Endless war is the basis for the abrogation of our civil liberties, the suspension our legal guarantees, and the assault on journalism. It is the cancer that is destroying our democracy, and our passivity is what makes it possible.
We are in the endless war because of the stupidity of American foreign policy beginning with the Reagan Administration, which was notably inept. And, thanks to Dick Cheney and the Neocons, we have transformed what was once a deep affection for Americans in the Arab world, which I experienced in the two years I lived in Egypt in the 70s, into! a deep and abiding hatred which will endure for generations.
They Hate Us, They Really Hate Us MARC LYNCH, Associate Professor of Political science and International Affairs at George Washington University – Foreign Policy
Saudi Arabia: Today, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal said in a statement, “To those who have announced they are cutting their aid to Egypt, or threatening to do that, (we say that) Arab and Muslim nations are rich… and will not hesitate to help Egypt.”
Prince Saud made the statement upon his return from France, where he held talks with President Francois Hollande, who strongly condemned violence in Egypt.
“[Poetry] should strike the Reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost as a Remembrance…” (John Keats)
“And then your life, the life you are telling me about, becomes a short story that had force only because it was viewed from a particular slant, your slant, which you found within the one language you speak…” (The Magician Awakes)
“The greatest sum is no sum at all. It isn’t the addition of facts or numbers. It’s the willingness, for a little while at first, to suspend judgment and consider there are mythic qualities in existence that come from us…myths greater than machines…and in order to give voice to the myths we need to go where poets go. We need to go there badly. For our own sake, we have to put that peculiar precision that splits a tiny particle into smaller and smaller pieces on the shelf for a little while…” (The Magician Awakes)
American President Obama says he deplores the Egyptian junta’s decision to massacre peaceful protesters and declare martial law.
If he deplores it so much, why is he paying for it?
It is no secret that Egyptian strongman el-Sisi and the soldiers he is sending to slaughter protesters are on the US payroll.
According to official estimates, US taxpayers give the Egyptian military 1.3 billion dollars per year in direct military aid. When various forms of indirect aid are taken into account, including money from US puppet states in the Persian Gulf, the real annual total is in the billions.
This lavish US funding has allowed Egypt’s military to balloon into a monster that controls between one-quarter and one-third of the Egyptian economy. That is why Egypt is economically moribund.
Click on Image to Enlarge
Military spending kills economies, as shown by Dr. Robert Reuschlein of RealEconomy.com. Money wasted on militaries, which are non-productive organizations, is stolen from the productive sector. In societies with large militaries, the best scientists, engineers, and other experts stop producing valuable goods and services, and spend their lives figuring out how to destroy things and kill people. And poorer people, instead of becoming productive citizens, are trained to mindlessly obey orders and kill on command. Many of them suffer severe psychological damage that renders them non-productive.
In Egypt, the military’s economic hegemony creates even more problems.
Egypt has inherited a millennia-old authoritarian bureaucratic tradition. Pharaohs, emirs, presidents-for-life, and generals serve as dictators, and their bureaucratic lackeys have the high-status, high-paying jobs. Productive people are considered mere peasants and tradesmen, inferior in status to the bureaucrats.
British colonialism, which imposed a new layer of foreign bureaucracy, worsened the problem. Bright young Egyptians were trained to believe they were owed government jobs when they graduated from college. Widespread belief that “the government owes me a high-paying non-productive job” persists in Egypt. And the military officers and their cronies are the biggest and most bloated parasites.
Peace Operations in Africa: Lessons Learned Since 2000
Given that since 2000 there have been over 50 peace-centered operations conducted in 18 African countries, this brief asks a simple question — what key lessons have we learned from these missions? In answering the question, the brief hones in on seven particular lessons learned, including 1) peace operations must be part of an effective political strategy and not a substitute for one, 2) strategic coordination between a variety of actors is crucial to enhancing the effectiveness of operations, and 3) maintaining legitimacy in the eyes of the ‘relevant audiences' is crucial.
Pauling Lecture, Oregon State University, Power Point
Good evening. I want to thank the committee for inviting me to speak with you this evening—it is such a pleasure to be here.
When I received the letter from Professor Clinton congratulating me on being nominated as the 30th person to receive the Ava Helen and Linus Pauling Memorial Lectureship for World Peace, I was stunned! After I went to the website and read the names of the 29 others who had given this lecture in years past, I became increasingly filled with a sense of honor, humility and gratitude that I had been chosen to follow in the footsteps of such notable intellectuals and activists as ***John Kenneth Galbraith, William Sloane Coffin, Noam Chomsky, Robert Kennedy Jr., and Grace Lee Boggs, not to mention the 8 Nobel Laureates: ***Linus Pauling, Adolfo Perez Esquivel, Mairead Maguire, Oscar Arias Sanchez, Jose Ramos-Horta, Betty Williams, Rigoberta Menchu, and Jody Williams. And now my name was going to be added to this prestigious list. I started feeling a strong sense of burden and responsibility to live up to the honor that had been given me. What could I possibly tell an audience that would be worthy of this lectureship? Even calling it a “lecture” gave me a sense of responsibility that I have not felt with any other speech or presentation that I have given. Although I enjoy telling people that by serving 20 years on Active Duty in the Navy, I am now able to live off of my military pension and work as a full-time volunteer peace activist, I have only been an “activist” for the past 6 years or so—a relative novice compared to so many others who have dedicated their lives to peace and justice. And so, I went very quickly from feeling elated that I had been chosen to give this lecture, to feeling a bit inadequate and unsure of what to say.
But the more I thought about it, the more I came to realize that perhaps I had been chosen to give this lecture precisely because I was not a big name celebrity, or a Nobel Laureate. Maybe I had been chosen because I am like so many of us—just someone who is outraged by injustice, and plugging along in the trenches, trying to exact change on the issues we believe in. Maybe I could use this opportunity to speak with you, not to “lecture” you, but perhaps to encourage and motivate you to realize the power of our potential as activists. The fact is that you don’t have to be a Nobel Laureate to make a difference. The work of most activists will never be recognized outside of their own communities, but we must remember that the power of activism is about all of us contributing a little. These little contributions, when coupled with the actions of others, multiply in their power exponentially.
Current events are an essential tool for learning civics. So today we are going to stay on track with our objectives for a national service with three events of the last few days. The first event was President Obama’s speech to the Convention of the Disabled American Veterans. You can watch it on the White House website, or, you can read the major points at this Stars and Stripes article.
There is nothing objectionable in the President’s remarks. His Administration’s commitment to our soldier/veterans is demonstrably more deeply felt and resourced than that of Mr. W. Bush and Mr. Clinton. In structuring greater transition services for our veterans, his Administration approaches President Reagan’s vision and commitment, abandoned during the first Bush Administration. Nevertheless, the President’s approach amounts to little more than a hardy salute and severance for our veterans. As we have discussed, our military will be shrinking in favor of freeing the Defense budget for buying new hardware, meaning more young people will be entering a shrinking labor market to compete with departing soldiers and laid-off veterans; the long term costs of treating and sustaining our wounded veterans and their families remain unaddressed; and the military structure and the cause for which they had fought are now known by our veterans to be corrupt.
These are continuing psychological and emotional burdens that must be shouldered by our veterans throughout their lives. These are matters unaddressed by the President, as is the potential of our veterans to be valued as the precious national assets we identified last week:
