Agnes Edna Ryan once said, “Wars will never cease while men still kill other animals for food, for to turn any living creature into a roast, a steak, a chop, or any other type of ‘meat’ takes the same kind of violence, the same kind of bloodshed, and the same kind of mental processes required to change a living man into a dead soldier.” Born in Stuart, Iowa in 1878, Agnes Ryan was an American pacifist, suffragist, feminist-vegetarian, and an animal rights activist. She also once wrote a piece called The Cancer Bogy, which Carol J. Adams has called the first modern vegetarian health guide. In the early 20th century, Agnes E. Ryan was making connections between meat eating and the killing of human beings in war, as well as shining a light on the links between plant-based diets and feminism, animal welfare, and disease. Wow, I love her already!
Click here to learn more from the University of NH on Agnes Edna Ryan.
Click here for an interview with Carol J. Adams.

Most Americans are desensitized and living in denial when it comes to ongoing wars and our catastrophic food system. It starts in childhood when our feelings of compassion, empathy and curiosity are for the most part crushed, in order to carry the torch of capitalism and militarism from one generation to the next. When it comes to food, it has been my experience that hiding the truth from children has less to do with concern for the child, and a lot more to do with parents and teachers who are not ready to look in the mirror, and consider the meal on their own plates. I can tell you as a former educator, that kids love to learn, and they love animals. We just need to tell them the truth, and watch them soar. We need to do it early however, so that they have less to unlearn. I truly believe that not one of my students (out of nearly 1,000), would choose to harm a single animal, or support animal factories. Not one. So, what is going on?

“Growth for the sake of growth is the ‘ideology’ of the cancer cell.” – Edward Abbey

Unfortunately, capitalism creates a culture of greed, materialism, and unprecedented financial wealth for a tiny group of people (tiny in more ways than one!). And for most of these folks, too much is never enough, and as a result, no life form matters. American capitalism has fed this sickness and produced some of the most powerful, dishonest, and devastating industries and organizations in human history. I am talking about the US military-industrial complex, Big Pharma, Wall Street, US healthcare (sick-care), US corporate media, Industrial Agriculture, and our completely broken and corrupt political and judicial systems (a regular murderers’ row of wickedness, thanks in part to Citizens United).

Unsurprisingly, the majority of US lawmakers in both the senate and congress are millionaires. Former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has seen her net worth jump from $41 million in 2004, to $115 million in 2019. And not to be outdone, Senator Mitch McConnell has seen his wealth increase from $3 million to $34 million in the same time period. Great investors? Hardly. Both people regularly chat with corporate CEOs and have been involved with regulating the financial industry (talk about the foxes guarding the hen house).
Click here to learn more about how capitalism is unsustainable, and destroys life.
Click here to learn more about how many US politicians get rich.

“As long as there are slaughterhouses, there will be battlefields.” – Leo Tolstoy

The grotesque US War Machine will not stop until enough Americans demand that it ends. And the same can be said for Big Ag (industrial agriculture). In the last 60 years, no country has killed more innocent people than the United States of War, and it is not even close. Is it any coincidence then that the US also slaughters over 10 billion beautiful sentient beings each year to support its destructive food system? And don’t believe the lies from the US government, and from the corporate media. The endless wars are never about “promoting democracy” or “protecting our freedom” so much as US control of everything and world domination. Did you know that 1 in 6 Americans now approve of military rule, which is up from 1 in 15 in 1995? How does that happen? Decades of US lies and propaganda (to the extent where fewer people than ever have faith in our so-called democracy). Similarly, most Americans (and medical doctors unfortunately) incorrectly believe that animal product consumption is necessary for good health, when in fact, it is the leading cause of death (along with processed foods). We are told by the “leaders” of the United States, the wealthiest country in the world, that there is no money to address US food insecurity (1 in 5 kids in the US don’t know where their next meal is coming from), homelessness, and a lack of healthcare for close to 90 million Americans (Medicare for All would actually SAVE at least 70,000 lives, and $450 billion per year). But starting wars, illegal invasions and occupations, killing innocent people, and manufacturing, gifting, and selling weapons? Not a problem, as somehow, there is always enough money for those types of endeavors. Yes, Putin is a gangster, but he is no more of a corrupt war criminal than most US leaders (past and present). In fact, so far, he pales in comparison. And yet, here we are again with the US already spending over $100 billion in support of Ukraine (without taxpayer consent of course, and for a war that the US could end at any time). Unfortunately, you will never hear anyone in the US mainstream media point that out or discuss accountability, and the war crimes that have been committed by each US president over the last 70 years. Noam Chomsky once said that if every US president since FDR was held to the same standards as the Nazis at Nuremberg, each one would have been hanged.
Click here to learn more about the link between diet and death.  
Click here for a video of CODEPINK organizer Olivia DiNucci exposing war profiteer Lockheed Martin for its crimes.

Have you ever noticed how US leaders never talk about “peace” or “negotiations”? Why is that? Mr. Chomsky has also explained that the actions of the U.S. government, in places such as Vietnam and elsewhere, are like those of the mafia, where the US can say and do whatever it chooses without consequences. US actions are almost always provided cover by the US corporate media, which operates more and more like a Ministry of Propaganda than a normal news operation. According to Vijay Prashad, “Reports of massacres do make it into the media, but routinely these are the massacres done by the enemies of the United States rather than the massacres conducted by United States personnel. It is always the enemy of the United States that is said to conduct a massacre, but never the United States or its close allies. It is fundamental to U.S. propaganda to ensure that the United States is seen as benevolent.”
Click here for Noam Chomsky & Vijay Prashad’s superb book, Withdrawal: Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and the Fragility of US Power.

“The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing.”
– Albert Einstein

Pulitzer Prize winning author Chris Hedges credits Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky for the concept of “Worthy” and “Unworthy Victims.” Here is an excerpt from his superb book, The Greatest Evil is War, “Rulers divide the world into worthy and unworthy victims, those we are allowed to pity, such as Ukrainians enduring the hell of modern warfare, and those whose suffering is minimized, dismissed, or ignored. The terror we and our allies carry out against Iraqi, Palestinian, Syrian, Libyan, Somali, and Yemeni civilians is part of the regrettable cost of war. We, echoing the empty promises from Moscow, claim we do not target civilians. Rulers always paint their militaries as humane, there to serve and protect. Collateral damage happens, but it is regrettable.” This idea can also be applied to the many people who claim to be animal lovers and will fight to the death for the rights of their dogs and cats (worthy victims), yet not think twice about the hypocrisy & implications of eating a cheeseburger, pork sandwich or chicken wings (cows, pigs, and chickens are considered “unworthy victims”). For them, “unworthy” animals represent little more than a flavor preference and a lifestyle choice. These people have to convince themselves that cows, pigs and chickens are not equal to their beloved dogs and cats, and therefore “unworthy” of any rights, or protections. Sound familiar?
Click here to learn more about Chris Hedges’s book, The Greatest Evil is War.
Click here to learn about Carnism.
Click here to learn more about cognitive dissonance.

“For hundreds of thousands of years the stew in the pot has brewed hatred and resentment that is difficult to stop. If you wish to know why there are disasters of armies and weapons in the world, listen to the piteous cries from the slaughter house at midnight.” — Ancient Chinese verse

And the madness continues. According to Vijay Prashad, the latest US military budget is not $858 billion, but actually $1.5 trillion, when we add in the money that goes towards nuclear weapon development and maintenance (war expenditures that are conveniently left out of the military budget). These enormous “nuclear” costs are instead buried in the Department of Energy budget. Can you imagine? The US government spends more than $1.5 trillion each year, on both weapons and its 800 military bases around the world. “The U.S. Department of Defense”? Please. As per Vijay Prashad, “You can’t tell me that the US government is spending this kind of money on Arms for no reason.”

Here is another excerpt from N. Chomsky and V. Prashad’s excellent book, “The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) maintains detailed records of military spending based on what governments declare in their budgets. In 2021, SIPRI’s report showed that in 2020 the United States spent an estimated $778 billion on its military, an increase of 4.4 percent over 2019. Based on what you just said, this is not an accurate assessment of the total military spending, since it does not include the full amounts tucked into other budgets (Department of Energy, NASA, and various intelligence agencies). Nonetheless, even without these additional amounts in the total, the United States accounts for 39 percent of total military expenditure in 2020. That is, the United States. with 4.25 percent of the world’s population, accounts for almost 40 percent of the world’s military expenditure. The United States can destroy any country in the world. And yet, it seems to consistently be defeated by the world’s peasant armies (Vietnam, Afghanistan). None of these facts, and they are facts that are culled from respectable publications, frame the stories in the major newspapers and for the major television channels and web-based publications.”
Click here to learn more from Vijay Prashad and Katie Halper via The Katie Halper Show.

“In the course of his development towards culture man acquired a dominating position over his fellow-creatures in the animal kingdom. Not content with this supremacy, however, he began to place a gulf between his nature and theirs. He denied the possession of reason to them, and to himself he attributed an immortal soul, and made claims to a divine descent which permitted him to annihilate the bond of community between him and the animal kingdom.”
– Sigmund Freud (1917)

I learned a couple of years ago that the US military also spends close to $700 million a year on predatory advertising, and dangles free college tuition to young military prospects as well. According to Jacobin’s Jordan Uhl, “The US military has a long history of recruiting poor people by offering benefits like free college. With Joe Biden’s partial student debt forgiveness, GOP war hawks are fretting that the military won’t be able to prey on desperate young Americans anymore.” The poor people who work in slaughterhouses are similarly exploited and abused, and thought of in animal like terms.
Click here to learn more about the US military’s predatory advertising.

