NORMAN SOLOMON -- On the last night of August, the president used an Oval Office speech to boost a policy of perpetual war. Hours later, the New York Times front page offered a credulous gloss for the end of “the seven-year American combat mission in Iraq.”
SUZY KIST -- Ocean Renewable Power Company (ORPC), an industry leader in tidal, river and deep-water ocean current energy technology and projects, announced on August 18 that its Beta Power System, the largest ocean energy “power plant” ever installed in U.S. waters, has successfully generated grid-compatible power from tidal currents at its Cobscook...
WINSLOW MYERS -- Two strategic goals of the U.S. are an apparent desire to control Middle East oil and the expressed commitment to help keep Israel safe. This requires the U.S. to refuse the laudable vision of the Middle East as a nuclear weapons-free zone, which would demand that Israel dismantle its nuclear arsenal....
NORMAN SOLOMON -- It’s already history. In mid-August 2010, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan launched a huge media campaign to prevent any substantial withdrawal of military forces the next summer. The morning after Gen. David Petraeus appeared in a Sunday interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press” to promote the war effort, the New York...
LAWRENCE WITTNER -- The August 9 announcement by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates of cost-containment measures at the Defense Department should not obscure two underlying facts. First, as he conceded, these proposed economies will not result in cutting the overall Pentagon budget, which is slated for expansion.
PETER BERGEL -- Two days ago, The PeaceWorker published an explanation by Rep Peter DeFazio of his recent votes on funding the war in Afghanistan. This article was encouraging in that it expressed the misgivings many of us have about the war and those prosecuting it. It also explained in a cogent way what...
REP. PETER DEFAZIO -- Given that the war in Afghanistan has entered its ninth year without clearly defined objectives or an exit strategy, I wanted to provide you an update of my continued opposition to our head-in-the-sand Afghanistan policies. We recently saw a major shakeup in military leadership in Afghanistan, but it is...
MICHAEL MARIOTTE -- The flagship project to build a new nuclear power reactor in the United States — the one that provided the economic model for most new reactor proposals since — is in serious trouble and likely will collapse of its own weight before construction can even begin.
JASON WHITED -- Fourteen nonviolent direct actionists at Creech Air Force Base in Southern Nevada face charges for entering the base to protest the use of unmanned weapons which kill indiscriminately halfway around the world. These weapons are guided to their targets from air-conditioned trailers at Creech. Trial for the “Creech 14” is set...
RALPH NADER -- The war in Afghanistan is nearly nine years old — the longest in American history. After the U.S. quickly toppled the Taliban regime in October 2001, the Taliban, by all accounts, came back stronger and harsher enough to control now at least 30 percent of the country. During this time, U.S....
EDITOR-- The “realities” listed in this article are correct as far as they go, but they do not go far enough. While it is strictly true that “there is no Social Security crisis” because the Social Security Trust Fund “is full of U.S. Treasury Bonds,” the implication is that everything is all right. This...
PETER BERGEL -- For decades, beginning during the Vietnam War, our elected leaders have tried to mask the size of the national debt they have permitted to accumulate by “borrowing” the surplus from the Social Security Trust Fund. This was done without consulting the public in any way, and largely without public knowledge, even...
LOUISE GRAY -- A new climate change report from the Met Office and its U.S. equivalent has provided the "greatest evidence we have ever had" that the world is warming. It is the first time a report has brought together all the different ways...
BOB HERBERT -- We were told by oil industry executives and their acolytes and enablers in government that deep-water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico would not cause the kind of catastrophe that we’ve been watching with an acute and painful sense of helplessness for the past three months. Advances in technology, they said,...
WINSLOW MYERS -- When I was working as a teacher, I loved the phrase “best practices.” It suggested pooled wisdom, a collective weeding out of the more effective from the less effective, a distillation of the authentic out of a world of potential baloney. It implied disinterested cooperation to figure out what really does...
PHIL DAVIS -- What are 308,367,109 Americans supposed to do? First of all, despite clamping down on immigration, our population grew by 2.6M people last year. Unfortunately, not only did we not create jobs for those 2.6M new people but we lost about 4M jobs so what are these new people going to do?...
