoid opening up a direct confrontation with the nuclear-armed People’s Republic while we are already engaged in an openly acknowledged proxy war with Russia, another nuclear power?

Biden’s words in Tokyo were so direct and unambiguous they left his aides in the room visibly surprised, according to the New York Times. And understandably so: The commander-in-chief erased what little remained of America’s longstanding policy of leaving it up to Beijing to decide whether it thinks Washington will come to Taiwan’s defense, the idea being that ambiguity and unpredictability can serve as deterrents. If the Chinese know that an attack will be met by a U.S. military response, the only question from their point of view becomes when best to mount it, given the political climate and balance of forces.

Biden’s “commitment,” moreover, would upend decades of American policy: Taiwan isn’t a treaty ally like, say, Japan or Poland, and hasn’t been seen as such by successive administrations. Under the Taiwan Relations Act, which has structured America’s ties to Taiwan since 1979, the U.S. government is obliged to help arm the Taiwanese, but not to directly defend the island.

Stumbling Toward War On Two Fronts

Then there is Henry Kissinger….someone that I have seldom agreed with has made a comment on the Ukraine situation…..

n Monday the CIA announced it had added two stars to its Memorial Wall for fallen officers. The memo is, appropriately for the shady world of intelligence, vague. Perhaps these quiet dead Americans were not killed in Ukraine; perhaps they did not even die recently. But one does wonder. 

In a surreal recent exchange, a colleague wondered how many American lives must be spent on top of the $54 billion in taxpayer money to scrape out a stalemate in East Ukraine. What is our interest there? As if summoned from my least charitable imaginings, an aging swamp creature appeared, indignant in response, to declare the American dead worth it, all the money worth it, to give Russia a defeat. It was, he said, like when we gave weapons to the mujahideen in Afghanistan to fight the Soviets, never mind Osama Bin Laden’s second career. It was, he said, like WWII all over again; if you give a dictator a bit of land, like the mouse and the cookie, he’ll want more of it. 

Perhaps when the war party is sending its people they are not sending their best. I shouldn’t take stale arguments from a man clinging to Cold War glory days as the best case for further American involvement in Ukraine. But I might counter one Cold Warrior with another and suggest that Henry Kissinger’s recent comments at Davos be given due consideration. The former secretary of State said that Ukraine should be willing to concede territory in the east to Russia in pursuit of peace. “Negotiations need to begin in the next two months before it creates upheavals and tensions that will not be easily overcome,” Kissinger said, as reported in the Daily Telegraph. “Ideally, the dividing line should be a return to the status quo ante. Pursuing the war beyond that point would not be about the freedom of Ukraine, but a new war against Russia itself.” 

Kissinger warned against the West being caught up in the “mood of the moment.” The mood of the moment is an acknowledged proxy war with Russia, one to which, as the Wall Street Journal reported, the Pentagon is eager to deploy U.S. special forces (let’s pretend they are not already on the ground “advising”). Is this a flex? A threat? Do they think the Kremlin doesn’t read the Journal? 

Not Another Cold War

You cannot depend on the MSM for accurate information….one must look beyond the PR agenda of corporate America…..

The U.S. news media’s treatment of the Ukraine issue has long been characterized by flagrant favoritism. Reports from organizations such as Human Rights Watch, Transparency International, and Freedom House showing that Ukraine’s actual conduct differed markedly from its carefully crafted image as a dedicated young democracy received little coverage in the mainstream press. That willingness to conceal Ukraine’s corruption and authoritarianism has grown even worse since the outbreak of war with Russia. Media coverage moved quickly from ignoring or minimizing inconvenient information about Kyiv’s political and economic system to channeling outright Ukrainian propaganda.

For example, multiple unfiltered stories from Ukrayinska Pravda and other Ukrainian news outlets have become a nearly daily feature on Yahoo’s news feed. Official statements and press releases from Ukraine’s government also appear on Yahoo and other outlets, frequently without an acknowledgment that the accuracy of those accounts could not be confirmed. Contents in the Washington Post and the New York Times, which set the agenda and tone throughout much of the US news media on any issue, similarly have conveyed a solidly pro-Ukraine perspective. Moreover, there are very few competing accounts in those outlets from Russian news sources or even from American analyses that challenge the dominant narrative.

The willingness of the US press to foster a favorable image of Ukraine knows few bounds. During the early weeks of the war, American news outlets even circulated the story about the “Ghost of Kyiv” – the fighter pilot who supposedly became an ace in a matter of days by shooting down numerous Russian warplanes. That account had all the earmarks of transparent propaganda, and the Ukrainian military ultimately conceded that the story was fictional. In the meantime, however, it had served its purpose well as propaganda for credulous Western audiences, and the US press aided that effort. Indeed, the coverage of Kyiv’s retraction of the story was noticeably limited.

The News Media’s Ukraine Whitewash Grows Worse

I wish people would stop accepting BS as fact…use your brain….once in awhile…..

