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Believing in Nuclear Deterrence and Angels
By David Swanson
“Despite the fact that deterrence remains an article of faith among the ‘realists’ who have orchestrated U.S. strategic policy and who continue to do so, despite its incoherence and instability, much of this faith is lip service only, analogous to deeply religious individuals who profess belief in heaven, yet rarely rejoice when a loved one dies. Thus, if the U.S. government really believed in nuclear deterrence — or in the billions of dollars spent on Ballistic Missile Defense — there wouldn’t be such hyperventilating about the threat posed by a nuclear armed North Korea or possibly by Iran in the future.” —David Barash
There’s a webinar coming up on July 9 about nuclear deterrence. I imagine it will be excellent. I’ve also just been reading a fantastic book on the topic called Threats: Intimidation and Its Discontents by David P. Barash. There’s an online book club with the author and free copy of the book coming up for that. Barash’s central thesis is that the idea of nuclear deterrence makes no sense. It’s kind of hard to see why anyone would argue with him.
Thank You to the SXSW Festival for Dumping the U.S. Army
By David Swanson
South by Southwest (SXSW) is an annual conglomeration of parallel film, interactive media, and music festivals and conferences organized jointly that take place in mid-March in Austin, Texas. It has been growing in size since 1987. The festivals just dumped weapons makers and the U.S. Army out the door: “After careful consideration, we are revising our sponsorship model. As a result, the US Army, and companies who engage in weapons manufacturing, will not be sponsors of SXSW 2025.”
Here were the major sponsors in 2024:
This wonderful development is not just something going right (such an unusual sight, in the words of Paul Simon), and not just somebody doing something right in Texas (I’m certain that it happens all the time, in the words of Lennon/McCartney). This is a mainstreaming of opposition to militarism in general — not just a particular weapon or a particular side of a particular war. This is kicking out on their gold-plated ears the profiters from organized mass murder.
The System of Elections in the USA and Political Parties
Dr. Vladislav B. Sotirović
Types of elections
In the USA, elections are organized on a regular basis for the President, both houses of Congress (the House of Representatives and the Senate), and state and local government offices. In practice, candidates in the majority of cases run for office as members of the party (one of two main political parties – the Democrats or the Republicans) in order to get the party’s support for their candidacy. However, in principle, whoever wants to run as an independent candidate can organize a petition. In that case, if it is collected enough signatures, the person can run. According to the electoral law, any American citizen over the age of 18 may vote in an election under conditions that the person is registered and meets the requirements for residency in a state (one out of 50).
Killing of Laken Riley
Laken Riley, 22-year-old American nursing student,
murdered while jogging at the University of Georgia,
On February 22, 2024, Laken Riley, a 22-year-old American nursing student at Augusta University, was murdered while she was jogging at the University of Georgia (UGA) in Athens, Georgia. Her body was found in Oconee Forest Park near Lake Herrick; her death was caused by blunt force trauma and asphyxiation.
The suspect, José Antonio Ibarra, is a 26-year-old Venezuelan who had entered the United States illegally. He was arrested by UGA police and has been charged with 10 charges, including felony murder, malice murder, false imprisonment aggravated assault with intent to rape and kidnapping. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges. A trial is to be held in the fall, but a date has not been set.
Riley's death made international news, generating extensive media attention. It sparked a debate over immigration in the United States after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) confirmed Ibarra is not a U.S. citizen and was caught crossing the border but was released into the United States. On March 7, 2024, the House of Representatives passed an immigration bill named the Laken Riley Act, requiring federal detention of migrants who commit burglary or theft.
Family of woman killed by illegal immigrant files $100 million lawsuit against Biden administration
Kayla Hamilton brutally murdered by MS-13 gang
member caught and released by Biden administration
The family of a 20-year-old woman slain in 2022 will file a $100 million wrongful death lawsuit arguing the Biden administration caught and released an undocumented immigrant who then brutally raped and strangled her with a phone charging cord.
Authorities would later figure out the suspect had MS-13 ties at the time he snuck into the U.S., but he was still caught and released under new relaxed policies the Biden administration implemented to deal with immigrant children without documentation.
“We bring this landmark lawsuit in honor of Kayla to get answers on how this catastrophic failure occurred and help prevent another senseless murder,” said Brian Claypool, the lawyer for Tammy Nobles, Kayla Hamilton’s mother.
Ms. Nobles is slated to testify Thursday to the House Homeland Security as part of impeachment proceedings against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas
In social media posts, Mr. Claypool said the lawsuit will name both Homeland Security, which initially apprehended the juvenile, and Health and Human Services, which released him into the community.
We Prevented an Israeli Weapons Exhibition
Our legal actions and activist mobilizations prevented
Israeli arms companies from exhibiting at Eurosatory 2024
By Stop Fuelling War
A coalition of human rights, anti-armament, arms-control, and Palestine advocacy groups sustained legal and campaign pressure to stop the Israeli pavilion at the world’s biggest arms fair, Eurosatory. Despite the legal complexities and manoeuvring encountered, and the inaccurate media coverage that continues, the central fact is that this coalition ensured that Israeli companies were stopped from exhibiting at the arms fair. It is easy to see that commercial relationships forged at shows like these by Israeli companies and delegations generate billions of euros worth of contracts, strengthening the economic power of the arms companies and, through them, Israel’s war machine. For a few days we managed to have Eurosatory prohibit any employee or agent of these companies, regardless of their nationality, from being present in the hall. At one point, up to 850 participants linked to Israeli arms and security companies had their badges disabled.
