Tag: Antiwar

Opposing The War Machine

Anti-war is a movement dear to my heart for I was a participant in the 1970s after I returned from Vietnam….it pains me to see just how compliant the American people have become to the nightmare of war….but there are some that will not look the other way because they are told to do so…..

Let’s revive the movement on a massive scale….especially now when the government is staring war after war with no clear reason other than their lies and misinformation.

Time for Americans to return to the days of confrontating the war machine….

The war resides mostly in the background here in the aggressor nation. Most of those who think about it at all tend to oppose it and seem to think it’s a task forced on the US by the zealots running Israel. Some take it even further, presenting an argument that blames the relationship between the mad rulers of Israel and the United States for the entire catastrophe. The argument varies, but its essence is that Bibi Netanyahu is the individual responsible for convincing the sundowning Donald Trump to bomb Iran for the sake of Israel. There are those who argue that the reason for this is because Israel’s Mossad has compromising materials on Trump and his escapades with Jeffrey Epstein, while others place Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner in the role of instigator. Of course, no one has produced a smoking gun for either possibility, even though both have a potential element of truth. It is likely that Epstein had some working relationship with Mossad and it’s an established fact that Kushner’s family have a long-term relationship with Netanyahu. Furthermore, Kushner is financially connected to Saudi Arabia and UAE’s monarchies. It’s an established fact that Israel, the Arab monarchies and the United States all oppose the Iranian government—its support of national liberation and anti-imperialist movements and its existence in general. Furthermore, all of these governments are more interested in maintaining the political situation in West Asia as it is and has been for decades. They are not interested in bringing popular democracy to the region, with some more than willing to maintain a constant state of war and occupation to maintain the current hierarchy of power.

https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/oppose-the-war-and-its-machinery/

To build a sustained anti-war movement one must look to the past and its many failures….

Before discussing the strengths and failures of the last major anti-war movement, we need to step back and look at US history. What that history shows is that the inability to build and sustain an anti-war movement or mass presence is directly linked to the absence of what one might call an anti-imperial/pro-democratic foreign policy on the part of progressive movements. As a result, those who adhere to the notion of a need for peace and justice find ourselves in a Groundhog Day scenario on a regular basis, trying our best to ignite or reignite a mass movement against US aggression each time that aggression raises its ugly head.

https://www.thenation.com/article/activism/anti-war-movement-history/

The only way to make sure that there is always opposition to any worthless war we need a movement that will be there for the long run and not one we need to rebuild with every war the government decides it needs to fight.

We need this movement now more than ever…..we cannot turn our backs on the opposition to senseless violence in the name of our country.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Only The Best For Our Boys

That disgusting individual in the White House likes to portray himself in some sort of delusional light of patriotism….and he is always going on about that he is doing the absolute best for our troops.

I came across this article about the food being served to our troops off Iran waiting in ships to be deployed…..

Some stellar food prep…..

Napoleon Bonaparte is credited with proclaiming that “an army marches on its stomach”.

Yet, the maxim that military success depends on well-fed soldiers seems not to have reached those in charge of American armed forces in the Gulf.

US marines deployed to the Middle East – poised to strike Iran if a fragile ceasefire collapses – are complaining of dwindling rations and inedible food.

One “meal” – photographed on the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier – consists of what appears to be a pre-cooked gyros slice, a pile of an unknown brown substance and some boiled carrots.

Another picture, taken on the USS Tripoli, shows a spoonful of shredded meat and a single tortilla on tray.

The USS Tripoli, an amphibious assault ship with 3,500 marines and sailors onboard, has been at sea since leaving its base in Okinawa, Japan, for the Middle East more than a month ago. It is engaged in Donald Trump’s blockade of Iranian ports.

One marine told her father that food was being rationed, the coffee machines were broken, and fresh vegetables and fruit had long disappeared.

Dan, 63, a veteran marine, told USA Today: “We have the strongest military in the world. You shouldn’t be running out of food, and you shouldn’t not be able to get mail on the ship.”

Postal deliveries to serving troops in the Middle East were temporarily suspended after the US and Israel attacked Iran on Feb 28. By April, the service was suspended indefinitely because of what the military called “airspace closures” and “logistical impacts” of the war.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2026/04/17/trumps-troops-served-tortilla-spoonful-meat-trays-navy/

The photos in the article are as disgusting as the asshole that is doing this top them.

I mean even MREs or C rats would be better than that plate of puke from Donny.

They say moral is super low among the troops and that could explain this story…..

Bill Galvin has spent much of the past month answering the phone.

“It’s been very, very busy,” he says. Galvin is the counseling director at the Center on Conscience and War, which helps run the 24-hour GI Rights Hotline, set up to inform service members of their options for military discharge.

