WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS #260, December 17, 2025.

 

WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS #260, December 17, 2025.   Compiled by Dick Bennett.

 

[WWW has never been more needed, but next week’s edition will be its final issue, unless you will be the new editor.  I am preparing to move to an assisted living residence.  -D]

 

 

Military-corporate-gov-media-neofascist Complex

US Militarism and Warmaking.

Kathleen Barry.  Unmaking War, Remaking Men:  How Empathy. . . . 
Nan Levinson. “Who’s Responsible When a Military Order is Illegal?”

Theocracy Watch.

Russophobia.
US Corporate Media Increasingly Centralized.
Common Cause.   Defending Arkansas PBS.
Robert Reich.  Major Media Being Bought by Trump’s Billionaire Friends.

TEXTS Empathy

Unmaking War, Remaking Men: How Empathy Can Reshape Our Politics, Our Soldiers and Ourselves by Kathleen Barry.  2010
 One day at a beach Kathleen Barry witnessed an accidental death. Seeing how empathy drew together the bystanders – strangers until that moment – in shared human consciousness, she asked: 'Why do we value human lives in everyday moments but accept the killing in war as inevitable?'    In Unmaking War, Remaking Men, Kathleen Barry explores soldiers' experiences through a politics of empathy.   By revealing how men’s lives are made expendable for combat, she shows how military training drives them to kill without thinking and without remorse, only to suffer both trauma and loss of their own souls.  She turns to her politics of empathy to shed new light on the experiences of those who are invaded and occupied and shows how resistance rises among them.   And what of the state leaders and the generals who make war? In 2001, a fateful year for the world, George W. Bush became President of the US; Ariel Sharon became Prime Minister of Israel; and Osama bin Laden became the de facto world terrorist leader. Analyzing their leadership and failure of empathy, Unmaking War, Remaking Men reveals a common psychopathology of those driven to ongoing war, first making enemies, then labeling them as terrorists or infidels. . . .

[Here is an excellent examination of the book by Gary Olson:  https://www.artsandopinion.com/2011_v10_n4/olson-2.htm  
Although it does not employ the expression, tparts of the review reminds me of a local veteran for whom “moral injury” was central to his soldiering and who killed himself: Jacob George.  –D]

 

“Doin’-the-Right-Thing Rag.   Who’s Responsible When a Military Order is Illegal? (Don't Ask Donald Trump!).”  By Nan Levinson.  Via Tarak Kauff.    . . . On enlistment, everyone in the military takes an oath of loyalty not to a person, a party, or any form of politics, but to the Constitution. Enlistees in all branches also pledge to obey orders from their officers and the president. As stipulated in the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), it’s clear that this means only lawful orders. Officers take a slightly different oath: they, too, swear to support and defend the Constitution, but their oath doesn’t include anything about obeying orders from their superiors or the president, presumably because they’re responsible for giving orders and ensuring that those orders are lawful. Officers reaffirm their oath whenever they’re promoted. Across the board, the UCMJ, the Nuremberg Principles, and the U.S. Constitution establish the right and responsibility of servicemembers to refuse illegal orders or to refuse to participate in illegal wars, war crimes, or unconstitutional deployments. . . .  More click on title

THEOCRATIZING THE GOVERNMENT AND MILITARIZING THE BIBLE

Freethought Today (Oct. 2025), a publication of Freedom from Religion Foundation, contains three articles regarding the unconstitutional behavior of the Trump administration.  “Theocracy Watch: Christianity Gets More Government Backing” describes the DHS, HUD, White House, Department of War, State Department.  “Arkansas Law Is ‘Obviously Unconstitutional” and “Texas School Districts Must Comply with Aug. 20 Ruling.”   --D

 

USA, UK, BBC RUSSOPHOBIC

Regarding war-making, the US and UK march shoulder to shoulder, so it’s not surprising, given the militarized economies of both nations, that BBC is as biased as our mainstream commercial networks.   In a recent a single report on the Ukraine War, BBC supported:  the “Coalition of the Willing” v. Russia; maximizing costs of the war to weaken Russia; using more long-range missiles against Russia (Starmer); stealing impounded Russian funds; claiming without serious qualifications that Russia had occupied Ukrainian territory the size of Greece; reporting Ukrainian lives lost by the Russian “invasion” of 2022 (but not Ukrainian lives lost by the 2014 coup).   See Soviet/Russophobia Anthology #8.   --Dick

 

Hopes for Impartial Public News Diminishing: PBS Budget Slashed, Major Media Being Bought by Trump’s Friends.
Common Cause.  “DEFENDING PBS: NO STATE NEEDS IT MORE THAN ARKANSAS.”
 I just signed this petition – will you?
Trump has already slashed $1.1 billion from public broadcasting this year – gutting local stations, shrinking investigative reporting, and leaving communities without trusted news. That vacuum is exactly what corporate networks are racing to fill with gambling-driven coverage.  I just signed a Common Cause petition urging Congress to save impartial public media – and I hope that you will too.     https://act.commoncause.org/petitions/save-impartial-public-media/?source=email-share

Robert Reich.  “I’ve never seen the media this bad.”   12-20-25.   Inequality Media: Civic Action.
Friends, we’re watching the slow-motion takeover of virtually every major media outlet and news source by Donald Trump and his ultra-rich friends.

Here’s just a partial list of the biggest media platforms now controlled by Trump’s allies:

· Elon Musk, who apparently is back as Trump’s “First Buddy,” owns Twitter/X.

· Trump friend Larry Ellison owns Paramount, which owns CBS — and could soon own Warner Bros. Discovery, which owns CNN.

· MAGA-friendly billionaire Mark Zuckerberg owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.

· Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post and Amazon MGM Studios.

· Right-wing media mogul Rupert Murdoch owns Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, and the New York Post.

· A Trump-aligned consortium including Ellison and Trump mega-donor Marc Andreesson is angling to buy TikTok, the biggest social media platform in the world.

American democracy will not survive if a handful of Trump-friendly billionaires control everything the people see, hear, and read — and that’s exactly why Trump is using the power of his office to accelerate this consolidation and attack the shrinking number of remaining independent outlets.

 

END WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS #260, December 17, 2025.   Compiled by Dick Bennett.