Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author's permission. Yesterday, journalists Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger testified before the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government. Their testimony, and the risible reactions of...
Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author's permission. President Dwight D. Eisenhower (Ike) had it right. The military-industrial complex (MIC) is fundamentally antidemocratic The national security state has become the fourth branch of government and arguably the...
Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author's permission. February 19th is the Rage Against the War Machine rally in DC. It just so happens to be my dad’s birthday as well. He was born on that date in 1917, endured the Great Depression, worked in the Civilian...
Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author's permission. Two articles I read Monday are typical of polarized, indeed antithetical, views on the Russia-Ukraine War. At the British Guardian, Simon Tisdall says this is Europe’s moment to step up and support Ukraine in...
More than two millennia ago, in the History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides recounted a disastrous conflict Athens waged against Sparta. A masterwork on strategy and war, the book is still taught at the US Army War College and many other military institutions...
Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author's permission. As a teenager in the 1970s, I recall talking to my dad about fears of nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union. My dad took a broad view, suggesting that if U.S. and Soviet leaders were...
Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author's permission. In my eclectic reading, I came across a couple of references to ChatGPT, an experiment in artificial intelligence (AI). You ask the AI bot a question, or give it a task, and it spits out an answer, and I must...
Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author's permission. Terminology is so important. There was a time when America spoke honestly of a Department of War. But not everyone is keen on war, even Americans, so in 1947 the national (in)security state slyly changed its...
Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author's permission. (I prepared these notes for a talk I gave on “Truth-killers: The Corporate Media and the Military-Industrial Complex,” sponsored by Massachusetts Peace Action. David Swanson also spoke.) I served in the U.S....
Originally posted at TomDispatch. It was a backlit wonder of a plane on what looked like a Hollywood set – though the location was actually a Northrop Grumman plant in California. The workers from that giant weapons maker were there, too, chanting “USA!...
