OMNI WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS, #150, NOVEMBER 1, 2023

 

OMNI WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS, #150, NOVEMBER 1,  2023 

 

Dick Bennett.   AIR WAR

As most of you know, I am clearing my home preparing to move to a smaller, more convenient residence, at a slow pace because I can’t resist rereading books and articles (of course eventually I must start dumping boxes without looking inside!).  Like the following:

Anthony Sampson.  Empires of the Sky: The Politics, Contests, and Cartels of World Airlines (Random House, 1984).

“How far has air travel changed the political map of the world?  Certainly, there is not much left of the rhetoric of unification—about abolishing frontiers or creating one world—which prevailed after Blėriots first cross-Channel flight, or in America during the Second World War.    The opening up of the air gave as many opportunities for destruction as for peaceful communication, and frontiers and sovereignty were soon extended upwards” (p. 229). 

Sampson’s statement led me to this question: Air Travel Leads to Peace or War?  and back to some earlier research (seeking peace v. war often involves knowledge, including often especially antecedents of events).

Here are a few writings about the atrocious history of war from the air.   (These writings lead also to present US wars—Ukraine, Gaza, just about everywhere given our $1.5 trillion spent for war in 2022 for some 800 military bases around the world and our 8 mobile, nuclear armed, extremely dangerous carrier battle groups, one of which was sent to the eastern Mediterranean by Biden, for starters)  (See Gisela Cernadas and John Bellamy Foster, “Actual U.S. Military Spending Reached $1.53 Trillion in 2022. . . . “  Monthly Review, Nov. 2023). 

#1.  http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2008/05/newsletter-1-on-air-war.html

#2.  http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2011/08/omni-air-war-newsletter-2.html

#3.  http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2012/05/omni-air-war-newsletter-2-compiled-by.html

Alas, a similar history has expanded upwards into outer space (star wars in preparation v. keeping space for peace), and is occurring as I write this.

 US STAR WARS MILITARIZATION OF SPACE FOR US DOMINANCE

#6  (October 2012)  http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2012/10/keep-space-for-peace-week-newsletter-6.html

#7  (March 2020)  https://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2020/05/omni-star-wars-newsletter-7-march-28.html

#8 (September 2021)   http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2021/09/star-wars-protest-to-stop-us.html  

My recommendation for resistance to the worst:  join the most effective organizations against air war.  I was a child during WWII and still hold hope for the UN, and I belong to several of its agencies struggling to prevent and to stop wars and to protect the refugees.  For starters.

 

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END OMNI WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS, #150, NOVEMBER 1, 2023