“While we ourselves are the living graves of murdered beasts, how can we expect any ideal conditions on Earth?”
– George Bernard Shaw

Another overlooked component in the madness of ongoing wars is how animal product consumption can lead to both depression and aggressive behavior. An analysis that was done in 2013 found suicide rates among veterans to be about 30 per 100,000, vs. a civilian rate of 14 per 100,000 (United States veterans were over 2x more likely to commit suicide than members of the general population). I have also recently learned that 5x more veterans have died by suicide since 9/11 than have died in combat or in active duty in any form. Wow. I had always thought that the high suicide rates amongst soldiers was mostly due to the indoctrination, killing, and the pressure to kill or be killed, which would cause any one of us irreparable damage. The connections between what a soldier eats, and how that could compound the emotional and physiological challenges of being told to do insane things, for insane reasons, just never really occurred to me.

According to a study published by Cambridge University, “In a large-scale, population-based, prospective study among Japanese adults, a prudent dietary pattern characterised by a high intake of vegetables, fruits, soy products, potatoes, seaweed, mushrooms and fish was significantly associated with a decreased risk of suicide in all participants. To our knowledge, this is the first study to examine the association between dietary patterns and suicide risk. Implications: A prudent dietary pattern, characterised by a high intake of vegetables, fruits, soy products, potatoes, seaweed, mushrooms and fish, was associated with a decreased risk of suicide among Japanese adults. The present findings suggest that a prudent dietary pattern is important in preventing suicide. Further research among populations with different social backgrounds will be required to confirm our findings.”
Click here for the study titled “Dietary Patterns and Suicide in Japanese Adults”.
Click here for an NPR piece that links anger and irritability with depression.
Click here to learn more about the link between plant-based diets and less depression.
Click here for a study published in the British Medical Journal that found that healthy plant-based diets can alleviate depression.
Click here to learn more from PCRM on how eating plants can help fight the blues.
Click here to learn more about veteran suicides being twice as high as civilian rates.
Click here for an excellent piece from Dr. Michael Greger on food and mood.
Click here to learn more from the Stop Soldier Suicide website.

So, if US soldiers have the highest suicide rates, and animal based diets can lead to depression and aggressive behavior, what are US soldiers fed? Here is a breakdown of the menus for what the military calls Meals Ready to Eat (MRE): Lots and lots of beef, chicken, pork, tuna, sausage, meatballs, eggs, and dairy. Out of 24 menus, none were vegan or entirely plant-based, and only two were vegetarian, which isn’t much of an improvement as cow’s milk is essentially liquid meat.
Click here for the MRE Menus from 2009.

Do you need more evidence on how plant-based nutrition can help curb aggression? 

According to the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), “Today, prisons and jails in America are in crisis. Incarcerated people are beaten, stabbed, raped, and killed in facilities run by corrupt officials who abuse their power with impunity. People who need medical care, help managing their disabilities, mental health and addiction treatment, and suicide prevention are denied care, ignored, punished, and placed in solitary confinement. And despite growing bipartisan support for criminal justice reform, the private prison industry continues to block meaningful proposals…Mass incarceration costs state and federal governments and American families $182 billion each year…Private prison corporations reported revenues of nearly $4 billion in 2017…The private prison population is on the rise, despite growing evidence that private prisons are less safe, do not promote rehabilitation, and do not save taxpayers money.” (The National Institute of Justice reports that nearly 80% of prisoners will be arrested for a new crime within five years of being released).

The U.S. has the highest incarceration rate in the world with over 1.5 million people in private, state and federal prisons. Even the US prison system serves as a financial boon for the wealthy few. There is some good news however. In 1997, a man named Terry Moreland bought a private correctional facility in Adelanto, California. Mr. Moreland gave inmates the option of a regular prison food plan, or a program called “New Start” which offered a high nutrient vegan diet, combined with bible study, occupational training, and anger management. Despite state officials having their doubts, 85% of the inmates chose to room on the “vegan” side of the facility. The results were astonishing as the New Start side had no fights, and the prisoners were peaceful. Perhaps the most impressive part of the story is that over a 7 year period, the recidivism rate for inmates dropped to 2% (again, the national average is nearly 80%). Wow. According to one California inmate, “There is a noticeable difference in the personalities of the vegetarian inmates. They smile more, are fully racially integrated, attend religious classes and anger management classes eagerly. Within 10 days (they) express improvement in how they feel.”
Click here to learn more from the Equal Justice Initiative on how prisons and jails in America are in crisis.
Click here for the excellent article from the Food Revolution Network on how vegan food helps rehabilitate prisoners.
Click here to learn more about the profitability of the American prison system from Fordham Law School.
Click here to learn more about the Equal Justice Initiative, and Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration.

WAR and ANIMAL FACTORIES are HELL

“Auschwitz begins whenever someone looks at a slaughterhouse and thinks: they’re only animals.”
– German Jewish philosopher Theodor Adorno

Upton Sinclair wrote his classic novel The Jungle in 1906, which exposed the abuses and crimes that were being committed in the meatpacking industry, as well as the links between human rights and animal rights. His descriptions of animal and human suffering are both graphic and shocking. 

Excerpts from The Jungle:
“One could not stand and watch very long without being philosophical, without beginning to deal in symbols and similes, and to hear the hog-squeal of the universe…. Each of them had an individuality of his own, a will of his own, a hope and a heart’s desire; each was full of self-confidence, of self-importance, and a sense of dignity. And trusting and strong in faith he had gone about his business, all the while a black shadow hung over him, and a horrid Fate in his pathway. Now suddenly it had swooped upon him, and had seized him by the leg. Relentless, remorseless, all his protests, his screams were nothing to it. It did its cruel will with him, as if his wishes, his feelings, had simply no existence at all; it cut his throat and watched him gasp out his life…And yet somehow the most matter-of-fact person could not help thinking of the hogs; they were so innocent, they came so very trustingly; and they were so very human in their protests–and so perfectly within their rights! They had done nothing to deserve it; and it was adding insult to injury, as the thing was done here, swinging them up in this cold-blooded, impersonal way, without a pretence at apology, without the homage of a tear. Now and then a visitor wept, to be sure; but this slaughtering-machine ran on, visitors or no visitors. It was like some horrible crime committed in a dungeon, all unseen and unheeded, buried out of sight and of memory.”

“…this [dishwashing] is most filthy and deadening and brutalizing work: that it is a cause of anemia, nervousness, ugliness, and ill-temper: of prostitution, suicide, and insanity; of drunken husbands and degenerate children – for all of which things the community has naturally to pay.”

“There were high squeals and low squeals, grunts, and wails of agony; there would come a momentary lull, and then a fresh outburst, louder than ever, surging up to a deafening climax…They use everything about the hog except the squeal.”

Amy J. Fitzgerald and Linda Kalof Thomas Dietz authored a remarkable study titled “An Empirical Analysis of the Spillover From The Jungle Into the Surrounding Community”, which explored the negative effects of slaughterhouses on workers and communities. Their findings concluded that slaughterhouse employment “increases total arrest rates, arrests for violent crimes, arrests for rape, and arrests for other sex offenses in comparison with other industries.”

Here is an excerpt from their report:
“At the turn of the 20th century, Upton Sinclair exposed the devastating work conditions and living environments of those who toiled in Chicago’s stockyard slaughterhouses. In The Jungle he made a connection between the numerous after-work fights instigated by slaughterhouse workers and the killing and dismembering of animals all day at work:

He [the police officer] has to be prompt—for these two-o’clock-in-the-morning fights, if they once get out of hand, are like a forest fire, and may mean the whole reserves at the station. The thing to do is to crack every fighting head that you can see, before there are so many fighting heads that you cannot crack any of them. There is but scant account kept of cracked heads in back of the [stock] yards, for men who have to crack the heads of animals all day seem to get into the habit, and to practice on their friends, and even on their families, between times (Sinclair, 1905/1946, pp. 18-19).

Although the “Sinclair hypothesis”, the propensity for violent crime is increased by work that involves the routine slaughter of other animals has not been given much attention, geographers, sociologists, and anthropologists have begun to examine the community effects of the migration of slaughterhouses from urban areas to rural communities…”

Summary: “More than 100 years after Upton Sinclair denounced the massive slaughterhouse complex in Chicago as a “jungle,” qualitative case study research has documented numerous negative effects of slaughterhouses on workers and communities. Of the social problems observed in these communities, the increases in crime have been particularly dramatic. These increases have been theorized as being linked to the demographic characteristics of the workers, social disorganization in the communities, and increased unemployment rates. But these explanations have not been empirically tested, and no research has addressed the possibility of a link between the increased crime rates and the violent work that takes place in the meatpacking industry. This study uses panel analysis of 1994-2002 data on nonmetropolitan counties in states with “right- to-work” laws (a total of 581 counties) to analyze the effect of slaughterhouses on the surrounding communities using both ordinary least squares and negative binomial regression. The findings indicate that slaughterhouse employment increases total arrest rates, arrests for violent crimes, arrests for rape, and arrests for other sex offenses in comparison with other industries. This suggests the existence of a “Sinclair effect” unique to the violent workplace of the slaughterhouse, a factor that has not previously been examined in the sociology of violence.”
Click here for the entire report, “An Empirical Analysis of the Spillover From The Jungle Into the Surrounding Community.”
Click here for the published study.
Click here for a link to Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle.

According to Dr. Sahadeva dasa, “The findings seem so obvious to me. When a person removes a non-human animal from moral consideration, he removes humans from moral consideration as well. This is seen in historical examples where colonialism or Genocide used the idea of the victims as “animals” to justify the murder or oppression…While killing an animal, we kill the better part of ourselves, and pay the price in the form of wars, crime, obesity, and poor health.”

We pray on Sundays that we may have light,
To guide our footsteps on the path we tread.
We’re sick of war, we do not want to fight,
The thought of it now fills our hearts with dread,
And yet, we gorge ourselves upon the dead.
– George Bernard Shaw

Author, journalist, and social justice activist Chris Hedges has become a trusted source who seems to be knocking it out of the park with every article and book in recent years. And oh yeah, Mr. Hedges and his wife are both vegans too! In his most recent book, The Greatest Evil is War, he shares some of his experiences and thoughts on War.