Most callers are asking how to apply to become a conscientious objector — a difficult, invasive and rarely used process. But they’re also airing their concerns and frustrations, often anonymously, as the hotline allows them a space to do so without repercussions.

Military members are citing myriad reasons for wanting to leave, but the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran has been a powerful motivator. In March alone, Galvin’s center took on more than 80 new clients — almost twice as many as it takes on in an average year. The busiest single day saw 12 new clients join, with one person saying four other members of their platoon were also interested.

https://www.alternet.org/conscientious-objector/

https://www.npr.org/2026/04/10/nx-s1-5771612/military-iran-war-trump-conscientious-objector

I say good for you and go for it….if enough stop fighting maybe the old bastards will do the dying…..we could use a few less.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Why Is Antiwar Bad?

Since my return from Vietnam in 1970 I have been antiwar….after witnessing the brutality, devastation and death I made my choice to not support war and I have been unapologetic since those early days of my youth.

When I returned I joined the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW)…..and to this day I feel the country owes us a debt of gratitude…..

Veterans have and continue to play, an important role in instigating social and political change in this country. One such group of veterans is the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, or VVAW: a movement of military veteran activist who, while struggling to heal from the psychological, emotional, and moral injuries of war, demanded through protests and demonstrations that our leaders fulfill their obligation to help veterans address their physical and mental health challenges, find alternative resolutions to conflict, and to bring an immediate end to the war in Southeast Asia.

Soldiers coming home from war joined VVAW members in speaking out through their poetry, short stories, novels, memoirs, and testimony to Congress and the American people about their experiences in war and afterward. Their intention was to educate the public about the horrific battlefield conditions they experienced while fighting America’s war in Vietnam, the nightmarish atrocities against innocent civilians that in many cases they may have committed, and the lack of care and horrendous conditions they suffered at Veterans Administration (VA) hospitals upon their return home.

This Nation Owes a Debt to the Vietnam Veterans Against the War

Fast forward to today….

I have not seen the need for the US to involve itself in the wars of the Balkans, Iraq, Afghanistan and all those minor incursions to include Ukraine of today.

Because of my antiwar stance I have received a lot of grief and chastisement for my opposition….everything from it is human nature to save the world for democracy and defense of the country…..yada yada.

None of which I will agree to at any point.

Many pro-war people see us antiwar activists as somehow anti-American and/or anti-democratic…..this is just plain wrong.  I have been told this on several occasions….at least these psuedo-patriots have not used the old say, ‘America love it or leave it’ that was their favorite back in the day when they had no answer for the questions asked.

The media which is mostly owned by the M-IC has lead the charge to sideline any dissent….with little to no coverage when there is a mass protest against the US involvement in these wars of adventure.

Most people get their confused and false ideas from the media and the lack of quality information and when that info is available if it does not conform to what has been instilled in the minds they lash out with idiotic reason why antiwar is not in the country’s interest.

With the Ukraine thing antiwar disclaimers, I have done so on numerous occasions, as to let the reader know that they are not pro-Putin…but these disclaimers are unnecessary…..

Over the last seventeen months, it’s become customary for those who disagree with US foreign policy on the Ukraine war to preface every objection to that policy with at least one, possibly two, disclaimers.

Disclaimer #1: The Russian invasion, they’ll concede, was “unprovoked.”

Optional Disclaimer #2: The Russian invasion, they’ll say, was “unjustified.”

I understand the impulse. They’re trying to preemptively communicate that they are “anti-war” or “anti-intervention” without being mistaken for horror of horrors, “pro-Russia.”

But those disclaimers are neither necessary nor wise.

The Russian invasion was not “unprovoked.”

For one thing, to “provoke” is, per Merriam-Webster, “to incite to anger” or to “arouse to a feeling or action.” Who decides whether Party A has been “incited” or “aroused” by Party B? Party A.

For another, Ukraine, NATO, and the US had been put on notice for quite some time (at least eight years, and actually more like 20) that Russia considered their actions provocative … and chose to continue down the same route rather than backing off or negotiating an amicable solution. The provocations were, in other words, both ongoing and intentional, not just occasional accidents.

To say that an action is “provoked,” though, is not the same thing as saying that the action is “justified.”

You might “incite me to anger” by singing loudly every time you walk past my house, but that doesn’t mean I’m justified in getting out my 12-gauge and sending you to your grave. Cutting me off in traffic may justify a honk of the horn and a selected obscenity or two. It doesn’t justify following you home and burning your house down.

