Gordon Prather and Victor Navasky on Antiwar Radio
Gordon Prather, physicist, and Victor S. Navasky of the Nation magazine will be the featured guests on the Scott Horton Show at Antiwar Radio, 12:15PM Eastern, Friday, May 30th.
Topics include the recent IAEA report on Iran’s nuclear program and the media's coverage in the lead-up to war. Scott Horton is one of the best interviewers in the business. The streaming link is here.
Here is an audio of Scott Horton's interview of actor, producer, and writer, John Kusack about his new film satire, War Inc. The film opened on May 23 in New York and Los Angeles and in the interview, according to this description, Cusack expresses "his outrage at the criminality of modern American war profiteers, the need for a grassroots bumrush of the first showings to guarantee national distribution, some critics’ complaints that the movie 'hits too close to home,' the great journalists whose work has inspired him, the socialization of the costs of all these private armies onto the American tax payer, the outsourcing of interrogation, the betrayals of the Democrats, the banality of evil, the short-changing of the troops while private mercenaries cash in and militarism in the movies."
Conservatives Demonized Reagan as "Chamberlainian appeaser"
The conservative attempt to compare Obama and Neville Chamberlain is not new. Glenn Greenwald finds that they made the same charge against none other than Ronald Reagan. For example,
Conservative Caucus Chair Howard Phillips, for instance, "scorned President Reagan as 'a useful idiot for Kremlin propaganda,'" and published ads which, according to a January 20, 1988 UPI article (via LEXIS): likens Reagan's signing of the INF Treaty to British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's signing of an accord with Nazi Germany's Adolf Hitler in 1938. The ad, with the headline, "Appeasement Is As Unwise In 1988 As In 1938," shows pictures of Chamberlain, Hitler, Reagan and Gorbachev overhung by an umbrella. Chamberlain carried an umbrella and it became a World War II symbol for appeasement.
Is this the choice the Democrats will offer us in November?
Leaders of the U.S. House of Representatives said in Israel on Monday that they do not rule out military action against Iran to stop it from acquiring nuclear bombs. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said a "full array of tactics are on the table" in efforts to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons.
Democrat Travis Childers won a stunning victory in a heavily Republican district in Mississippi, once represented by Trent Lott, by stressing such themes as support for a balanced budget amendment and opposition to gun control.
A less noticed, but equally important, factor in Childers' victory in this pro-military district was his call to bring the troops home “honorably, safely and soon.”
Former CIA officer and Antiwar.com columnist Philip Giraldi has this ominous news:
There is considerable speculation and buzz in Washington today suggesting that the National Security Council has agreed in principle to proceed with plans to attack an Iranian al-Qods-run camp that is believed to be training Iraqi militants. The camp that will be targeted is one of several located near Tehran. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates was the only senior official urging delay in taking any offensive action.
The best hope for the success of the antiwar movement is to have friends in both major parties.
One of these friends is Republican Rep. Walter Jones of North Carolina, who turned against the war despite his famous proposal to change the name of French fries to "freedom fries" soon after 9-11.
Despite the best efforts by the GOP establishment to punish and remove him, Jones easily prevailed yesterday against a pro-war opponent.
The heroic Republican Ron Paul of Texas, who was number one on the GOP's enemies list, won 70 percent against his primary opponent earlier this year. Paul has been against the war from the beginning and has often spoken out against the prospect of war with Iran.
Ninety years ago, Randolph Bourne aptly characterized war as “the health of the state.” Economic historian Robert Higgs not only agrees but also challenges those on the right as well as the left who assume an automatic trade-off between guns and butter.
In a online roundtable for Reason Magazine on the coming recession, Higgs writes: : Hardly anyone was surprised that real military spending (measured in accordance with the government’s own narrow definition) increased by almost 60 percent between 2000 and 2007, compared to real GDP growth of 18 percent during that time. Note, however, that the government’s real nondefense outlays increased concurrently by more than 24 percent—an increase one-third greater than that of GDP. When people let down their guard in “supporting the troops,” they permit the government to make greater headway in its ceaseless quest to enlarge spending in a wide range of areas, many of them strictly civilian in nature.
Few individuals in history have received more negative treatment than Herbert Spencer. Some U.S. survey texts give the impression that this alleged “Social Darwinist” (a term Spencer never used) was an apologist for imperialism and violence by the strong against the weak.
Spencer’s own writings tell a different story of a flawed but sincere classical liberal advocate of peace, free exchange, and social cooperation. Spencer was second to none in his critique of imperialism and militarism. In his essay on patriotism, Spencer had this to say about the Afghan War of his time:
Some years ago I gave my expression to my own feeling – anti-patriotic feeling, it will doubtless be called – in a somewhat startling way. It was at the time of the second Afghan war, when, in pursuance of what were thought to be “our interests,” we were invading Afghanistan. News had come that some of our troops were in danger. At the Athenæum Club a well-known military man – then a captain but now a general – drew my attention to a telegram containing this news, and read it to me in a manner implying the belief that I should share his anxiety. I astounded him by replying – “When men hire themselves out to shoot other men to order, asking nothing about the justice of their cause, I don’t care if they are shot themselves.”