Here are a few more excerpts:
“I know the instrument of war. War is not politics by other means. It is demonic…I have heard the wails of those convulsed by grief as they clutch the bodies of friends and family, including children. I hear them still. It does not matter the language. Spanish. Arabic. Hebrew. Dinka. Serbo-Croatian. Albanian. Ukrainian. Russian. Death cuts through the linguistic barriers. I know what wounds look like. Legs blown off. Heads imploded into a bloody, pulpy mass. Gaping holes in stomachs. Pools of blood. Cries of the dying, sometimes for their mothers. And the smell. The smell of death. The supreme sacrifice made for flies and maggots…The landscape of war is hallucinogenic. Former Marine Eugene Sledge calls it “the kaleidoscope of the unreal”. It defies comprehension. War, like the Holocaust, as Barbara Foley wrote, is “unknowable.” Its full dimensions are inaccessible to the ideological framework that we have inherited from the liberal era.. You have no concept of time in a firefight. A few minutes. A few hours. War, in an instant, obliterates homes and communities, all that was once familiar, and leaves behind smoldering ruins and a trauma that you carry for the rest of your life. I have tasted enough of war, enough of my own fear, my body turned to jelly, to know that war is always evil, the purest expression of death, dressed up in patriotic cant about liberty and democracy and sold to the naïve as a ticket to glory, honor, and courage. It is a toxic and seductive elixir. Those who survive, as Kurt Vonnegut wrote, struggle afterwards to “reinvent themselves and their universe,” which, on some level, will never make sense again.”
Click here to learn more about why Chris Hedges and his wife are vegans.

“A scream, I have observed since, is much the same, whatever the species that utters it. A scream born of terror: the sound of Being, in pain. I’ve heard a cat scream and it sounded just like a child. A horse that sounded like a man. A man who sounded like — one of his compatriots said at the time — “like a stuck pig.” It’s all the same. The pig, screaming, slid down the chute into the cauldron of boiling muck. He didn’t stop screaming till the muck closed over his head. In a moment he, too, was lifted out and another creature stood blinking and shining at the top of the chute. I staggered out of the slaughterhouse and leaned against the back wall, vomiting. My mother found me. “What’s the matter, Honey? Have an upset stomach? Here.” She handed me her handkerchief. It was trimmed with ecru lace. “Let’s go home and settle your stomach. You’ll probably feel better after you’ve had something to eat.'” – A Childhood Memory (excerpt), Paulette Callen

ACTIVISM, and the DARK HISTORY of THE UNITED STATES

“Sleep on America, you have nothing to lose but your dreams.” – Ralph Nader

I sometimes don’t know what’s worse, republicans not caring, or the vast majority of democrats pretending to care, and not caring. They are far more alike, than unalike. I voted for Ralph Nader 3 times in the presidential elections.
Click here for an excellent piece from Mr. Nader on why the democrats and republicans are more alike than dissimilar.

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts.”
– Mark Twain

I have had the good fortune of visiting many other parts of the world, and I can tell you that I love China, as much as I love Vietnam, as much as I love Africa, as much as I love Argentina, as much as I love the United States, and as much as I love anywhere, or anyone for that matter. We are all brothers and sisters. I am reminded of this wonderful quote from Iranian artist, director, and writer Marjane Satrapi who just nails it: “If I have one message to give to the secular American people, it’s that the world is not divided into countries. The world is not divided between East and West. You are American, I am Iranian, we don’t know each other, but we talk together and we understand each other perfectly. The difference between you and your government is much bigger than the difference between you and me. And the difference between me and my government is much bigger than the difference between me and you. And our governments are very much the same.” Yep, that about sums it up. 🙂

The United States of America is built on murder, slavery, and attempted genocide. Since the US government has never succeeded in establishing justice & equality for all people, what chances do animals have?

Over the last 25 years, I have been both a half-assed social activist, and a sort of messenger for justice who fights the good fight (at least that is what I like to think). Although I am flawed in many ways and I haven’t done enough, I am proud to say that except for the apparent corruption of a few individuals with Black Lives Matter, I have remained on the right side of history (and on the side of truth and science) for the better part of 25 years. As far as I know, there hasn’t been one instance over that period of time where I supported or marched for a cause that was later disproved, or discredited. Why am I bringing all of this up? I would just like to take a moment to share a little more of what I have learned over the years with regards to colonialism, as well as the US corporate media, and the US War Machine (and their relentless campaigns of lies, violence, and devastation).

THE ATTEMPTED GENOCIDE OF NATIVE AMERICANS 
Click here to learn more about how the US was founded on Genocide. 

ENSLAVEMENT TO MASS INCARCERATION: THE PERSISTENCE OF A MONSTROUS LEGACY, AMERICAN SLAVERY
Click here to learn more from the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), and The Legacy Museum.

HAWAII

Not once in my years of schooling (never to be confused with my education), did I learn that Hawaii was a Polynesian colony that was forcibly taken by the United States. I have had the good fortune of visiting Hawaii a few times but I failed to make the true connections, which of course, makes me a part of the problem. Native Hawaiian Activist Haunani-Kay Trask wrote the powerful book, “From a Native Daughter, Colonialism and Sovereignty in Hawaii”, which is an impassioned account of ongoing abuse of Native Hawaiian rights, institutional racism, and gender discrimination. Pulitzer Prize winning author Alice Walker has called the work a “Masterpiece”. I have learned that Ms. Trask was a Master-Spirit (in addition to being a professor, author, poet and activist), and I am sorry that it took me so long to discover her great work. Unfortunately, Ms. Trask died in 2021, but thankfully, her inspiring legacy and passion live on.

“Modern Hawai’i, like its colonial parent the United States, is a settler society; that is, Hawai’i is a society in which the indigenous culture and people have been murdered, suppressed, or marginalized for the benefit of settlers who now dominate our islands. In settler societies, the issue of civil rights is primariily an issue about how to protect settlers against each other and against the state. Injustices done against native people, such as Genocide, land dispossession, language banning, family disintegration, and cultural exploitation, are not part of the intrasettler discussion and are therefore not within the parameters of civil rights…We are not American. Say it in your heart. Say it when you sleep. We are not American. We will die as Hawaiians. We will never be Americans! They took our land. They imprisoned our queen. They banned our language. They forcibly made us a colony of the United States. America always says they are democratic. Lies! That is a lie!” – Author, Poet, and Activist, Haunani-Kay Trask
Click here for Ms. Trask’s superb book, From a Native Daughter, Colonialism and Sovereignty in Hawaii.  

VIETNAM

“All Governments Lie.” – I.F. Stone

I learned only 6-7 years ago that the estimated number of Vietnamese civilians killed during the Vietnam War is ongoing and now exceeds 2 million, which directly contradicts the US government “estimates” of 30,000 – 58,220. I knew that all governments lied (especially the US), and I just chalked it up to another nauseating and egregiously offensive example. I didn’t realize however, until I read the book Scofflaw: International Law and America’s Deadly Weapons in Vietnam, by Ariel S. Garfinkel, that the Vietnam War has not ended for the people of Vietnam.

According to Ms. Garfinkel, in its decade of participation in the War, the U.S. dropped 7.66 million tons of bombs in Indochina (Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia combined), which is 3 times the amount that was used on Europe and the Pacific during WWII. Of the five million tons dropped on Vietnam itself, a notable percentage failed to detonate (estimates put the range between 10-30%), and they continue to maim and kill civilians to this day. The U.S. also planted the soil of Vietnam with landmines and other ordnance, many of which never detonated, and remain live, often exploding on human contact. The injuries and deaths that continue to occur go largely unrecognized by the international community.

The U.S. Air Force also sprayed more than 20 million gallons of biocides throughout Vietnam in an effort to destroy crops that could be used for food, and to remove forest cover (two-thirds of the toxins were Agent Orange). This exposed close to 5 million Vietnamese to dioxin, which is recognized as one of the most toxic substances known to science. Dioxin impacts people by altering their DNA, and civilians can be indirectly exposed through contamination of crops and seafood.

The U.S. pulled its military abruptly in the mid 70s, but the remaining ordnance and biocides have continued to kill Vietnamese civilians (many of whom are children), to this day. Since the final departure of the U.S. from Vietnam in 1975, more than 100,000 Vietnamese civilians have been injured (60,000) or killed (42,000) by UXO (unexploded ordnance) explosions. U.S. military deaths for the entire War are estimated to be over 58,000.

The United States has been denying, and to a large extent ignoring international and moral laws. In fact, according to Ms. Garfinkel, so prevalent is the presence of UXO in Indochina that at the current rate of cleanup, it would take 3 centuries to clear the land of explosives. The US has mostly avoided responsibility (refusing to remove its live weapons from Vietnamese soil and even consider reparations responsibilities), and has so far, contributed far less than 1% of what would be required financially for such a serious undertaking (the small amount of money that has been appropriated by the US is largely due to the efforts of Senator Pat Leahy of Vermont).

Considering both treaty law, and international law, Ms. Garfinkel explains that the overwhelming evidence is that the US violated International laws of war with the types of weapons it deployed in Vietnam, and with their indiscriminate use against civilians. Think about that for a second. Indiscriminate use against civilians. And the U.S. response, other than the launching of junk food franchises throughout Vietnam, and the exporting of deadly animal based products via McDonald’s, Subway, Burger King, and KFC? Nothing, besides denial, and contempt for the Vietnamese. Can you imagine? I mean the level of criminal arrogance, and unconscionability is breathtaking.
Click here for a link to the game changing book, Scofflaw: International Law and America’s Deadly Weapons in Vietnam.
Click here to learn more about Ariel S. Garfinkel, and human rights.
Click here to learn more about how the bombs remain in Vietnam.