Opposing War: No Disclaimers Required

I will forever remain antiwar….if that is too difficult for mental midgets to grasp then it is on them…..for it is not my problem.

I have taken my stance and shall remain firmly rooted in antiwar….

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Non-Interventionists Are Bad!

I believe I have been chastised.

I guess to some my thoughts would make me a non-interventionists…..to others I am something worse….

I think there might be a slight deference in opinion and a ‘modern’ definition of the term that goes lacking.

To me it appears that to some if you have an opinion that is different than theirs then I must be labeled or insulted which is okay I have been insulted by many and even worse than the crap spread by some.

I bring this up because I have been labeled (well people like me so that means me) by the Secretary of War, Lloyd Austin, in his speech to Congress to scam more funds for war out of them.

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin has hit out at Americans who prefer a less interventionist foreign policy, smearing them as isolationists who want to see the US “retreat from responsibility.”

Austin, a former Raytheon board member, made the comments in a speech at the Reagan National Defense Forum in California on Saturday.

“You know, in every generation, some Americans prefer isolation to engagement—and they try to pull up the drawbridge. They try to kick loose the cornerstone of American leadership,” Austin said.

The Pentagon chief accused less interventionist Americans of trying to “undermine the security architecture that has produced decades of prosperity without great-power war.” However, most opponents of the US involvement in Ukraine are against the policy because it risks a direct clash with Russia.

In his rhetoric, Austin appeared to be targeting Republicans in Congress who have opposed additional funding for Ukraine, although the vast majority of GOP members against the proxy war with Russia favor funding Israel’s onslaught in Gaza and the military buildup in the Asia Pacific that risks war with China.

“And you’ll hear some people try to brand an American retreat from responsibility as bold new leadership. So when you hear that, make no mistake: It is not bold. It is not new. And it is not leadership,” Austin said.

Austin went on to urge Congress to pass a full-year appropriations bill and to approve President Biden’s behemoth $106 billion spending request that includes military aid for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan.

“You know, our competitors don’t have to operate under continuing resolutions. And so, doing so erodes both our security and our ability to compete,” he said. “And I also urge you to pass our urgent supplemental budget request to help fund our national-security needs, to stand by our partners in danger, and to invest in our defense industrial base.”

(antiwar.com)

First, Let’s look at the world today……

a report published Wednesday by the Costs of War Project at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs shows that since 2021, the U.S. military has conducted counterterrorism operations—including training and assistance, military exercises, combat and detention, and air and drone strikes—in at least 78 countries.

The publication also identifies 30 countries where the United States “conducted formal, named military exercises to project
force locally and rehearse scenarios of combating ‘terrorists’ or ‘violent extremist organizations,” and 73 nations where the U.S. government “trained and/or assisted military, police, and/or border patrol forces.”

(commondreams.org)

Some Congressman, name eludes me, has stated for the record in a hearing the “We are not at war”….I think the reality will contradict his ignorant statement..

So more on my thoughts….

I have never said we should withdraw from international relations….just that too much cash is being poured into war when it should be poured into programs that benefit the American people….not some dilettante halfway around the world.

I know some will disagree by saying that any dip in our monetary support will benefit our foes….and that is the same manure they have been spreading since 1945….I think they are mistaken.

For god’s sake get a new playbook.

I feel that if there is a situation in whatever region of the globe then the regional residents should tackle the situation not wait for the US to fund their operations.

I am not saying withdraw from the world just use other methods other than enriching an already profit heavy industry.

Am I a non-interventionist…..then NO!  Lloyd should spend more time on his grammar than being up the M-IC’s ass trying to cut a deal when he gets out of office.

So Mr. Lloyd when you come up with a better insult please let me know for I am on pins and needles waiting for the next barrage of ignorance.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Trump’s Agenda47

My friend and fellow blogger, John over at https://limingslynkz8.blog/ knowing how much I hate war has sent me a link to something Trump is proposing during a campaign stop….

Something that Trump calls Agenda47…..keep in mind that this is from his website….

President Trump presided over an era of Peace through Strength and was the only President in generations who did not start a war during his term. He rejected the catastrophic advice of many of Washington’s generals, bureaucrats, and diplomats who only know how to get America into unnecessary conflicts.

“For decades, we’ve had the very same people, such as Victoria Nuland and many others just like her, obsessed with pushing Ukraine toward NATO, not to mention the State Department’s support for uprisings in Ukraine,” President Trump. “These people have been seeking confrontation for a long time, much like the case in Iraq and other parts of the world, and now, we’re teetering on the brink of World War III. And a lot of people don’t see it, but I see it, and I’ve been right about a lot of things.”

