WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS, #89,
AUGUST 31, 2022
Chris Hedges.
“Ukraine and the Politics of
Permanent War.”
World Beyond War. The War Abolisher Awards of 2022.
Dick Bennett. “Finding Hope.”
Chris Hedges. “Ukraine and the Politics of
Permanent War.”
The prosecution of permanent war requires
permanent censorship.
No one, including the most bullish supporters
of Ukraine, expect the nation’s war with Russia to end soon. The fighting has
been reduced to artillery duels across hundreds of miles of front lines and
creeping advances and retreats. Ukraine, like Afghanistan, will bleed for
a very long time. This is by design.
On August 24, the Biden administration announced yet
another massive military aid package to
Ukraine worth nearly $3 billion. It will take months, and in some cases years,
for this military equipment to reach Ukraine. In another sign that Washington
assumes the conflict will be a long war of attrition it will give a name to
the U.S. military assistance mission in Ukraine and make it a separate command
overseen by a two- or three-star general. Since August 2021, Biden has approved more
than $8 billion in weapons transfers from existing stockpiles, known as
drawdowns, to be shipped to Ukraine, which do not require Congressional
approval.
Including humanitarian assistance,
replenishing depleting U.S. weapons stocks and expanding U.S. troop presence in
Europe, Congress has approved over
$53.6 billion ($13.6 billion in March and a
further $40.1 billion in May) since
Russia's February 24 invasion. War takes precedence over the most serious
existential threats we face. The proposed budget for
the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in fiscal year 2023 is
$10.675 billion while the proposed budget for
the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is $11.881 billion. Our approved
assistance to Ukraine is more than twice these amounts.
The militarists who have waged permanent
war costing trillions of dollars over the past two decades have invested heavily in
controlling the public narrative. The enemy, whether Saddam Hussein or Vladimir
Putin, is always the epitome of evil, the new Hitler. Those we support are
always heroic defenders of liberty and democracy. Anyone who questions the
righteousness of the cause is accused of being an agent of a foreign power and
a traitor.
The mass media cravenly disseminates these
binary absurdities in 24-hour news cycles. Its news celebrities and experts,
universally drawn from the intelligence community and military, rarely deviate
from the approved script. Day and night, the drums of war never stop beating.
Its goal: to keep billions of dollars flowing into the hands of the war industry
and prevent the public from asking inconvenient questions. MORE https://scheerpost.com/2022/08/29/chris-hedges-ukraine-and-the-politics-of-permanent-war/
Attend Online Presentation of War Abolishers of 2022 Awards. World BEYOND War ( 8-15-22).
The War Abolisher Awards
of 2022 will be presented, and we'll hear from the recipients, at a free,
public online event on September
5, 2022.
Find the timing and the answers to most questions at the link.
We'll be announcing the winners on August
29th.
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Dick: Finding
HOPE, all around and in us.
Despair: to
lose hope, to be without hope.
To a
Christian, despair denies Jesus. Through
Jesus and a God of love we can understand the universe and solve human
problems With Jesus we cannot despair.
To a humanist,
despair abandons reason and science and the other affirmations of human thought
and action by which we understand the universe and solve human problems. The colleges of the arts and sciences exemplify
humanist hope.
These two ways
to truth are not essentially, inevitably antagonistic. The Dalai Lama led the Tibetan nation and
faith while affirming all religions and science and social sciences. Both can agree with Thomas Hardy’s way to
truth: “If way to a better there be/It
exacts a full look at the worst.” ( “In Tenebris II”) Both eschew denial of reality, evasion, naiveté,
wishful thinking, ignorance, partial thinking, inadequate perception, bigotry,
jingoism, xenophobia, which generate illusions.
Both seek action based on full reality.
And both are imperfect, always to be improved.
The present
confluence of wars, threat of nuclear war, planetary heating, global racism,
population growth, economic inequality, and pandemics exacts a full look at the
worst, if we are to act wisely for peace.
OMNI’S WWW AND
CMM seek to provide parts of this full reality.
Ref.
The last page of every number of Free
Inquiry provides “The Affirmations of Humanism: A Statement of Principles”
by Paul Kurtz.
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