According to Noam Chomsky & Vijay Prashad (from their book The Withdrawal), “There is no disagreement even from liberals in the United States. After the United States had withdrawn from Vietnam, U.S. president Jimmy Carter was asked in March 1977 if the United States owed anything to the people of Southeast Asia for having destroyed Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, killed millions of people, devastated the region with chemical warfare, and so on. His answer was quite measured. He said, “We owe them no debt. The destruction was mutual.” Okay. That’s the liberal president. Reagan was worse: “It was a noble cause, we were right, so they owe us reparations.” Or George H. W. Bush: “We’re willing to forgive the Vietnamese their crimes against us, because we are a forgiving nation. If they carry out their one responsibility, to find the bones of U.S. pilots who were shot down by the evil North Vietnamese while they were on a mercy mission, flying over North Vietnam in their B-52s to devastate the place, if they do that, and since we are a forgiving country, we will forgive them if they carry out that duty.” That’s George H. W. Bush, the statesman, not George W. Bush, his son, the maniac. You can go on indefinitely into the annals of imperial history.” Wow.

Background for The Vietnam War Documentary by Ken Burns: Historian Christian Appy said that Vietnam (the War) was not a “tragic misunderstanding” but a campaign of “imperial aggression”.

I was fooled. When I watched The Civil War documentary by Ken Burns over 30 years ago, I thought it was great. Fast forward to today, and I now realize that many of his documentary films ignore the truth by rewriting history and glorifying the past, in an apparent attempt to appeal to the widest audience possible. What the F*ck? I am not an expert on the Vietnam War but I have read a couple of books on the subject, and I have visited Vietnam too. I can tell you that from what I know about his film, The Vietnam War, it avoids the truth, and completely misses the mark in the most significant and dangerous ways. I have learned that the entire 18 hours of the series focuses mostly on soldiers’ stories with little attention being paid to the millions of Vietnamese civilians who suffered, and died (and continue to do so). It also doesn’t address the many lies of US officials, which led to countless atrocities on both sides as well. How can we learn from history if people like Ken Burns are looked upon as the official chroniclers of our past, when clearly, they are only perpetuating lies and falsehoods. I have also learned from Native American Historian Nick Estes’s excellent book, “Our History is Our Future”, that the Ken Burns team made similar “calculations” with their documentary Lewis and Clark, in which they portrayed Native Americans as being savages and unreasonable during certain historical events, when in fact, the reality was quite the opposite.

Here is an excerpt from The Vietnam War film which stopped me in my tracks, and prevented me from continuing to watch: “America’s involvement in Vietnam began in secrecy. It ended 30 years later in failure, witnessed by the entire world. It was begun in good faith by decent people out of fateful misunderstandings, American overconfidence and Cold War miscalculation. And it was prolonged because it seemed easier to muddle through than to admit that it had been caused by tragic decisions made by five American presidents belonging to both political parties.” Shame on Ken Burns. As per Salon.com writer Patrick Lawrence, “The Vietnam War” purports to be our document of record, a film meant to bring us all together in some kind of agree-to-disagree unity. Forget it. There are two sides to every story, but in this case one is right and the other very wrong. It cannot be made otherwise, and Burns’s failure lies in his failure to acknowledge this.”
Click here to learn more about what Ken Burns gets wrong about Vietnam.
Click here for Native American historian Nick Estes’s superb book, Our History is Our Future.

I was lucky enough to visit Vietnam (and China) for a few weeks a while back, and I had a wonderful experience. Our Vietnamese brothers and sisters could not have been kinder or more friendly, and many parts of Vietnam were as beautiful as its people. And the food? Amongst my favorites of all time. Wow, indeed. And yet, the suffering, and War itself, continues in Vietnam (some 50+ years later), and most Americans, unsurprisingly, don’t know or hear anything about it. And all while another occupant in the White House is lying, and once again picking fights with other countries, including China, Venezuela, Iran and Russia, in a blatant effort to manufacture even more profitable wars for the wealthy few. When will we learn?

IRAQ (and the US War Criminals who have never been held accountable)

According to the best estimates, over 2.4 million people have been killed in Iraq since the illegal invasion and occupation by the US in 2003 (Brown University estimates that the number of Iraqi deaths is close to 1 million). The so-called “Iraq War” was based on lies, and not bad information, as its designers would like everyone to now believe. Many of us knew then that they were lying, and they knew that they were lying too, but it still didn’t stop them. Millions of us from all over the world took to the streets in protest (many times over the years), but it wasn’t enough to prevent the US war machine from doing what it did and continues to do. The US corporate media were cheerleaders for the war and were somehow never held accountable for the atrocities either. And speaking of the corporate media, what did they have to say about US Secretary of “Defense” Donald Rumsfeld’s recent passing (Donald Rumsfeld was one of the chief architects of the “Iraq War”)? CBS News called him a “force of nature” and claimed that he was someone who raced towards danger! Apparently, the NY Times gushed about his “one handed pushups” and marveled at his ability to be both the youngest and oldest Secretaries of Defense in US history. Nobody mentioned Rumsfeld’s lies (and those of his many colleagues), and the millions of lives that were forever lost and altered as a result of his and others actions. Can you imagine if the roles were reversed? What if a secretary of defense in Iraq had repeatedly lied to the people of Iraq and convinced them to illegally invade and occupy the United States? And what if that illegal invasion and occupation resulted in over 2.4 million US deaths? That secretary of defense would be eternally reviled, and we would be talking about WW 3, and the end of civilization as we know it. I know that it is complicated and that people like Donald Rumsfeld are a product of their culture, but he was a war criminal, and he has to be remembered as one if we are to ever achieve peace.
Click here to learn more about the death toll in Iraq from CODEPINK founder Medea Benjamin.
Click here for a clip of CODEPINK members confronting Donald Rumsfeld for his War Crimes. 
Click here to learn more about the cost of the 20 year “War on Terror” from Brown University.
Click here to learn more about the disastrous legacy of Donald Rumsfeld.

Former US President, and war criminal extraordinaire George W. Bush now has a masterclass on leadership. Can you imagine? What’s next, Adolf Hitler’s masterclass on compassion? Once again, we see another war criminal trying to rewrite history. Don’t believe it. George W. Bush is completely incompetent, and although strangely affable, a mass murderer who is responsible for millions of deaths as well. He too belongs in prison, or worse. Bush, and other tyrants (like Joe Biden, and Dick Cheney), are aided and abetted by the corporate media (depending on their respective leanings), and popular talk show hosts like Jimmy Kimmel, Seth Meyers, Bill Maher, Stephen Colbert, Howard Stern, and a slew of other millionaire champions of the “status quo” (since leaving office, Bush has been treated like royalty in his many guest appearances on TV talk shows). The whole lot of celebrities are nauseating as they yuck it up with the world’s grand thieves and normalize their monstrous behavior.
Click here to learn more about George W. Bush’s legacy as a war criminal.
Click here to learn more about the awful legacy of George W. Bush.

Former US Secretary of State and war criminal Condoleezza Rice’s hypocrisy recently made me laugh out loud. According to Chris Hedges, “The rank hypocrisy is stunning. Some of the same officials that orchestrated the invasion of Iraq, who under international law are war criminals for carrying out a preemptive war, are now chastising Russia for its violation of international law. The U.S. bombing campaign of Iraqi urban centers, called “Shock and Awe,” saw the dropping of 3,000 bombs on civilian areas that killed more than 7,000 noncombatants in the first two months of the war. “I have argued that when you invade a sovereign nation, that is a war crime,” Harris Faulkner, a Fox News host said (with a straight “face) to Condoleezza Rice, who served as Bush’s national security adviser during the Iraq War. “It is certainly against every principle of international law and international order, and that is why throwing the book at them now in terms of economic sanctions and punishments is also a part of it,” Rice said. “And I think the world is there. Certainly, NATO is there. He’s managed to unite NATO in ways that I didn’t think I would ever see after the end of the Cold War.” Rice inadvertently made a case for why she should be put on trial with the rest of Bush’s enablers. She famously justified the invasion of Iraq by stating: “The problem here is that there will always be some uncertainty about how quickly he can acquire nuclear weapons. But we don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.” Her rationale for preemptive war, which under post-Nuremberg laws is a criminal war of aggression, is no different than that peddled by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who says the Russia invasion is being carried out to prevent Ukraine from obtaining nuclear weapons.”
Click here to learn more about Condoleezza Rice’s war crimes from Chris Hedges and Katie Halper.

Former US Vice President Dick Cheney is perhaps the Chief War Criminal, yet will never be held accountable thanks in part to Barack Obama (Barack Obama reneged on his 2008 campaign promise to investigate the crimes of Bush Administration officials and hold them accountable, and infamously said, “we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards”). The fact that Dick Cheney is now celebrated on both sides of the aisle by the lunatics running the US government is both laughable and outrageous, and yet speaks volumes. Even a former Fox “News” Senior Judicial Analyst, Andrew Napolitano, is calling for former US president George W. Bush and VP Dick Cheney to be tried for war crimes. As per Judge Napolitano: “I would try (Bush & Cheney) for war crimes for which there is no statute of limitations…the war crimes are well-known. The war crimes are leading us into war under false pretenses; intentionally targeting civilians in the Middle East; authorizing torture and purporting to protect it against state law if done in the U.S. and international law. These are all well-known war crimes for which the penalty is life in prison. They can also be execution…There is still an E.U.-wide arrest warrant live out there issued by Spanish authorities for the arrest of George W. Bush, because of the war crimes I have just summarized.”
Click here for the complete interview with Ralph Nader and Andrew Napolitano.
Click here to learn more from Democracy Now! about the war crimes committed by Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld.
Click here to learn more about Dick Cheney’s war crimes. 
Click here to learn more about why US “leaders” are never held accountable.