“Take a look at the globalist warmonger donors backing our opponents. That’s because they’re candidates of war. I am the President who delivers peace, and it’s peace through strength. There was a reason we had no conflict, there was a reason we didn’t get into wars, because other countries respected us.”

Transcript:

World War III has never been closer than it is right now. We need to clean house of all of the warmongers and America-Last globalists in the Deep State, the Pentagon, the State Department, and the national security industrial complex.

One of the reasons I was the only president in generations who didn’t start a war is that I was the only president who rejected the catastrophic advice of many of Washington’s Generals, bureaucrats, and the so-called diplomats who only know how to get us into conflict, but they don’t know how to get us out.

For decades, we’ve had the very same people, such as Victoria Nuland and many others just like her, obsessed with pushing Ukraine toward NATO, not to mention the State Department’s support for uprisings in Ukraine. These people have been seeking confrontation for a long time, much like the case in Iraq and other parts of the world, and now, we’re teetering on the brink of World War III. And a lot of people don’t see it, but I see it, and I’ve been right about a lot of things. They all say, “Trump’s been right about everything.”

None of this excuses in any way the outrageous and horrible invasion of Ukraine one year ago, which would have NEVER happened if I was your president—not even a little chance. But it does mean that here in America, we need to get rid of the corrupt globalist establishment that has botched every major foreign policy decision for decades, and that includes President Biden, whose own people said he’s never made a good decision when it comes to looking at other countries and looking at wars. We have to replace them with people who support American interests.

Over our 4 years in the White House, we made incredible progress in putting the America-Last contingent aside and bringing the world to peace—and now, we’re going to complete the mission. The State Department, Pentagon, and National Security Establishment will be a very different place by the end of my administration. In fact, just into my administration it’ll be a very different place, and it’ll get things done just like I did four years ago. We never had it so good. We’ll also stop the lobbyists and the big defense contractors from going in and pushing our senior military and national security officials toward conflict, only to reward them when they retire with lucrative jobs—getting paid millions and millions of dollars.

Take a look at the globalist warmonger donors backing our opponents. That’s because they’re candidates of war. I am the President who delivers peace, and it’s peace through strength. There was a reason we had no conflict, there was a reason we didn’t get into wars, because other countries respected us. I entirely built all right from the beginning—rebuilt our military. It’s a big reason for that. They didn’t want to mess around with the United States, and now they’re laughing at us. We could end the Ukraine conflict in 24 hours with the right leadership. At the end of my next four years, the warmongers, and frauds, and failures in the senior ranks of our government will all be gone, and we will have a new group of competent national security officials who believe in defending America’s vital interests above all else.

Thank you very much.

I thank my friend John for turning me on to this….and now for my take on his proposal.

While I agree with just about every word of this statement I just think it is manure for the public.

I cannot see a person who moves money more than young women would turn his back on lobbyists that have buckets of cash to give away.

To me it is a bullshit promise that will go nowhere.

Any thoughts?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Daniel Ellsberg R.I.P.

For most people this name may mean nothing to them….but for me it is the loss of an antiwar icon.

Daniel Ellsberg, antiwar activist dead at 94….

Daniel Ellsberg, the history-making whistleblower who by leaking the Pentagon Papers revealed longtime government doubts and deceit about the Vietnam War and inspired acts of retaliation by President Richard Nixon that helped lead to his resignation, has died at age 92. Ellsberg, who announced in February that he was terminally ill with pancreatic cancer, died Friday morning, according to a letter from his family released by spokeswoman Julia Pacetti, per the AP.

Until the early 1970s, when he revealed that he was the source for the stunning media reports on the 47-volume, 7,000-page Defense Department study of the US role in Indochina, Ellsberg was a well-placed member of the government-military elite. He was a Harvard graduate and self-defined “cold warrior” who served as a private and government consultant on Vietnam throughout the 1960s, risked his life on the battlefield, received the highest security clearances and came to be trusted by officials in Democratic and Republican administrations. He was especially valued, he would later note, for his “talent for discretion.”

The Pentagon Papers had been commissioned in 1967 by then-Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara, a leading public advocate of the war who wanted to leave behind a comprehensive history of the US and Vietnam and to help his successors avoid the kinds of mistakes he would only admit to long after. The papers covered more than 20 years, from France’s failed efforts at colonization in the 1940s and 1950s to the growing involvement of the US, including the bombing raids and deployment of hundreds of thousands of ground troops during Lyndon Johnson’s administration. Ellsberg was among those asked to work on the study, focusing on 1961, when the newly-elected President John F. Kennedy began adding advisers and support units.

