BONNIE CARACCIOLO—I do not believe in war. Saying that I do not believe in war is not the same as saying “I don’t support the troops”. That is a ploy to make those who are against war seem like unpatriotic ingrates. What it means is- I don’t believe in subsidizing young people to go halfway across the planet to kill other young people and unarmed civilians who are, today, 80% of casualties in ‘modern warfare’.
ED CURTIN—Hedges omits mentioning the Clinton administration’s dismantling wars against Yugoslavia, including 78 days of non-stop bombing of Serbia in 1999 that killed thousands of innocent people in the name of “humanitarian intervention,” wars he covered for the New York Times, the paper he has come to castigate and the paper that has a long history of doing the CIA’s bidding.
When you consider Obama’s record after four years in office–a multi-trillion-dollar bailout of Wall Street, the continuing “war on terror,” more civil liberties shredded, the Employee Free Choice Act abandoned, deportations on the rise, a deepening assault on public schools–the answer has to be no. The list of broken promises and betrayed hopes goes on and on, outweighing anything that could be described as progress.
In his intro, Lee dissects the scandalous way in which mainstream media trivialise news, assign top billing to banalities such as sports and political gossip, and generally squander mass communications, a precious resource at a moment when our planet is dying. And then he gets to interview Danny Haiphong, a leading young radical intellectual and historian affiliated with Black Agenda Report.
WJ ASTORE—Like Russia, China has a single aircraft carrier, though there are plans to build one or two more. Even if China does, the U.S. will still maintain an enormous lead on its “great-power” rivals. Some rivalry!The U.S. Navy currently has eleven fleet aircraft carriers, with two new ones under construction and a further two on order. Indeed, to make space for all these new carriers, the Navy has plans to retire CVN-75, Harry S Truman, 20 years early, an idea even Congress finds silly.