And speaking of Barack Obama, perhaps Cornel West said it best when he referred to Obama as “a black mascot of Wall Street oligarchs, and a black puppet of corporate plutocrats. And now he has become head of the American killing machine and is proud of it.”
Click here to learn more about Barack Obama’s war crimes from Cornel West.
Click here to learn more about how in many other respects, Barack Obama was a lousy president too.
Click here to learn more about how the “Obamanauts” are rebranding as evil.
Click here to learn more from Chris Hedges on the Obama deception.

Lifetime criminal Donald Trump became the 45th U.S. President in 2016, and nobody has summarized his character, and presidency better than Chris Hedges: “Trump, like most of his opponents in the Republican and Democrat parties, serves the interests of the billionaire class. He, too, is hostile to the rights of workers. He, too, is an enemy of the press. He, too, backs the diversion of hundreds of billions of federal dollars to the war industry to maintain the empire. He, too, does not respect the rule of law. He, too, is personally and politically corrupt. But he is also impulsive, bigoted, inept and ignorant. His baseless conspiracy theories, vulgarity and absurd antics are an embarrassment to the established power elite in the two ruling parties. He is difficult, unlike Biden, to control. He has to go, not because he is a criminal, but because he is not trusted by the ruling crime syndicate to manage the firm.”
Click here for the superb article, The Donald Trump Problem, by Chris Hedges.

And then there is Joe Biden. Joe Biden was one of the architects of the US’s illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq which has killed millions of people. And now he is back for another encore as he continues to lead the US and perhaps the rest of the world towards catastrophic destruction once again (this time with Russia, and China). There are very few true journalists in the United States. Jeremy Scahill is one of them, and he is a trusted source. He knocked it out of the park when he reminded us why Joe Biden, the DNC/GOP, and the corporate media are all rotten.

Here is an excerpt from Jeremy Scahill’s piece on Joe Biden: “When Obama emerged as a serious contender in the 2008 Democratic primary, he was a largely unknown entity nationally, and he carefully encouraged a false perception that he was an anti-war candidate. Close observers of Obama’s career knew that was an oversimplified fallacy, but it is difficult to blame ordinary voters for believing it, at least during the 2008 campaign. It was in choosing Biden as his running mate that Obama sent a clear message to the war party in the U.S. that its interests were secure. That’s because Biden is a Washington creature with a multi decade record of hawkish policy making and support for wars and militarism. He voted for the Iraq War and actively aided and abetted the Bush administration’s lie-filled drive to make it a reality. He is the epitome of the bipartisan D.C. foreign policy establishment…The prospect of four more years of Trump was what decided this election. It was the overriding imperative of those who cast their votes for Biden. Corporate and establishment Democrats expect their left-wing critics to vote for them every four years without question or negotiation. This expectation is almost always delivered as more of a threat than an ask. And when Democrats lose, they blame the left. Yet election after election shows that when they do win, elite Democrats do not believe that they have to offer any meaningful national security appointments or policy changes to these voters. History shows us that they are much more interested in finding common ground with the violent imperial visions of right-wingers and neoconservatives. And Joe Biden is indeed the perfect figure to drive that reality home.”
Click here to learn more from Jeremy Scahill on Joe Biden’s multi-decade support for wars and militarism.
Click here to learn more from Jeremy Scahill about Joe Biden, the Empire Politician.

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and his wife Ginni epitomize corruption and sleaze. Let’s not forget too that Joe Biden supported the campaign to discredit and humiliate Anita Hill, and appoint Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court. According to Chris Hedges, “We must also never forget it was Joe Biden who gave us Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. The Democrats are kinda quiet about that. They are two of the worst modern Supreme Court justices and Biden was their champion.”
Click here to learn more from Chris Hedges on the awfulness of Joe Biden, the DNC and the GOP.
Click here for another excellent piece from Chris Hedges on how the Democrats are now the War Party.

Update on Joe Biden (07.08.23) – As President Joe Biden, and the US War Machine bring us all closer to nuclear annihilation with Russia and China, let’s not forget that Joe Biden is a war criminal under international law. Joe Biden was one of the architects of the United States’ illegal invasions of both Iraq and Afghanistan, which have killed millions of innocent people (according to Brown University, “An estimated 3.6-3.7 million people have died indirectly in post-9/11 war zones, bringing the total death toll to at least 4.5-4.6 million and counting.”). Joe Biden and other US officials lied, and we knew they were lying, and that is why millions of us around the world marched against the impending invasion of Iraq in 2003. As per journalist Jeremy Scahill, “In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, Joe Biden served as one of the Bush-Cheney administration’s key allies in green lighting the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. He also claimed credit for drafting significant parts of the Patriot Act.”

Here is an excellent exchange between Ralph Nader and author Norman Solomon on Joe Biden:

Ralph Nader: Let’s get some names here. How did Joe Biden, as a senator, vote to invade Iraq?

Norman Solomon: He not only voted for invading Iraq and gave a strong speech on the Senate floor in favor, but he chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and they had sham hearings. I remember at the time at the Institute for Public Accuracy, we were trying very hard with news releases to offer alternative sources pointing out how skewed and one-sided those hearings were. These were seminal hearings, two days in the summer of 2002, with Biden holding the gavel, and there was a fella who was the chief of staff who helped engineer the guest list. And that railroad that was basically a propaganda vehicle to shore up political support for the impending invasion, his name was Anthony Blinken. And so what we’ve been dealing–

Ralph Nader: Who is now the Secretary of State.

Norman Solomon: Yes, a duo that back in 2002, as today, with all the liberal trappings of rhetoric serving the warfare state, the military industrial complex, to use a term coined by President Dwight Eisenhower in his farewell address, we could now call it the “military- industrial-media-intelligence complex,” these were two people who were serving what they were wanting to serve.

And today I have to say, Ralph, that it’s really hard, when I listen to outlets like NPR’s All Things Considered in “Morning Edition,” just taking at face value without any comment, the denunciations by Anthony Blinken and President Biden now, that one country, they say in 2023, must never invade another country, that international law and international order is paramount. And of course, they’re talking about Russia. And I certainly agree. Russia, as I point out in the book, has committed enormous war crimes, and so should be held to a standard that you don’t get to, as one country, go and invade another and violate international law and human decency in the process.

But the doublethink, as Orwell described, it has gotten so flagrant because we have Biden and Blinken, who back a couple of decades ago, were doing exactly what they denounce Vladimir Putin for doing now. This goes to a very deep question about what kind of intellectual or moral honesty exists on Capitol Hill and in the major media of this country. Doublethink seems very much in play. One principle, as Orwell described it, is that one fact could be put on the shelf and then, when convenient, taken off the shelf brandished and used, and then when inconvenient, put back on the shelf. That describes with U.S. foreign policy, the way that our mass media functions.”

Joe Biden is a war criminal, but he will never be held accountable because in the US, if you are super wealthy or powerful, you are above the law. This is one of the reasons that US presidents are never held responsible for their war crimes (it also doesn’t help that Biden is a corporate media darling, and that most Americans are either disinformed or unconcerned). Of course President Biden is awful in other ways too (500+ children killed in Ukraine while the US has undermined peace negotiations with Russia, the continued funding of Israel’s slaughter of countless Palestinians, a long history of chronic lying (the list is depressing), a staunch opponent of universal healthcare which would save 70,000 lives and $450 billion per year, championed two of the worst US Supreme Court justices in history in Thomas & Scalia, etc.), but the DNC will run him again in 2024 because he is easy to control and that is what the US billionaires and corporations demand. But yeah, Joe Biden is a war criminal.
Click here for the excellent interview with Ralph Nader and author Norman Solomon.
Click here for the Costs of War report from Brown University. 

“The Republican party is the most dangerous organization in human history.” – Noam Chomsky

Yes, when compared to republicans, the democrats are probably the lesser of two evils. However, I couldn’t help but laugh a few times at the hypocrisy of Joe Biden’s recent speech that railed against Trump extremists, but then claimed that democrats and most republicans care deeply about issues surrounding justice and equality. Yes, Trump is a lifetime criminal, racist, and dangerously incompetent (see his countless anti-science positions, including the climate crisis), but once again, we see the democrats pretending to care, while taking no responsibility for their own criminality. The list is too long to get into, but here is one piece of the pie (each year, the US sends $3.8 billion to Israel, in the form of military “aid”, to further harm and kill Palestinians). According to Noam Chomsky, Israel doesn’t doesn’t do anything without US approval.
Click here to learn more about how the US backed Israeli government killed another 231 Palestinians in 2022.
Click here to learn more about the democrats and the art of pretending to care.
Click here to learn why Donald Trump, despite being a lifetime criminal, will likely never spend a day in jail.
Click here to learn more about Donald Trump’s complete disregard for our children’s future as he repeatedly scoffed at pleas to take climate change seriously.

“If the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every post World War II American president would have been hanged.” – Noam Chomsky

Professor Noam Chomsky can explain in less than 12 minutes, how every US president since WWII has committed war crimes. Apparently, the video below was recorded in 2003, so the equally indictable crimes of Obama, Trump, and Biden are not included. Click here to learn more about the crimes of U.S. presidents from Noam Chomsky. 

“Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is that people all over the world have obeyed the dictates of leaders…and millions have been killed because of this obedience…Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war, and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves… (and) the grand thieves are running the country. That’s our problem.” – Howard Zinn

AFGHANISTAN

Ditto to the Iraq section (see above).
Click here to learn more about Afghanistan from CODEPINK.

CHINA (China has been demonized by the US government and corporate media for years)

Don’t believe the BS. Again, no country is responsible for more innocent people being killed in recent decades than the United States, and again, it’s not even close. The US nearly outspends the next ten countries combined on its military each year. The US has 300 military bases surrounding China (with missiles pointing at major Chinese cities), and nearly 800 bases worldwide, yet it is the US who attempts to demonize China at every turn. Can you imagine if the situation was reversed? Despite what you will hear from the US government and its state media (mainstream/corporate), China is not a military threat. If anything, China is an economic threat, primarily because, unlike the US, China hasn’t squandered over $9 trillion in recent years on illegal invasions and occupations that have killed millions of people (And again, not one US official has ever been held accountable). The United States of War is the biggest threat to world peace, and the survival of our species.