Be Smart!  Learn Stuff!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Ukraine And Antiwar

For those new visitors and those that are not sure of my stand on the Ukraine war I want to let all know that I am a staunch antiwar advocate……I feel that it is a waste of resources and especially people….war is a desperate war by desperate people.

So I attempt to inform my readers at every turn….mostly it is a fart in the wind but I keep trying…..

As we think about the nightmarish war in Ukraine, let me just offer you a few figures: almost a million dead, nearly 400,000 of them civilians; at least 38 million people turned into war refugees or internally displaced; and perhaps $8 trillion in money squandered on that hell on Earth. Oh wait, sorry, that’s what happens when you get old and things start to blur in your mind. Yes, the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine is indeed a horror of slaughtered civilians, mind-boggling numbers of refugees and internally displaced Ukrainians, and untold amounts of money already squandered on death and destruction. The figures I just gave you, however, come from the invaluable Costs of War Project’s calculations about what used to be called this country’s “Global War on Terror,” which includes the invasions, occupations of, and disastrous conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq.

As we face a Congress that can’t agree to spend any reasonable sums on needy Americans but is racing to raise staggering billions of dollars to arm the Ukrainians (no questions asked), it’s worth remembering that, in this century, when it came to invasions and horrifying wars, our leaders were functionally Vladimir Putins. Now, thanks to him, we’ve suddenly become the “good guys” again, a phenomenon in which Washington is, of course, reveling. If only, as the other major invader nation of this century, we had learned that making peace is so much better than making war and were putting at least some of our efforts into brokering negotiations between the warring parties in Ukraine rather than further revving up the conflict and glorying in doing so.

Ukraine: An Antiwar Dilemma

My biggest problem is the waste of funds that are needed here in this country.

More money for Ukraine….and then more  money…..

The fact is, Zelensky would rather shame the west into precipitating WWIII than own up to the fact that the aggressive anti-Russian actions of his own government fostered the calamity that now besets his country. Those foolish actions include his pledges to forcibly take back Crimea, join NATO, and re-acquire nukes – along with the launch, before Russia’s February 24th invasion, of an all-out offensive against the Russian-speakers of the Donbas.

So let us repair to the fundamentals. To wit, the intramural conflict between Russians and Ukrainians in the historic borderlands of Russia has no bearing whatsoever on the liberty and security of the American homeland. Yet here was the GOP leadership pledging America’s unstinting support in treasure, if not blood, for a regime in Kiev that is only slightly less corrupt and authoritarian than Putin’s strongman kleptocracy in Moscow.

And when we say Russia is zero threat to the American homeland we mean that as in none, nada, nichts and nugatory. There exists a MAD (mutual assured destruction) standoff on the nuclear front; and there’s not a snowball’s chance in the hot place that Russia’s pip-squeak economy ($1.6 trillion of GDP versus $24 trillion US GDP and $43 trillion GDP for all of NATO) could ever fund the air, land and sea armada that would be required to vault over the Atlantic and Pacific moats and wage conventional war on the American homeland.

The Washington GOP: War-Besotted Sucklers on the Public Teat

And who do you think will ‘rebuild’ Ukraine?

Then ask…at what price to the country we love?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

What To Do About War?

From the git-go I want everyone to know that I am antiwar…..after seeing the obscenities of war up close and personally I have been against such exercises since 1968…..I can safely state that my opposition has never wavered.

There are times that I feel that I may need to apologize for my stands and writings….but then I check such feelings for most people that try to explain away conflict like Ukraine have never been confronted with the horrors and the fear that only war can present.

Deep down we are all anti-war….

Everyone’s anti-war until the war propaganda starts. Nobody thinks of themselves as a warmonger, but then the spin machine gets going and before you know it they’re spouting the slogans they’ve been programmed to spout and waving the flags the flags they’ve been programmed to wave and consenting to whatever the imperial war machine wants in that moment.

Virtually everyone will tell you they love peace and hate war when asked; war is the very worst thing in the world, and no healthy person relishes the thought of it. But when the rubber meets the road and it’s time to oppose war and push for peace, those who’d previously proclaimed themselves “anti-war” are on the other side screaming for more weapons to be poured into a proxy war that their government deliberately provoked.

This is because the theory of being anti-war is very different from the practice. In theory people are just opposed to the idea of exploding other people for no good reason. In practice they’re always hit with a very intense barrage of media messaging giving them what look like very good reasons why those people need exploding.

https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2022/04/27/everyones-anti-war-until-the-war-propaganda-starts/

That reminds of a line in some movie when a general said “an unused weapon is a useless weapon”….

The antiwar movement, the anti-imperialist movement of America, has nothing to apologize for and obediently doing so now is tantamount to facilitating our own systematic demonization, silencing, and persecution.