First published in the New York Times in June 1971, with the Washington Post, the Associated Press, and more than a dozen others following, the classified papers documented that the US had defied a 1954 settlement barring a foreign military presence in Vietnam, questioned whether South Vietnam had a viable government, secretly expanded the war to neighboring countries, and had plotted to send American soldiers even as Johnson vowed he wouldn’t.

As important as the Pentagon Papers were in my day sadly we as Americans have learned NOTHING from the publishing the documents…..

…

Why is it that many Americans still want to believe the unbelievable denials of the State Department and Pentagon when it comes to Nordstream?  Why is it that the mainstream media today is no longer a watchdog but functions as an echo chamber for governmental propaganda, or worse, when the media becomes an attack dog that intimidates and censors those who dissent from the official narrative?  What has happened to the New York Times, Washington Post and most of the “quality press” over the past 50 years?  It seems that only the US government has learned from the Pentagon Papers, has adapted to better control the risk of disclosure, to better dissimulate crimes, and learned how to keep the mainstream media on the leash, so that when a prominent Professor at Colombia University and Advisor of four UN Secretary Generals, Jeffrey Sachs, disagrees with the official line, he gets yanked off the air for saying the obvious – that the US was behind the blowing up of Nordstream.[25] While the revelations in the Pentagon Papers are of enormous and urgent relevance to our perception of the war in Ukraine, the US government determines the music, and those who do not want to dance to their tune are ignored, defamed, ridiculed.

Daniel Ellsberg was and is on the right side of history and common sense when he reminds us that notwithstanding all the narrative management by our government  “A failing war is just as profitable as a winning one… It’s the old Latin slogan, Cui Bono, who benefits?…We’re not after all a European nation and we have no particular role in the European Union. But in NATO—that’s as the Mafia says Cosa Nostra, our thing—we control NATO pretty much and NATO gives us an excuse and a reason to sell enormous amounts of arms now to the formerly Warsaw Pact nations…Russia is an indispensable enemy.”[26]

Today, more than ever, we need a free press, but we do not have it.  We need investigative journalists like Seymour Hersh, but they are an almost extinct species. We need a vigorous alternative media that gives us the information that the “quality press” suppresses. We need academics with courage and intellectual honesty like Professors Nils Melzer[27], John Mearsheimer[28], Jeffrey Sachs, Richard Falk, who accept the factum that they must pay a price for their commitment to truth and the rule of law.  We need whistleblowers who know exactly what happened with the bombing of the Nordstream Pipelines.  Silence in such cases is not honourable. It means covering-up terrorist activities.

Lessons Not Learned From the Pentagon Papers

Dan Ellsberg has never rested on his laurels. Those who take seriously the danger of nuclear war are also deeply indebted to him for his The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner (2017). That unique book is even more important today than when first published.

His voice will be sadly missed….at least for those that pay attention to the world around them.

With deepest sorrow we saw good-bye to an icon.

May he rest in peace.

“lego ergo scribo”

End Of An Era

The news has come out that effects me and anyone who participated in the antiwar movement from the 70s.

The person that released the secret info to the public through the Pentagon Papers has very little time left in this world.

The “Pentagon Papers”?

This is for those too young to give a shit about this historic incident.

The Pentagon Papers, officially titled Report of the Office of the Secretary of Defense Vietnam Task Force, is a United States Department of Defense history of the United States’ political and military involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1967. Released by Daniel Ellsberg, who had worked on the study, they were first brought to the attention of the public on the front page of The New York Times in 1971.  A 1996 article in The New York Times said that the Pentagon Papers had demonstrated, among other things, that the Johnson Administration had “systematically lied, not only to the public but also to Congress.”  (Some things never change…think Ukraine you dullards)

The Pentagon Papers revealed that the U.S. had secretly enlarged the scope of its actions in the Vietnam War with coastal raids on North Vietnam and Marine Corps attacks—none of which were reported in the mainstream media. For his disclosure of the Pentagon Papers, Ellsberg was initially charged with conspiracy, espionage, and theft of government property; charges were later dismissed, after prosecutors investigating the Watergate scandal discovered that the staff members in the Nixon White House had ordered the so-called White House Plumbers to engage in unlawful efforts to discredit Ellsberg.

(wikipedia)

Daniel Ellsberg is dying.

Daniel Ellsberg, who copied and leaked documents that revealed secret details of US strategy in the Vietnam War and became known as the Pentagon Papers, said he has terminal cancer and months to live. Ellsberg posted on his Facebook page Thursday that doctors diagnosed the 91-year-old with inoperable pancreatic cancer on Feb. 17 following medical scans. Doctors say he has three to six months to live, he said. Ellsberg said he has opted not to undergo chemotherapy and plans to accept hospice care when needed, the AP reports.