Here are the takeaways from the Pentagon’s latest annual report on China (from CODEPINK), which is of course full of lies, and an overt attempt to demonize China for the purposes of ongoing wars, and obscene profits for the wealthiest few.

CODEPINK:
“To pressure Congress into authorizing the largest defense budget ever, the Pentagon just released its annual report on China,* which dangerously misrepresents the country’s defense strategy. Such deliberate lies about China to drum up justification for more US war spending need to be urgently addressed. Tell your Senators to stop funding a war with China and vote NO on the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2023!

Let’s debunk the Pentagon’s lies:
– On Nuclear Weapons: According to the Pentagon report, China possesses around 400 nuclear warheads with no clear plan on how to use them. If this estimation of China’s arsenal is correct, it’s still trivial compared to the US’s almost 6,000 warheads. China is the only nuclear power with an unconditional “no first use” policy, and has been clear that it only intends to use its nuclear power for assurance and defense. Meanwhile, the US is the only country to have used nuclear weapons in war and has also flirted with escalating tensions into a nuclear war with Russia this year. Who is preparing for war?
– On Global Military Presence: The Pentagon reports that since China established its first overseas military base in Djibouti, it has ambitions to expand its military presence globally. At the same time, the US has more than 750 military bases in around 80 countries. This includes more than 250 bases in the Asia-Pacific encircling China with 375,000 personnel in the Indo-Pacific Command, while China has no military presence in the Western Hemisphere. Who is preparing for war?
– On International Order: The Pentagon reports that China may challenge the US in the international arena. It is true that China is taking the lead internationally in economic development, in technological innovation, and in fighting climate change. Other countries around the world are happy for its support in growing their capacities to be independent of US hegemony in their regions. China builds relationships through economic cooperation and good diplomacy. In contrast, the US asserts its global dominance through direct or proxy war, occupation, crippling sanctions, and regime-changing coups. The international order that the US seeks to maintain is rooted in violence and destruction. Let’s invest in peace, not war! While the United States is desperately pursuing its outdated policy of enforcing global hegemony, the rest of the world is already moving towards a multilateral sphere which ensures the greatest chance for peace. It’s important to realize that China is not our enemy. Escalating tension with China was already a mistake, but building a colossal military budget to double down on this mistake makes no sense.”

The United States of War is at it again, as our State Media (corporate media) continues its decades long streak of complicity by being nothing more than cheerleaders for yet another war. The big difference this time around is that it could easily escalate to a nuclear war with Russia or China. Why can’t the war monger Joe Biden, and the DNC & GOP wait for the next confrontation? Again, never ending wars mean big business for a select few. In fact if you had invested $10,000 in “Defense” stocks when the “Afghanistan War” began, it would now be worth nearly $100,000. There are other reasons too why the US is always itching for another war, including ignorance, elitism, racism, and arrogance, but greed is probably at the top of the list.
Click here to learn more about the incredible financial rise in US “Defense” stocks due to never ending wars.

US Admiral Charles Richard recently announced that “nuclear employment is a real possibility” with both Russia and China. And not to be outdone, four star Air Force general Michael A. Minihan also predicted a war with China (which potentially includes nuclear annihilation), and made the following deranged statement in the context of ongoing US wars, and the continued US provocation of China: “Lethality matters most…When you can kill your enemy, every part of your life is better. Your food tastes better. Your marriage is stronger.” Can you imagine the level of disconnect and conceit that is required to be so cavalier? Clearly, this is how insane people might speak. Is it any surprise that these are the very words of high ranking officers of the largest and most destructive military in human history? The general has also been agitating China by publicly urging his troops to be ready for a war with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 2025, while casually referring to such a scenario as inevitable. Again, the US war machine is big business and will never stop on its own. If we don’t create a massive peace movement soon, we are doomed. The United States should be partnering with China in peace, not starting yet another war. According to Daniel Ellsberg, a nuclear war between the US and Russia would wipe out about 90% of the world’s population. The US political & military systems are replete with war criminals/mongers & climate change deniers who are without a doubt, and again, the biggest threats to the survival of our species.
Click here to learn more about the lunacy of General Minihan and his ilk.

The arrogance, and recklessness of the US government is mind boggling. U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi recently put billions of lives at risk due to her ego, and criminal nature. Shaming her is not enough. As per this excellent piece from CODEPINK’s Jodie Evans, “On Tuesday, the entire world watched with anticipation as the US Speaker of the House, a heartbeat away from the presidency, touched down in Taiwan with blatant disregard for longstanding US-China agreements as well as direct warnings from the Chinese government. Even President Biden and the Pentagon advised against the trip, understanding the serious risk she posed to US-China relations. Luckily, it’s not too late—tell your members of Congress the only way to stop war is to keep it from starting! As China, the US, and Taiwan all undergo military preparations, it’s important to understand how we got here: the United States has been waging a hybrid war on China for years. On top of trade wars and sanctions, the United States has also surrounded the world’s most populous country with military bases throughout the Pacific, Oceania, and Central Asia. Meanwhile, China operates just one overseas military base, nowhere near the US. Now, Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan further exacerbates tensions and brings us closer to war. While Chinese media has called the trip a “blatant provocation,” the Chinese Foreign Ministry itself also described Pelosi’s actions as “playing with fire.” China has clearly drawn its red line, and the United States has crossed it. Where have we seen this before? After the US spent years ignoring Russia’s warnings, expanding NATO and propping up pro-Western governments in Eastern Europe, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine came as an unsurprising, yet unbearable tragedy. Now, we find ourselves stuck pouring billions of dollars into a proxy war over military and economic dominance in Eastern Europe, while Nancy Pelosi puts us on the same track in Asia. We must take the path of cooperation for the people and the planet now! Contact Congress! This war is a threat to the lives of millions in Taiwan, China, the US, and around the world. We’ve already seen how the war in Ukraine has had devastating global impacts. From fuel shortages to famine, working-class people around the world have shouldered heavy costs of the war while thousands in Ukraine continue to die in combat. On top of this, the environmental and health-related impacts of the war will play out for decades to come. All of this is without mentioning the deadly impact warmongering abroad has on populations here at home. Since the US has ramped up anti-China rhetoric in recent years, we’ve already seen rising hate crimes against Asian people in the United States. From World War I to the War on Terror, there is no doubt that belligerence abroad emboldens white supremacy at home. Tell your member of Congress to publicly stand for peace! We can’t afford another war. Save the people and the planet!” 
Click here to tell Congress that China is not our enemy.
Click here to learn more about how Nancy Pelosi stoked tensions with China, and brought us closer to a nuclear war.
Click here to learn more about how the US has over 750 military bases worldwide, and how nearly 300 encircle China. 

Here is an excerpt from a thoughtful piece from Vijay Prashad on the U.S.’s ongoing provocation of China.
Excerpts: “As the U.S. legislative leader Nancy Pelosi swept into Taipei, people around the world held their breath. Her visit was an act of provocation…Rather than seeing China for both its successes and contradictions, this madness of our times seeks to reduce China to an Orientalist caricature–an authoritarian state with a genocidal agenda that seeks global domination….This madness has a definite point of origin in the United States, whose ruling elites are greatly threatened by the advances of the Chinese people–particularly in robotics, telecommunications, high-speed rail, and computer technology. These advances pose an existential threat to the advantages long enjoyed by Western corporations, who have benefited from centuries of colonialism and the straitjacket of intellectual property laws….Countries in the Global South can learn a great deal from China’s experiments with socialism. Its eradication of extreme poverty during the pandemic is an accomplishment celebrated by the United Nations…Walls need to be knocked down, not built up. The U.S. is provoking a conflict due to its own anxieties about China’s economic advances: we should not be drawn in as useful idiots. We need to have an adult conversation about China, not one imposed upon us by powerful interests that are not our own.”
Click here for the complete article.
Click here to learn more about how Nancy Pelosi brought us all closer to a nuclear war by visiting Taiwan.
Click here to learn more about what the Pentagon doesn’t want you to know about China.
Click here to learn more about China from CODEPINK.
Click here for an excellent, and laugh out loud piece from Ronny Chieng of The Daily Show (in response to yet another racist report on China from Fox “News”).

ISRAEL

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is a corrupt mass murderer (despite what you might hear from celebrities like Bill Maher), and Israel is a Jewish supremacist state that has been financially and militarily propped up by the US for decades. I will likely never travel to Israel again. Political scientist, and Holocaust survivor Norman Finkelstein says, “Israel is a lunatic state.”
Click here for another superb piece from Chris Hedges on Israel, and the rise of Jewish fascism.
Click here to learn more about Israel’s War on Kids.

Katie Halper does tremendous work, and she is one of the most important voices in media. She was recently fired as a guest host by “The Hill” for explaining why Israel is an Apartheid state (a long established fact that has been confirmed by the United Nations, Amnesty International, and many others). Katie Halper’s firing is just another sad example of censorship, and a reflection on where the US mainstream media (or state media) stands today. Shame on Jake Tapper of CNN for being a corporate shill (no surprise), and Jonathan Greenblatt from the Anti-Defamation league (Israel lobbying group), who lost credibility a long time ago.
Click here to listen to Ms. Halper knock it out of the park as she explains how she was fired for calling Israel an Apartheid state.
Click here for more information from FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting).
Click here for the Katie Halper Show.  

