Alternatives to Empire » Ethics

Obama and War: What Would Jesus Do? John W. Whitehead

andrew — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 04:57:53 +0000

Barack Obama came into the office of the presidency proclaiming hope and change and a personal adherence to the teachings of Jesus Christ, who preached a message of peace, love and nonviolence. Yet any hope that Obama’s professed religious beliefs might lead him to put an end to the endless wars was short-lived. Indeed, rather than dismantling the military empire that became a hallmark of George W. Bush’s presidency, Obama has continued to spread American troops around the globe.

Boasting the biggest war budget since World War II (the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have now passed the $1 trillion mark, with Congress recently approving an additional $37 billion in war funding), Obama’s war machine is wreaking havoc far and wide on communities and families devastated by mounting military and civilian casualties, on the already faltering economy, and on America’s once-noble standing in the world. Even the recent disclosure of more than 90,000 secret military files documenting a failing Afghanistan war riddled by undocumented civilian casualties has not managed to slow Obama’s steadfast march to war.

What collapsing empire looks like By Glenn Greenwald

andrew — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 04:51:25 +0000

As we enter our ninth year of the War in Afghanistan with an escalated force, and continue to occupy Iraq indefinitely, and feed an endlessly growing Surveillance State, reports are emerging of the Deficit Commission hard at work planning how to cut Social Security, Medicare, and now even to freeze military pay. But a new New York Times article today illustrates as vividly as anything else what a collapsing empire looks like, as it profiles just a few of the budget cuts which cities around the country are being forced to make.Does anyone doubt that once a society ceases to be able to afford schools, public transit, paved roads, libraries and street lights — or once it chooses not to be able to afford those things in pursuit of imperial priorities and the maintenance of a vast Surveillance and National Security State — that a very serious problem has arisen, that things have gone seriously awry, that imperial collapse, by definition, is an imminent inevitability?

If you want more then go to: http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/08/06/collapse/index.html

An American Attack On Iran Would Lead To US Collapse Says Top Russian General

andrew — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 03:24:38 +0000

Written by Juan Cole

Weapons of Mass Democracy by Stephen Zunes

andrew — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 04:41:21 +0000

Nonviolent Resistance Is the Most Powerful Tactic Against Oppressive Regimes

On the outskirts of a desert town in the Moroccan-occupied territory of Western Sahara, about a dozen young activists are gathered. They are involved in their country?s long struggle for freedom. A group of foreigners?veterans of protracted resistance movements?is conducting a training session in the optimal use of a ?weapons system? that is increasingly deployed in struggles for freedom around the world. The workshop leaders pass out Arabic translations of writings on the theory and dynamics of revolutionary struggle and lead the participants in a series of exercises designed to enhance their strategic and tactical thinking. These trainers are not veterans of guerrilla warfare, however, but of unarmed insurrections against repressive regimes. The materials they hand out are not the words of Che Guevara, but of Gene Sharp, the former Harvard scholar who has pioneered the study of strategic nonviolent action. And the weapons they advocate employing are not guns and bombs, but strikes, boycotts, mass demonstrations, tax refusal, alternative media, and refusal to obey official orders.

Naomi Klein on Climate Debt: Why Rich Countries Should Pay Reparations To Poor Countries For The Climate Crisis.

andrew — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 03:54:32 +0000

With the Copenhagen climate summit two weeks away, best-selling journalist Naomi Klein examines the grass-roots movement behind the climate debate proposal that argues all the costs associated with adapting to a more hostile ecology?everything from building stronger sea walls to switching to cleaner, more expensive technologies?are the responsibility of the countries that created the crisis. Klein also discusses the 10th anniversary of the Seattle WTO protests and the 10th anniversary of her first book, ?No Logo.?

For More Read: http://www.democracynow.org/2009/11/23/naomi_klein_on_climate_debt_why

Three Good Reasons To Liquidate Our Empire

andrew — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 07:33:23 +0000

By Chalmers Johnson

However ambitious United States President Barack Obama’s domestic plans, one unacknowledged issue has the potential to destroy any reform efforts he might launch. Think of it as the 800-pound gorilla in the American living room: our longstanding reliance on imperialism and militarism in our relations with other countries and the vast, potentially ruinous global empire of bases that goes with it. The failure to begin to deal with our bloated military establishment and the profligate use of it in missions for which it is hopelessly inappropriate will, sooner rather than later, condemn the United States to a devastating trio of consequences: imperial overstretch, perpetual war and insolvency, leading to a likely collapse similar to that of the former Soviet Union.

Chalmers Johnson is the author of Blowback (2000), The Sorrows of Empire (2004) and Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic (2006), and editor of Okinawa: Cold War Island (1999).

To Read More:

God and Empire

larrym — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 01:27:44 +0000

By David E. Anderson

God and Empire
by David E. Anderson

I chant the new empire grander than any before, as in a vision it comes to me
I chant America the mistress, I chant a greater supremacy
–Walt Whitman, “A Broadway Pageant”

Reading the foreign policy positions of the top Democratic and Republican presidential candidates in a series of articles published in Foreign Affairs earlier this year, one found many descriptions of the United States. But not one of them used the “E” word — empire.

Similarly, the estimable Review of Faith & International Affairs, an evangelical quarterly, while exploring a host of issues such as globalization, foreign aid, religious freedom, and faith-based diplomacy, offers no indication its analysts recognize the possibility of American empire and its ethical and theological implications.

Yet as Gary Dorrien wrote four years ago in “Imperial Designs,” an article in the journal CrossCurrents (he has also published a book by the same title), “most of the world has no doubt that the U.S. is an empire, but now it has plenty of doubt about the kind of empire that the U.S. wants to be.”