The documents in the Pentagon Papers looked in excruciating detail at the decisions and strategies of the Vietnam War. They told how US involvement was built up steadily by political leaders and top military brass who were overconfident about US prospects and deceptive about the accomplishments against the North Vietnamese. Ellsberg, a former consultant to the Defense Department, provided the Pentagon Papers to Neil Sheehan, a reporter who broke the story for the New York Times in June 1971. Sheehan died in 2021. Sheehan smuggled the documents out of the Massachusetts apartment where Ellsberg had stashed them, illicitly copied thousands of pages, and took them to the Times.

President Richard Nixon’s administration got a court injunction arguing national security was at stake and publication was stopped. In June 1971, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of allowing publication, and the Times and the Washington Post resumed printing stories. The Nixon administration tried to discredit Ellsberg, an effort that included Nixon aides orchestrating a break-in at the office of Ellsberg’s psychiatrist. Ellsberg was charged with theft, conspiracy, and violations of the Espionage Act, but his case ended in a mistrial when evidence surfaced about government-ordered wiretappings and break-ins. “When I copied the Pentagon Papers in 1969, I had every reason to think I would be spending the rest of my life behind bars. It was a fate I would gladly have accepted if it meant hastening the end of the Vietnam War,” Ellsberg wrote.

This is a letter from Daniel Ellsberg to his supporters….

Dear friends and supporters,

I have difficult news to impart. On February 17, without much warning, I was diagnosed with inoperable pancreatic cancer on the basis of a CT scan and an MRI. (As is usual with pancreatic cancer – which has no early symptoms – it was found while looking for something else, relatively minor). I’m sorry to report to you that my doctors have given me three to six months to live. Of course, they emphasize that everyone’s case is individual; it might be more, or less.

I have chosen not to do chemotherapy (which offers no promise) and I have assurance of great hospice care when needed. Please know: right now, I am not in any physical pain, and in fact, after my hip replacement surgery in late 2021, I feel better physically than I have in years! Moreover, my cardiologist has given me license to abandon my salt-free diet of the last six years. This has improved my quality of life dramatically: the pleasure of eating my former favorite foods! And my energy level is high. Since my diagnosis, I’ve done several interviews and webinars on Ukraine, nuclear weapons, and first amendment issues, and I have two more scheduled this week.

As I just told my son Robert: he’s long known (as my editor) that I work better under a deadline. It turns out that I live better under a deadline!

Living on a Deadline in the Nuclear Age. Some Personal News From Daniel Ellsberg

This man meant a lot to us in the movement….his guts and his drive has been an inspiration for all us that are concerned about the state of our war machine.

His voice will be missed….there are so few voices left in the antiwar movement…..and these days we need all we can get.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

War, It’s Dark Is Worst Than It’s Light

Finally there is a call to arms over Ukraine….Sunday 19Feb23….a protest.

I was one of those ‘pinkos’ as we were called back in the day……when I returned from Vietnam I got deeply into the antiwar scene and since those days I have never wavered from my belief that war is a last result.

Step back into history for all those that have short memories….

Consider just one long-gone date in the world of give-peace-(not-war)-a-chance: January 27, 1973. On that day, the United States, North Vietnam, South Vietnam, and the South Vietnamese rebel forces signed an agreement initiating a cease-fire during which the U.S. would withdraw its troops and dismantle all its bases in the South. On that very same day in this country, the draft was ended, launching what would become America’s all-volunteer military. Richard Nixon was still president then. He had long been convinced, as Andrew Glass wrote at Politico, that “ending the draft could be an effective political weapon against the burgeoning antiwar movement. He believed middle-class youths would lose interest in protesting the war once it became clear that they would not have to fight, and possibly die, in Vietnam.”

Though it was already too late for Nixon to test out that thesis in terms of America’s disastrous war in Vietnam, almost half a century later, it seems as if he was onto something. I was in that “burgeoning antiwar movement” of the late 1960s and early 1970s; turned in my draft card in protest; was often in the streets demonstrating against the war; and worked as an antiwar journalist at a time when, among others, both rebellious students and antiwar soldiers demonstrated repeatedly, often in significant numbers, against a first-class horror thousands of miles away.

In this century, we haven’t exactly lacked Vietnam equivalents. After all, in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, the administration of President George W. Bush launched its Global War on Terror and, with it, two fiercely destructive distant conflicts that could have been considered Vietnam-competitive. I’m thinking, of course, of the invasions of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003. The devastating war in Iraq following that invasion continued for years, while the one in Afghanistan only ended (disastrously) in August 2021. And yet here was the odd thing: though there were large antiwar protests in February 2003 against the coming invasion of Iraq and more followed after that war began, unlike in the Vietnam era, they died out all too soon, while this country’s conflicts went grimly on (and on and on).

