Category: Uncategorized

When humans embrace the dehumanization of others, we release our ugliest, most destructive selves. Dehumanization is a perverse force that propagates violence and justifies the lust for war and its atrocities. On August 6, 1945, Sakue Shimohira was 10 years old when an atomic blast obliterated her home in Hiroshima, Japan, burning her mother into … Continue reading “The Dehumanization of War: A Meditation for Veterans Day”

On November 2, against the weight of the entire world, the US, once again, voted against a UN General Assembly resolution calling for the end of its six decade embargo of Cuba. The resolution was called the “necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed by the United States of America against Cuba.” … Continue reading “Israel Alone in Supporting the US Embargo of Cuba”

What if the roles were reversed? What if the Palestinians were a powerful and prosperous state armed to the teeth by the most powerful country in the world? What if they had state-of-the-art weaponry complete with F-16s, Merkava tanks, howitzers, armored personnel carriers, and the patriot missel defense system. What if the Palestinians controlled the … Continue reading “Israel-Palestine: If the Shoe Were on the Other Foot”

Since October 7th, the ongoing horrific violence in Palestine and Israel has received incredible amounts of media coverage. Both Israelis and Palestinians are experiencing terrible pain and suffering. Unsurprisingly, the mainstream media’s reporting provided little context for the deadly Hamas attack and its war crimes. Note that the provision of the context is not a … Continue reading “More Violence Leads to Even More Violence”

The Israel-Palestine vortex of human suffering that has flooded eyes on social media over the last weeks has been stupefying. As a result, many people have been rendered numb to the human empathy evoked with each new report of grisly murders of innocent lives, from grandmothers to toddlers and babies. In the midst of the … Continue reading “The Haunting of Christ in the Holy Land”

The governments of Israel and the United States are now in disagreement over how many Palestinian civilians it’s okay to kill. Last week – as the death toll from massive Israeli bombardment of Gaza neared 10,000 people, including several thousand children – top U.S. officials began to worry about the rising horrified outcry at home and … Continue reading “Israel’s Military Is Part of the US War Machine”

Surveying the wreckage US foreign policy has wrought from the privileged and comfortable vantage point of Washington, DC, should prompt the surveyor to wonder when exactly did things go so wrong?  Any reasonable list of dates might include April 12, 1945 as the point at which the US began its decades long journey away from reality and onto … Continue reading “US Foreign Policy Has Come Full Circle”

Faced with growing American frustration over more than $100 billion spent on a failed proxy war in Ukraine, President Biden’s handlers have hit on a gimmick to convince us that this foreign aid is actually an investment in our own economy! In his recent television address, Biden explained that as we transfer more weapons to … Continue reading “Don’t Worry, It’s Not Foreign Aid… It’s Corporate Welfare!”

On September 19, 2001, eight days after 9/11, as the leaders of both parties were already pounding a frenzied drumbeat of war, a diverse group of concerned Americans released a warning about the long-term consequences of a military response. Among them were veteran civil rights activists, faith leaders, and public intellectuals, including Rosa Parks, Harry … Continue reading “America’s War Economy and the Urgent Call for Peace in the Middle East”

Ukraine has lost the war. That is not fake news from social media. It is not propaganda from Russian media. It is what follows deductively from statements made by the commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian armed forces, General Valery Zaluzhny, in a November 1 interview with The Economist. In that interview, Zaluzhny assesses that “we have … Continue reading “Ukraine Has Lost the War”