Our coalition of associations and collectives across France, Palestine, and beyond have registered a precious victory against the arms industry of a regime engaged in genocidal behaviour in Palestine. Our actions denied it the opportunity to market its ‘combat proven’ products used to sustain war crimes, crimes against humanity, and plausible genocide.
Asymmetric Warfare And Its Characteristics
Dr. Vladislav B. Sotirovic
At least from the very academic viewpoint, war is a condition of armed conflict between at least two sides (but, in fact, states). Historically, there are several types of warfare: conventional warfare, civil war, lightning war (blitzkrieg in German), total war, hegemonic war, liberation war, war on terrorism, etc. However, according to the used warfare technique, there is, for instance, little war (guerrilla war in Spanish) or according to the (counter)balance of warfare sides, there is asymmetric war as an example.
Asymmetric warfare exists in the case when two sides of combat forces (two states, two blocs, a state vs. one military bloc, etc.) are very or even extremely different regarding their military and other capacities to fight each other. They are also very different in terms of their areas of comparative strategic advantage, Therefore, the confrontation between such two different sides is coming to turn on one belligerent side’s ability/capacity to force the other side to fight on their terms and conditions.
Another feature of asymmetric warfare is that the strategies that the weaker side has consistently adopted against the stronger side (enemy) often involve targeting the enemy’s domestic political base as much as its forward military capabilities. Nevertheless, in essence, usually, such strategies involve inflicting pain over time without suffering unbearable retaliation in return.
Horrific new details revealed about Rachel Morin’s brutal rape and murder as suspect denied bail
American woman, Rachel Morin, mother of five.
Her half-sister, Erin Morin Layman, holds the
Biden administration accountable for her murder
Rachel Morin was strangled as well as savagely beaten, it was revealed Friday — as the illegal Salvadorian migrant accused of raping and killing the mom-of-five was denied bail.
Victor Antonio Martinez Hernandez, a 23-year-old suspected gangbanger, attended the Friday hearing via video link from the Harford County Detention Center dressed in a black and white striped jumpsuit with his hands cuffed behind his back.
The court heard that Morin, a 37-year-old mom, was brutally beaten to death and found partially naked after she was attacked on the Ma & Pa Heritage hiking trail in Bel Air, Maryland, on Aug. 4.
The Morin family’s attorney Randolph Rice told The Post after the hearing that the victim’s “badly beaten” body was located in a drainage tunnel the following day.
He said she had “10-15 head wounds and the manner of death was strangulation and blunt force injuries.”
“She was attacked on the trail during her workout and dragged through the woods to the tunnel where she was located,” he added, citing the argument presented by the State’s Attorney at the bail hearing.
Hernandez is charged with first- and second-degree murder, first- and second-degree rape and first- and second-degree assault.
Judge Kerwin A. Miller ruled Friday that Hernandez was a flight risk and a danger to society and noted that he has an ICE detainer and an Interpol Warrant. His bond was denied.
Hernandez declined the opportunity to make a statement as the heartbroken Morin family watched on.
Rice described it as an “emotionally challenging experience for them to see the Defendant on the video screen.”
Why Does the Government Borrow When It Can Print?
by Ellen Brown
In the first seven months of Fiscal Year (FY) 2024, net interest (payments minus income) on the federal debt reached $514 billion, exceeding spending on both national defense ($498 billion) and Medicare ($465 billion). The interest tab also exceeded all the money spent on veterans, education, and transportation combined. Spending on interest is now the second largest line item in the federal budget after Social Security and the fastest growing part of the budget, on track to reach $870 billion by the end of 2024.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, the federal budget deficit was $857 billion in the first seven months of fiscal year 2024. In effect, the government is borrowing at interest to pay the interest on its debt, compounding the debt. For the lender, it’s called “the miracle of compound interest” – interest on interest compounds exponentially. But for the debtor, it’s a curse, compounding like a cancer to the point of devouring assets while still growing the debt. As Daniel Amerman, a chartered financial analyst, writes in an article titled “Could A Compound Interest Wildfire Threaten U.S. Solvency?”:
Opposing Both Israeli and Hamas Killing Is a Model for All Wars
Opposing Both Israeli and Hamas Killing is a model for all Wars
By David Swanson
Of course, millions of people all over the world and in the United States support either Israeli or Hamas warmaking — warmaking which (one must point out the obvious because the very topic of warmaking renders so many people mentally dull) is on a very different scale and of a very different type, one from the other. At the moment, I’m not writing to any of those war supporters.
What interests me is that for a huge number of people, for several months now, it has been the required, proper politics both to oppose Israel’s ongoing genocide and to oppose incidents of mass murder by Hamas.
At the moment, I’d rather not change the subject to allegations of mass rape and exactly how false they were. I do think the obsession of the past century of war commentary with rape, torture, and anything other than killing is of interest in how it normalizes murder. But there isn’t any dispute that both Israel and Hamas have killed people, and for a great many there isn’t any dispute that killing by both sides should be opposed.