Originally posted at TomDispatch.

I see that I am one of a very few these days that opposes war…..so what happened to us antiwar people?

This is the American Conservatives take on my question….

On Feb. 15, 2003, 14 million people poured into the streets of 800 cities worldwide to oppose the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. It was a preemptive response to the preemptive war hatched by Bush administration, and according to the Guinness Book of World Records, it was the largest protest ever in human history. Yet the 2003 protest was also a swan song of sorts: the movement that gave rise to it is now all but defunct—namely, the antiwar left.

Two decades later, as U.S. hawks press for relentless escalation against nuclear Russia, and as European leaders unfailingly toe Washington’s line, there is no major movement of the left to channel dissent. Nor are there commanding antiwar figures comparable in stature to the likes of Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Labour M.P. Tony Benn, who spoke for the movement in 2003. Old antiwar groups, like the ANSWER Coalition, are either silent or struggling to be heard.

Some two-dozen House progressives on Monday called for diplomacy, but antiwar leftists who championed the likes of Sen. Bernie Sanders and The Squad must surely be disappointed, as the few elected socialists on Capitol Hill dutifully voted “Yes” on one massive Ukraine military-aid package after another. Some veteran left-of-center restrainers, meanwhile, such as former Ploughshares Fund boss Joe Cirincione, sound downright Kristolian, what with the calls to smoke out a “pro-Putin axis.”

Whatever Happened to the Antiwar Left?

I have been saddened by the lack of concern for our propensity for endless war…..but that could change (he said with fingers crossed)….

On February 19, Washington, DC, will witness a protest against the war in Ukraine that marks a sharp departure from past demonstrations. The lead demand is simple and direct, “Not One More Penny for war in Ukraine.” It is a demand that emphasizes what we in the US can do to end the war, not what others can do. After all, the only government we have the power to influence is our own.

Above and beyond that demand, the potential power of this unique and promising movement arises from the nature of the sponsoring organizations – The Peoples Party, a progressive new Party, and the Libertarian Party. It is in fact what much of the press would term a “right-left” Coalition, spanning a spectrum broad enough to actually bring the proxy war in Ukraine to an end. Fittingly, the organizers are calling the protest “Rage Against the War Machine.” With the war in Ukraine putting us the precipice of nuclear Armageddon, “rage” might be considered a mild reaction.

The Peoples Party is probably the lesser known of the two sponsoring organizations, because it’s newer. Its founder and National Chair is Nick Brana, a lead organizer of the protest. Brana was National Coordinator of the Bernie Sanders 2016 campaign, but has turned his back on the Democrats in disgust over the failure progressive Democratic pols to fight for the promises they made. Among the speakers at the Party’s founding convention in 2020 were Cornel West, Chris Hedges, Jimmy Dore and Nina Turner (co-chair of the Sanders 2020 campaign).

The Libertarian Party is better known. It has been around longer and, though small, is the third largest political party in the US by voter registration. The present National Chair, Angela McCardle, is the other lead organizer of the DC protest. In American political life, probably, the best known representative of libertarian values, most notably a principled anti-interventionist stance in foreign policy, is Ron Paul.

Right and Left To Join in D.C. Protest: ‘Not One More Penny for War in Ukraine’

Will this make a difference?

I wish I could be more positive but the American people do not have the capability of understanding the consequences of war anymore.

It is sad.

This country needs a “Rage against the war machine”

Feb. 19: We Need a Huge Rage Against the War Machine

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

MLK: From Vietnam To Ukraine

Yesterday was MLK, Jr Day, a Federal holiday, and I did not post this on his special day because I wanted people to remember him for his stellar work with civil rights and my post is about his antiwar stance.

As an antiwar activist his speeches on the cruelty of war were something I held dear.

In April 1967, Martin Luther King Jr. delivered an eloquent and stirring denunciation of the Vietnam war and US militarism. The speech titled “Beyond Vietnam” is relevant to today’s war in Ukraine.

In the speech at Riverside Church, King talked about how the US had supported France in trying to re-colonize Vietnam. He noted, “Before the end of the war we were meeting 80% of the French war costs.”

When France began to despair in the war, “We encouraged them with our huge financial and military supplies to continue the war.”

King went on to recall that after the French finally left Vietnam, the United States prevented implementation of the Geneva Accord which would have allowed Ho Chi Minh to unite the divided country. Instead, the US supported its preferred South Vietnamese dictator.

