Amidst all the talk about defunding the police, notice something important: No one talks about defunding the military. That’s because the military establishment is too powerful and has come to be accepted as a permanent feature in American life. Except for libertarians, everyone treats the military as their god.
In his famous dissent in Olmstead v. United States, Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis in 1928 called the right to be left alone the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men. He was referring to the right to be left alone from the government — a right that today we call privacy.
Washington’s “Farewell Address” to the new nation was a warning about the threat of American imperial ambitions and a declaration of his high expectations for a republic of free men: “In offering to you, my countrymen, these counsels of an old and affectionate friend, I dare not hope they will make the strong and lasting impression I could wish; that they will control the usual current of the passions, or prevent our nation from running the course which has hitherto marked the destiny of nations. But, if I may even flatter myself, that they may be productive of some partial benefit, some occasional good; that they may now and then recur to moderate the fury of party spirit, to warn against the mischiefs of foreign intrigue, to guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism. …”
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But recognize that you have shamed the legacy of our first president. George Washington, who distinguished the promise of the new world from the corruptions of the old by shunning imperial conquest, said: “Our commercial policy should hold an equal and impartial hand; neither seeking nor granting exclusive favors or preferences; consulting the natural course of things; diffusing and diversifying by gentle means the streams of commerce, but forcing nothing.”
French-Canadian journalist Guy Boulianne has reported on his website that the online database known as Mirotvorets (or Myrtvorets — meaning “Peacekeeper”) has been using a facial recognition technology known as NeuroIdentigraf to improve its search for “enemies of Ukraine” around the globe.
Chris Hedges returned to The Sanctuary for Independent Media in Troy NY on October 21, 2022 to speak on the subject of his latest book, titled “The Greatest Evil is War” (Seven Stories Press). This unflinching indictment of the horror and obscenity of war draws from experience and interviews for a book that looks at the hidden costs of war, what it does to individuals, families, communities, and nations.
[World War I] Pro-war statements and speeches—as well as more coercive measures—gradually captured American public discourse in 1917. Fairly quickly, those who rejected the rationales for United States participation in the war found themselves increasingly isolated. Liberals, intellectuals, and even many socialists soon supported American intervention. A youthful critic in his twenties, Randolph Bourne wrote a bitter essay in the intellectual magazine Seven Arts, lambasting his fellow intellectuals for lining up so readily behind the war effort.
Jan. 6 defendants held in the D.C. jail’s so-called “Patriot Wing” are demanding to be transferred to Guantanamo Bay’s military prison—which is notorious for human rights abuses—because they think it would have better amenities.
China has been, variously described as a rising power, a sleeping dragon and a collapsing economy. Most of the rhetoric is driven from the US. Inside their government, both the Senate and Congress have anti-China hawks, their State Department seems to see a threat at every turning point and their military seems to believe that a defensive People’s liberation Army is a bad thing as it threatens US interests. Books reports and documentaries are created about mass dissatisfaction which extended academic research seems unable to identify.
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