RUSSELL VANDENBROUCKE -- Every August, as the anniversaries of Hiroshima and Nagasaki approach, comments resume about American decisions at the end of World War II. Despite the passage of 65 years, heated opinions are repeated as fact and myths become immortalized as truths. Beyond distorting the historical record, wishful thinking about it leads us...
JOE WALSH -- The vote was not even close and especially when you know that it took a 2/3 vote. The reason for the 2/3 vote to pass, was it was a rule change. We have been informed that all our delegation except that one republican voted against war funding, I want...
NORMAN SOLOMON -- Washington’s spin machine is in overdrive to counter the massive leak of documents on Afghanistan. Much of the counterattack revolves around the theme that the documents aren’t particularly relevant to this year’s new-and-improved war effort.
MICHAEL BURNHAM -- Westward pioneers halted their wagons in Portland, OR 150 years ago, but today's politicians and planners aim to make recession- battered Portland the starting point for green-economy trailblazers. Mayor Sam Adams and General Electric Co. executives are forging a first-of-its-kind partnership that will include retrofitting drafty buildings with energy-saving technologies and...
WILILEAKS -- On July 25, 2010 WikiLeaks, the Australian whistleblower website, released a document set called the “Afghan War Diary,” an extraordinary compendium of over 91,000 reports covering the war in Afghanistan from 2004 to 2010.
WES BENEDICT -- The long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been back in the news recently, and we just had the bizarre spectacle of the Republican National Committee Chairman saying he didn't like Obama's war in Afghanistan, while the DNC chastised him for failing to support the troops.
WINSLOW MYERS -- The article in Rolling Stone that ended the meteoric career of General McChrystal shines light on the thought-process not only of one military man, but also on the dysfunctional paradigm now failing in Afghanistan. It is a textbook demonstration of how the mind-set of war itself, the notion of annihilating...
REPS. BARNEY FRANK AND RON PAUL -- As members of opposing political parties, we disagree on a number of important issues. But we must not allow honest disagreement over some issues to interfere with our ability to work together when we do agree. By far the single most important of these is our current...
REMARKABLE VIDEO -- Are you familiar with the term “micro air vehicle?” If not, you should be. It’s another of the arsenal of futuristic weapons the U.S. Air Force is developing.
DAVID SWANSON -- The Democratic leadership in the House had to resort to an unusual and underhanded tactic to pass war funding last week.
NORMAN SOLOMON -- For the warfare state, it doesn’t get any better than 99 to 0. Every living senator voted to approve Gen. David Petraeus as the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan. Call it the unanimity of lemmings -- except the senators and their families aren’t the ones who’ll keep plunging into the sea.
WINSLOW MYERS -- What an extraordinary civics lesson for the students, faculty, administration, town officials and parents connected with the Dennis-Yarmouth Regional High School on Cape Cod! Two teachers, Marybeth Verani and Carrie Koscher, stood up at an assembly recognizing six students who were joining the military and held a sign that said "End...
OREGON PEACEWORKS -- Oregon PeaceWorks' events calendar has been combined with the calendar offered by Oregon Progressive Network (OPN). Read the details...
KATHY KELLY & DAN PEARSON -- In accepting General McChrystal’s resignation, President Obama said that McChrystal’s departure represented a change in personnel, not a change in policy. “Americans don’t flinch in the face of difficult truths or difficult tasks.” he stated, “We persist and we persevere.” Yet, President Obama and the U.S. people don’t...
KAT BARR -- Right now, the Internet is a free, open resource for all Americans. But in backrooms in Washington, Verizon, AT&T, and other telecom companies are lobbying hard to change that.
NICOLE FORBES-- From 500 miles off the Oregon Coast to Japan, the Pacific Ocean is a toxic soup of plastic. The amount of plastic in our oceans has tripled since the 1980s, and it is now six to 40 times more prevalent than plankton, the fundamental food source of our ocean. It’s time...
REP. PETER DEFAZIO -- U.S. Rep. Peter DeFazio, (OR-04) in a speech on the House floor June 24th, urged President Obama to reconsider his policy in Afghanistan in light of the replacement of General McChrystal. Read the speech.