There were notable analysts in the independent media, antiwar orbit who called this correctly, predicting a Russian attack, leaving the door wide open to an invasion as a major possibility. Those who apparently assumed American policymakers would choose diplomacy and not ultimately risk the deaths and displacement of millions of Ukrainians and Russians, a possible global economic meltdown, catastrophic destabilization in Europe, or all out brinksmanship between the two greatest nuclear superpowers were unfortunately mistaken.

However, the U.S. antiwar scene has always opposed America’s hostile post-Soviet Union policy of coups, color revolutions, NATO’s eastward expansion menacing the Bear, ringing Russia’s borders and coasts with NATO troops, bases, missiles, tanks, bombers, and warships.

The reason for this is not simply because these policies are plainly unnecessary for American security, abhorrently costly, polluting, and aggressive. These new Cold War policies are condemned rightly because they inevitably lead to war, or more likely nuclear war.

https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/dont-apologize-the-antiwar-movement-was-right/

For those that deplore the conflict because of whatever reasons….there is something that we can do and should press all belligerents to observe (instead of sending aid that only prolongs the conflict)…

  • De-escalate the concept of enemy. An enemy can be reframed, in progressive order, as an adversary, competitor, partner, teacher, and finally your equal.

  • Treat the other side with respect. Otherwise you lose them before you start.

  • Recognize that there is the perception of injustice on both sides. This is a point of agreement adversaries can join in.

  • Be prepared to forgive and ask for forgiveness. Here forgiveness means letting go of your desire for retribution and revenge. This is an act of true courage. Even if you believe that the other side doesn’t deserve forgiveness, you deserve peace.

  • Refrain from belligerence. It will be taken as bullying and arouses renewed antagonism.

  • Use emotional intelligence, which means understanding the other side’s feelings, giving them value, and making them equal to your feelings.

  • Reach out to understand the other side’s values, both personal and cultural. The fog of war descends when two adversaries know nothing about one another. The result is a war based on projections and prejudice. The goal is mutual acceptance. At the deepest level we all want the same things.

  • Refrain from ideological rhetoric over politics and religion.

  • Recognize that there is fear on both sides. Don’t be afraid to express your anxieties and to ask the other side what they are afraid of.

  • Do not insist on being right and proving the other side wrong. Give up the need to be right allows you to focus on what you actually want.

(choprfafoundation.org)

There are ways to address war (for those that cannot see the necessity)…..War can be devastating, and it can wreak havoc on entire societies for decades and generations. And sometimes, no good even comes out of the long years of fighting and staggering national losses. Many people oppose war, but don’t know how to take action to stop it. There are a variety of things you can do to take a stand against war.

https://www.wikihow.com/Take-Action-to-Stop-War

You can make a difference…..but only if you try….time for the American people to stop being an observer and take damn action.

There are antiwar people in both parties…..they should put aside squabbles and work together….after all they have no problem finding cooperation when they throw money at the wars around us.

Why cannot they just be friends…..at least for awhile…..

Many within the commentariat are confused by this perplexing alliance. Some have slandered this relationship as a tenuous “Red-Brown coalition.” Such characterization is an unfortunate (if not an intentional) mischaracterization of this budding partnership. Left-wing opponents to the foreign policy status quo are not communists. Nor are the ranks of the right overpopulated with Nazis. Instead, the two wings of dissent are the inheritors of distinct but often overlapping strains of foreign policy opposition. Both traditions are firmly rooted in the American experience; neither are alien imports of a totalitarian ideology.

The reemergence of both strains signals a return to an earlier norm where opposition to U.S. foreign policy was not a definitive litmus test for a party or ideological affiliation. Understanding this history and how they came to be consumed by partisan politics should reassure those who desire a change in how the U.S. government conducts itself abroad.

Why Can’t We Be Friends? The History of and Prospects for Left and Right Antiwar Collaboration

Plus the antiwar movement needs to become more international than it is today…..

A ceasefire between the warring parties, a Russian withdrawal, a halt to arms shipments, a negotiated peace and an end to NATO. This is what the international left should be organizing around in regards to the Russia-Ukraine war. It shouldn’t be calling for stepped up arms shipments to Ukraine’s military or defending Moscow’s invasion. When all is said and done and this war is stopped, the most likely situation for the vast majority of Ukrainian working people will be one where their greatest enemy could well be the Ukrainian government. Likewise, if the war goes on long enough, the greatest enemy of the vast majority of Russian working people could well be their government. The oligarchs in both nations will still be oligarchs, while the Russian and Ukrainian people will bear the costs—human, financial, and otherwise—for the war.

If the reader thinks the current conflict will somehow end with a different outcome, they need to revisit the history of war, especially war of the modern kind. You know, where civilian populations are bombed, conscripts are forced to kill and die in the thousands; where international bankers make loans to all sides until the battle begins. All the while generals and politicians talk nonsense about the principles being defended as if most of them had any principles that couldn’t be purchased.

We Need an International Antiwar Movement, Not a Cheerleading Squad for the Arms Industry

As I have stated many times I will not apologize for my antiwar stand….mine came from experience not not some fad that is popular

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“lego ergo scribo”