UKRAINE & RUSSIA

“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.” – Frederick Douglass

So, what about Ukraine? The US, so far, has sent over $100 billion in military “support” (without taxpayer consent, of course) to Ukraine, even though again, it could end the conflict at any time (the US broke multiple agreements to not expand NATO, and has so far, thwarted every attempt at peace). According to CODEPINK’s Medea Benjamin (on Democracy Now!), “The U.S., unfortunately, and the Biden administration, has been against negotiations, nixed the negotiations that were going on in late March, early April, and told the Ukrainians, basically, “You don’t have to negotiate, because we’re going to keep pouring more weapons in.” This is only helping the weapons companies, who actually were the sponsors of a reception at the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington, D.C., on December 8th, brought to you by Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Raytheon. They are the ones who are getting rich in this. The Ukrainians are suffering. The whole world is suffering from this. And we have to get Congress, all of Congress, to recognize this is not in the best interest of the American people or of the entire world…”

And according to Cornel West, “You’ve got 14,000 courageous Russian brothers and sisters who were willing to go to jail for seven years in order to have some accountability of the gangster who runs their empire, Russia, we need to have an equivalent antiwar movement in the American empire that’s willing to put pressure on our political elites. Most of our political elites and in Congress suffer from a moral and spiritual bankruptcy, because they can’t say a mumbling word when it comes to what’s really happening on the ground with the heroic struggles in Iran right now. They can’t say a mumbling word about the Palestinian struggles, what’s been going on for the last 50 years. But all of a sudden they’re willing to breakdance and act as if they’re concerned about domination when it comes to Ukraine…”
Click here to learn more from Medea Benjamin and Cornel West via Democracy Now!.

So what to do? Avoid the US corporate media If you want to find out what is really going on with NATO, Ukraine and Russia.
Click here for an exceptional interview with Ralph Nader and Katrina Vanden Heuvel on the Ralph Nader Radio Hour.
Click here for the highly informative article from Katrina vanden Heuvel titled, “The Exit from the Ukraine Crisis that’s Hiding in Plain Sight”.
CODEPINK is another fantastic resource, and one of my favorites.
Click here for the many articles on Ukraine from the CODEPINK archives.
Click here for Medea Benjamin’s new book, “War in Ukraine, Making Sense of a Senseless Conflict”.
Click here to learn more about US militarism, and Ukraine, from Columbia University’s Jeff Sachs, and Katie Halper.

US CORPORATE MEDIA, and much of HOLLYWOOD, are ESSENTIALLY STATE CONTROLLED

“Any dictator would admire the uniformity and obedience of the U.S. media.” – Noam Chomsky

Here are some random thoughts that I have collected in recent years on the US corporate media, Hollywood films, and documentaries.

– I learned first hand in 2003 not to trust corporate media (relentless lying and cheerleading for wars, etc.). Mainstream media’s loyalties are to money and power via the advertisers and the US war machine, rather than the truth, or the common good. They don’t give a bleep about the truth, justice, and our collective future. Let’s not forget the infamous quote from the then CEO of CBS Les Moonves, who said in 2016 of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, “It (Trump) may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS. I’ve never seen anything like this, and this is going to be a very good year for us. Sorry. It’s a terrible thing to say. But, bring it on, Donald. Keep going.” As a result, CBS & other networks gave Trump billions of dollars in free advertising and air time. According to Les Moonves, he was good for ratings and profit margins, and that was all that mattered.

– Why isn’t the progressive candidate Bernie Sanders our president? I know that it is old news, but it is remarkable how blatant the efforts were by both the DNC and the mainstream media to quash Sanders in every way possible. Why? Greed. Here is an article from “The Hill” in 2019 with a headline that states that Trump is ahead of Warren and Biden in the Iowa polls. There is zero mention of Sanders beating Trump in the same poll. For that, you have to go to the 3rd paragraph of the story. Sigh.
Click here for the misleading headline from the awful website, The Hill.

– Fast forward to 2020, and MSNBC producer Ariana Pekary has resigned and written a scathing letter that exposes MSNBC and the corporate media for their collective practice of putting money and ratings ahead of everything else.
Excerpt: “This cancer risks human lives, even in the middle of a pandemic. The primary focus quickly became what Donald Trump was doing (poorly) to address the crisis, rather than the science itself. As new details have become available about antibodies, a vaccine, or how COVID actually spreads, producers still want to focus on the politics. Important facts or studies get buried. This cancer risks our democracy, even in the middle of a presidential election. Any discussion about the election usually focuses on Donald Trump, not Joe Biden, a repeat offense from 2016 (Trump smothers out all other coverage). Also important is to ensure citizens can vote by mail this year, but I’ve watched that topic get ignored or “killed” numerous times….“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” – James Baldwin…I know James Baldwin wasn’t thinking about MSNBC when he wrote that line in 1962, but those words spoke loudly to me in the summer of 2020. Unfortunately, many of the same ailments are still at stake today. Now maybe we can’t really change the inherently broken structure of broadcast news, but I know for certain that it won’t change unless we actually face it, in public, and at least try to change it. “
Click here for the entire letter from Ariana Pekary.
Click here to learn how YouTube has become a shill for the US corporate media.

“All Warfare is based on deception” – Sun Tzu

– FOX “News” has proven to be the most egregious violator when it comes to lying and misinformation, but all of the mainstream media networks are guilty, and have been so for some time. I laughed out loud recently when I read that CNN referred to China’s media as being “state controlled.” How rich is that? CNN exemplifies state run media in just about every way, and is itself nothing more than a shill for the US government and corporations. Despite getting a story right on occasion, CNN is pathological, and as bad as any “state controlled” media outlet on the planet. They have been demonizing China and other countries for years, as they continue their relentless cheerleading efforts for ongoing wars. Please remember to support independent media, if you want news that is closer to the truth.
Click here to learn more about CNN lies and misinformation campaigns from Media Matters.

– Shame on CNN (again) and the US corporate media. CNN, like FOX, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and other mainstream media outlets, has been a lying, and enthusiastic champion of war for decades. Here are three headlines from today for the same news event:
1. Democracy Now!: “Israeli Forces Kill 9 Palestinians, Including Elderly Woman, in Raid on Jenin”
2. Mondoweiss: “Death toll rises to 10 following Israeli army ‘massacre’ in Jenin”
3. CNN (US propaganda) – “Israeli forces kill nine in Jenin clash with Palestinian gunmen, marking West Bank’s deadliest day in over a year” (Again, please support independent media, if you want news that is closer to the truth!)
Like CNN and the US corporate media, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) blatantly lies in order to promote its agenda, and sell its “products” too. The USDA has a conflict of interest, as it is tasked with both promoting the sale of meat and dairy products, while also establishing the US dietary guidelines. This is why despite overwhelming evidence that the consumption of meat and dairy products causes disease and premature death, the USDA still features both on its recommended dietary plate (MyPlate.gov). And just like the mainstream media’s cheerleading for ongoing wars and other deceptions, the USDA actions are also unconscionable.
Click here to learn more about Israel’s most recent US backed killing spree from Democracy Now!.

“The media are a corporate monopoly. They have the same point of view. The two parties are two factions of the business party. Most of the population doesn’t even bother voting because it looks meaningless. They’re marginalized and properly distracted. At least that’s the goal.” – Noam Chomsky

– We have seen this movie before. Here we go again with more government lies, and the corporate media (FOX “News” this time) not doing its job, and in fact, blatantly beating the drums of war.
Click here to learn more from the excellent site Media Matters.

– Yikes. Celebrity broadcaster Barbara Walters died recently at the age of 93, and all over corporate media, she was being hailed as a “legendary journalist”, “groundbreaking TV journalist”, “trailblazer”, “first, among TV newswomen”, etc. Barbara Walters may have been an otherwise decent person, but she was also a corporate shill, and a TV personality first and foremost. A true journalist? Please. She played the game well, and the game made her a rich celebrity, and gave her access to powerful politicians because she was safe. Unfortunately, we did however lose a real muckraking writer and political activist named Barbara in 2022, but her last name wasn’t Walters, it was Ehrenreich. Barbara Ehrenreich didn’t play the game, and as a result, she was not provided instant access to celebrities and famous politicians. She only exposed inequality in her many books, including “Nickel and Dimed,” and opposed what she called the Health-Industrial Complex over a decades-long career. In other words, she was the real deal, and as a result, mostly ignored by the corporate media when she passed. Barbara Ehrenreich is the Barbara who should be honored and celebrated as a “legendary” journalist or writer.
Click here to learn more about the inspiring Barbara Ehrenreich.
Click here for a link to Barbara Ehrenreich’s book Nickel & Dimed.

– As mentioned earlier, I learned in 2003, after joining millions of people around the world in multiple anti-war marches, that the US corporate media could not be trusted. According to most polls at the time, the majority of Americans wanted no part of an invasion of Iraq or a war, but it didn’t matter to the people in power and the corporate media. Although Fox “News” continues to be the most appalling outlet with regards to lying, racism, and misinformation, it was also CNN who completely misrepresented the protests by significantly downplaying crowd numbers, vilifying speakers and activists, and by giving over 95% of their airtime to pro-war, ex-military generals with ties to weapons manufacturers (without viewer knowledge), pro-war pundits, and others who were hawkish on the prospect of invading Iraq.
Click here to learn more about the real fake news being corporate media.
Click for a piece from the Nation’s Jeet Heer titled, “How Cheerleaders for the Forever Wars Got Away with Murder”.

– It is not just the US corporate media and filmmakers like Ken Burns who have been masters at lying, rewriting history, and being cheerleaders for wars. The lies and propaganda regarding US “democracy” and endless wars extends to American television, Hollywood, and other media platforms as well. American actor Clint Eastwood and Hollywood heartthrob Bradley Cooper’s film, “The American Sniper”, perpetuated countless lies, glorified war (and killing), and yet despite being exposed for its untruths, still raked in nearly $550 million at the box office as neither actor was apologetic (I wasn’t surprised by Clint Eastwood as he has a long history of being clueless, despite his random ability to make a good film. Unsurprisingly, his net worth exceeds $475 million). Hollywood actor Ben Affleck’s film “Argo” claimed to be based on a true story too and yet was also full of historical inaccuracies, and racism. Perhaps its most appalling theme was its unrelenting demonization of Iranians throughout the entire film. Did it matter to most Americans? Nope. The film won multiple Oscars, and made hundreds of millions of dollars as well (btw, Ben Affleck’s net worth tops $150 million). And then there is Tom Cruise, and the blockbuster franchise “Top Gun”. The Top Gun movies are recruiting bonanzas for the US military, as each installment glorifies violence and wars. The US military has provided considerable help to the Top Gun films as well, in the form of locations, military equipment, and personnel (Tom Cruise has an estimated net worth of over $620 million). As far as I know, none of these actors/filmmakers have issued apologies. Why would they? Again, capitalism, arrogance, greed, racism, elitism, American hegemony…Well, you get the picture. 🙂
Click here to learn more about the film Argo.
Click here to learn more about the film American Sniper.
Click here to learn more about how the US military uses Hollywood as a propaganda tool.