MARY LEE MORRISON -- Elise Boulding died at 4:40 pm, June 24, 2010 in Needham, MA. Hailed as a "matriarch" of the twentieth century peace research movement, she was sociologist emeritus from Dartmouth College and from the University of Colorado and in on the ground floor in the movements of peace, women's studies and...
SIMON LAUDER -- The man behind whistleblower website Wikileaks says he is not in a position to record an interview amid claims his life is in danger. Julian Assange, the Australian-born founder of Wikileaks, is said to be under threat with reports that the site has hundreds of thousands of classified cables containing explosive...
LAWRENCE WITTNER -- The offshore oil drilling catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico brought to us by BP has overshadowed its central role over the past century in fostering some other disastrous events.
NORMAN SOLOMON -- When the wheels are coming off, it doesn’t do much good to change the driver. Whatever the name of the commanding general in Afghanistan, the U.S. war effort will continue its carnage and futility.
TOM H. HASTINGS -- Here comes the 4th of July and we are barely done with Memorial Day. The flags of nationalistic patriotic fervor sprout and resprout across the land, in the parks, on the lawns, on billboards, on the Internet, and generally everywhere. Military jets will fly in formation, anthems will fill the...
PAUL ROGAT LOEB -- Effective activism is a long-haul process, not “save the earth in 30 days, ask me how.” But there are some principles that seem to reoccur for people addressing every kind of challenge from the Gulf Oil spill to inadequate funding for urban schools to how to deal with Afghanistan and...
SARAH HODGEDON -- There is no doubt that the human race must wean itself from dependence on oil if it is to survive and avoid the worst aspects of global warming. The Sierra Club has devised an imaginative way to bring this message to Congress as an Independence Day celebration. Read more...
RAJ PATEL -- A top ten list of things that aren’t as cheap as you think.
WENDY MCELROY -- In response to a flood of Facebook and YouTube videos that depict police abuse, a new trend in law enforcement is gaining popularity. In at least three states, it is now illegal to record any on-duty police officer. Even if the encounter involves you and may be necessary to your defense,...
IPPNW -- The following is a joint statement from the Palestinian and Israeli affiliates of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) on the recent violence at sea. This statement is the product of unique and powerful collaboration, with physicians transcending political and ideological divisions to speak out with a common...
CHRIS NELDER -- As the Deepwater Horizon rig disaster continues to unfold, the peak oil community has a “teachable moment” in which it can illuminate the reality of our energy plight. The public has had a crash course in the challenges of offshore oil, and learned a whole new vocabulary. They are more aware...
KATHY KELLY & JOSH BROLLIER -- These brave peace correspondents, reporting from a desperately dangerous place, reveal why U.S. policy is failing in Afghanistan.
LAWRENCE WITTNER -- For some time now, it has been clear that nuclear weapons threaten the existence not only of humanity, but of all life on Earth. Thus, Barack Obama's pledge to work for a nuclear weapons-free world—made during his 2008 presidential campaign and subsequently in public statements—has resonated nicely with supporters of nuclear...
NORMAN SOLOMON -- When Israel attacked the Gaza aid flotilla, Congresswoman Jane Harman was engaged in a parallel assault. Israel’s government relied on the efficacy of violence; Harman’s campaign was counting on the power of paid media. In both cases, the targets were advocates of human rights for Palestinian people.
CARRIE ADAMS -- If you have ever visited the Oregon PeaceWorks office in Salem, you have seen our display of peace merchandise. If you’ve never had that opportunity, you no longer need miss out. OPW has launched its online Peace Store which you can visit with a mere mouseclick.
JOHN MICHAEL GREER -- It has been nearly four decades now since the limits to industrial civilization’s trajectory of limitless material growth on a limited planet have been clearly visible on the horizon of our future. Over that time, a remarkable paradox has unfolded. The closer we get to the limits to growth, the...
PHIL CARVER -- The Senate is now considering the Kerry-Lieberman climate bill, titled the American Power Act (APA). It has several improvements over H.R. 2454, the Waxman-Markey bill that passed the House in June 2009.