The U.S. has played a similar role in blocking compromise solutions and international agreements to the Ukraine conflict. Following Ukraine protests in February 2014, the European Union negotiated an agreement between President Yanukovich and the opposition to have early new elections. The attitude of lead US official Victoria Nuland was crystallized in her secretly recorded comment, “F*** the EU!.” Despite the agreement, a violent bloody coup led by ultra-nationalist Ukrainians was “midwifed”.

The ultra-nationalist coup government immediately started implementing policies hostile to the Russian speaking citizens of Ukraine. The coup and the new policies provoked the conflicts and resistance which have led to the situation today. The coup and policies were abhorred by a majority of Ukrainians, especially in eastern Ukraine. The Russian speaking Ukrainian citizens of Crimea voted overwhelmingly to secede from Ukraine and re-unify with Russia.

The Minsk Accords of 2014 and 2015 were intended to resolve the conflict by granting some autonomy to the the Russian speaking sections in the eastern Donbass but keeping them within Ukraine. Thanks to the admissions of two prominent former European leaders, Angela Merkel and Francois Hollande, we know that the West and their Ukrainian government puppet never intended to implement the Minsk Agreement.

Like the 1954 Geneva Accords regarding Vietnam, the 2014 and 2015 Minsk Agreements on Ukraine were never implemented because Washington did not want a compromise.

MLK: Beyond Vietnam to Ukraine

His words were not heeded in the 60s and they

are still falling on deaf ears.

History does have a way of repeating itself.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Russian Antiwar

This weekend I am focusing on the situation unfolding in Ukraine…..but this post is about the Russian people that are not approving of the war in Ukraine….

I am proud of the Russian people…..they are doing what Americans should be doing…

Thousands of Russians who woke up to the news that their nation had attacked Ukraine took to the streets to protest on Thursday. They found a heavy police presence, with officers breaking up even small gatherings by using loudspeakers to order demonstrators to disperse, the New York Times reports. After access to Pushkinskaya Square in Moscow’s city center was closed off, a few hundred demonstrators lined streets leading to it, at times chanting, “No to war!” OVD Info, a rights group, reported that more than 600 demonstrators were detained. Protests took place across Russia, and the group counted a total of 1,620 people detained in 52 cities, per the AP.

The protesters, some of whom displayed the Ukrainian flag, talked about how disheartened they were by the attack on a neighbor often called a “brotherly nation.” One protester who said, “The world has turned upside down” broke into tears when she saw the square wasn’t packed. “Everyone must be here, it is the only way to show that something monstrous is happening,” she said. Russian celebrities and public figures spoke out, as well. Oxxxymiron, one of the nation’s most popular rappers, urged the creation of an antiwar movement in Russia. “I cannot entertain you when Russian missiles are falling on Ukraine,” he posted on Instagram. The government has promised to punish protesters.

Demonstrations took place in cities around the world. In New York, protesters in Times Square shouted “Stand with Ukraine,” per the AP, while others gathered near the Russian Federation’s UN mission. Protesters also demonstrated in cities including Montreal, Budapest, Mexico City, and Santiago, Chile. Demonstrators burned a Russian passport in Vilnius, Lithuania. In Chicago, an immigration attorney said she’s been receiving calls from Ukrainian Americans trying to help family members back home. “They are absolutely devastated, extremely sad,” she said.

Seriously?

Thousands of Russians protesting the war with Ukraine…..over a thousand arrested for their part in those protests….

Plus the protests are spreading around the world…..

International cities where protests have taken place:

Adana; Amsterdam; Antwerp; Athens; Austin; Barcelona; Bari; Beirut; Berlin; Bern; Brussels; Budapest; Buenos Aires; Cape Town; Chicago; Colombo; Copenhagen; Denver; Dublin; Edinburgh; Frankfurt; Geneva; Houston; Istanbul; Krakow; London; Madrid; Melbourne; Mexico City; Milan; Montreal; Naples; New Delhi; New York City; Nice; Oslo; Ottawa; Paris; Prague; Pretoria; Pristina; Rome; San Francisco; Santiago; Sao Paulo; Stockholm; Sydney; Taipei; Tallinn; Tbilisi; Tel Aviv; The Hague; Tokyo; Turin; Vienna; Vilnius; Warsaw; Washington, DC; Wellington; Zakopane.

Protests have taken place in at least 50 Russian cities including: Chelyabinsk; Moscow; Nizhny Novgorod; Novosibirsk; Perm; Saint Petersburg; Yekaterinburg.

It is a shame that Russians need to show Americans how they should deal with our many many wars….I wish that many Americans had a position on war….which they do not for they allow ours to continue uncontested…..and endlessly.

How sad is that?

Have a great Sunday…..be well and be safe

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”