– Et tu, Jon? American comedian, political commentator and TV host Jon Stewart seems like an otherwise nice man, but what is he thinking? First, he advocated for a healthcare expansion bill for veterans which made a lot of sense, but then he kept calling US soldiers “heroes”, and made no mention of additional healthcare for the victims in Iraq and Afghanistan. And recently, he had Condoleezza Rice, a war criminal, and Hillary Clinton, a war monger, on his show to talk about democracy. Really? I mean, you can’t make this stuff up. We are all flawed, but Jon Stewart appears to be yet another status quo type of guy with very limited views. In other words, when it comes to justice, equality, and fighting the good fight, he is a part of the problem too (despite his wonderful work with animals). I like Jon Stewart, but I was somewhat surprised to learn that his views were so limited. Being a soldier does not necessarily equate with being a hero. In fact, often times, a soldier’s actions reflect quite the opposite. Here are a couple of excellent pieces from Howard Zinn that may help Jon Stewart and anyone who may be questioning what it means to be a hero.
Click here for Howard ZInn’s piece, The Greatest Generation?
Click here to learn more about Unsung Heroes from Howard Zinn.
Click here to learn more from Democracy Now!.

“It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.” – Mark Twain (apocryphal?)

– Mark Twain most likely never spoke those words, but I appreciate this quote more than ever as it relates to our broken political and judicial systems, and the US corporate media (CNN, FOX, CBS, ABC, MSNBC, NBC, NY Times, and others). Many of us keep fighting the good fight in our efforts to expose the mainstream media for its countless lies. If you are interested in moving away from the corporate media (state media), and receiving news that is a lot closer to the truth, please check out the sites below. They may not get everything right, but overall, they do a really good job (despite their failure to report meaningfully on the power of plant-based nutrition, and how our current food system destroys animals’ lives, our health, and Mother Earth). 
– DemocracyNow.org
– CODEPINK.org
– FAIR.org
– TheIntercept.com
– TheNation.com
– JACOBIN.com
– LeverNews.com

CLOSING THOUGHTS

Albert Einstein warned in 1950 that “only the creation of a world government can prevent the impending self-destruction of mankind.” Have you heard of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ Doomsday Clock (Albert Einstein was a founding co-chair of the Bulletin’s Board of Sponsors)? According to their website, “The Doomsday Clock is a “design that warns the public about how close we are to destroying our world with dangerous technologies of our own making. It is a metaphor, a reminder of the perils we must address if we are to survive on the planet. When the Doomsday Clock was created in 1947, the greatest danger to humanity came from nuclear weapons, in particular from the prospect that the United States and the Soviet Union were headed for a nuclear arms race. In 2020, the Science and Security Board set the time to 100 seconds to midnight, largely because of worldwide governmental dysfunction in dealing with global threats. Before 2020, the closest the hand was set to midnight was two minutes; in 1953, after the United States and the Soviet Union each tested their first thermonuclear weapons within six months of one another, and 2018, largely due to nuclear risk and the rising threat of climate change.”

Wow, we are now closer to midnight than we have ever been, and for some reason the good (and I suspect brilliant) people at the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists continue to ignore the global, and catastrophic Standard American Diet (SAD) type of food system, which is in many ways driving our ongoing wars and the climate crisis. Sigh.
Click here for an article on the H-Bomb written by Albert Einstein in 1950.
Click here to learn how the prophets of doom might save the world.
Click here for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists website.

The older I get, the more I feel younger adults looking right through me. I stopped by a relatively upscale restaurant the other night to watch a Celtics game, and I was seated at a bar surrounded by meat devouring millennials who were all having a good time. I struck up a conversation with a nice couple, and after some discussion and laughter, I shared my card and a few quick thoughts on the power of plant-based nutrition (as they were getting ready to leave). Well, the mood changed quickly and their smiles faded just as fast. The woman was sweet, and out of kindness, tucked my card in her jacket as her husband rolled his eyes. Before I left, I scanned the room and noticed that most people were flirting, arguing over video games, laughing, talking loudly on their cell phones, and all the while not thinking for a moment of where the misery on their plates originated, or how their lifestyle choices are connected to ongoing wars. They had beautiful smiles, beautiful clothes, beautiful cars, and most likely beautiful homes. And they were friendly enough too, but they just didn’t care, and probably never will. Their curiosity, compassion, and any sense of injustice were beaten out of them long ago. Oh yes, capitalism. Cornel West said it best, we need a Revolution. It is that simple, and I don’t see any other way to a sustainable future, and peace for all beings without one. Too many Americans are sleepwalking, and there are just too many broken systems, with too many lunatics in positions of great influence and power. And power as we know, concedes nothing without a demand.

I have learned that the first steps in the process of healing and recovery for alcoholics is acknowledgement, and accountability. This is exactly what the US needs to do to end its long history of attempted Genocides, wars, and other acts/events of violence, murder, and destruction (including the relentless, lethal march of Industrial Agriculture). If only we could acknowledge this history, change our food system to one that is entirely plant-based (saving millions of lives each day while replenishing the soil), and then try to see that justice is served for every being, everywhere (again, the US has killed millions of innocent people in the last 50 years, and not one person has ever been held accountable). In a perfect world, we could then pay reparations to all of our brothers and sisters, including Native Americans, Vietnamese, African Americans, Palestinians, Iraqis, Afghans, and countless others around the world too. I know that it’s a pipe dream, but can you imagine the implications for future generations? I know too that as a group, most Americans would laugh at such talk, but I also know that most people are good, and Americans are no different. And this is what gives me hope. As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. taught us, “History is the long and tragic story of the fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but, as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups are more immoral than individuals.” Perhaps the first step in getting more people to care, is to be honest with our children about the food on their plates. We could also work on being better communicators, and honest with ourselves as well. I know that I will keep trying, even though I still have a long way to go.
Click here for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail.”

Incidentally, I read that when Cornel West was asked why he was not vegan (considering his unique aptitude for fighting the good fight when it comes to social justice issues), he was left speechless. Apparently, he nodded in agreement when someone next to him explained that there is a difference between the truth, and the journey to the truth, and that they were still on the journey. Cornel West is a trusted and valuable resource who continues to do tremendous work both in how he simplifies complicated issues, and with his relentless and inspiring activism. I admire him in many ways. But just as Howard Lyman once said that you can’t be an environmentalist and eat meat, the same can be said for “peace activists”, who at the end of a long event, pat themselves on the back while chomping down on cheeseburgers and chicken wings.

And in the “Excuse me Ma’m, just one more thing” category, I  joined an anti-war march recently that ended up in the educational and cultural space of a wonderful organization called The People’s Forum. If you are unfamiliar, here is a description from their website: “We are a movement incubator for working class and marginalized communities to build unity across historic lines of division at home and abroad. We are an accessible educational and cultural space that nurtures the next generation of visionaries and organizers who believe that through collective action a new world is possible.” The presenters did a great job when it came to discussing the history, politics, and criminality of our ongoing wars. Unfortunately, despite their noble efforts, there was still a complete disconnect between our catastrophic food system that is based on violence and suffering, and our abilities to achieve peace. Their very own People’s Cafe, which is a part of the People’s Forum space and proudly featured on their website, offers many animal, health, and Earth destroying foods, including chicken dumplings, mozzarella sticks, pigs in a blanket, and steamed cow’s milk (see pics below). Sigh. Again, you can’t call yourself a “peace activist”, if you are chomping down on cheeseburgers and chicken wings.
Click here for the The People’s Forum website.

So, there you have it. The longest blog in the history of blogs! Like millions of others, I remain a work in progress as I continue to try and figure stuff out. If our species survives, I do know that I will not see the changes that I would like to see in my lifetime. How comforting is that? So, I find myself once again thinking of Ms. Agnes Edna Ryan, who was born in 1878. Wow. A true inspiration, and way ahead of her time, I can’t help but wonder how Ms. Ryan would respond to the following two questions: If the United States has a food system that is based on violence, suffering, death, and destruction, should any of us really be surprised by the unrelenting and monstrous actions of the ever-expanding US war machine? Are we evolving or regressing?  

Until next time. 🙂

*Main Image: Terror of War, aka Napalm Girl, by Nick Ut 
Click here to learn more about Kim Phuc Phan Thi, and the Pulitzer Prize winning photo, Terror of War.

Additional Sources:
Click here to learn more about corporate media’s propaganda from Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman.
Click here to learn more about how McDonald’s is exporting a new kind of death to Vietnam.
Click here to learn more about a Buddhist’s view of animal slaughter and meat eating.
Click here for Dr. Sahadeva dasa’s book, As long as we have Slaughterhouses, We’ll have Wars.
Click here for an interesting piece from the International Vegetarian Union from 1997.
Click here for a piece from Climate Healers on how mainstream media censors the cow in the room. 
Click here for a great song by Michael Franti and Spearhead titled, Light up Ya Lighter.
Click here for Bob Dylan’s classic, Masters of War.
Click here for the iconic song War, written by Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong. 
Click here for a wonderful song by Malvina Reynolds, and recorded by Pete Seeger called Little Boxes, which addresses the conformity and consumerism of most Americans.