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.

To Read More go to: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-w-whitehead/obama-and-war-what-would_b_667815.html

Constructing Alternatives to Empire is Part Four of a four part series of interviews conducted by Larry Marshall with Professor Joseph Camilleri and Reverend David Pargeter, two of the founders of The Alternatives to Empire Project.

Illusions of Empire is Part Three in a four part series of interviews conducted by Larry Marshall with Professor Joseph Camilleri and Reverend David Pargeter, two of the founders of The Alternatives to Empire Project.

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.”

Read More at pbs.org

Watch Chandra Muzzafar American Empire at YouTube

Violent Muslim, Christian and Jewish extremists invoke the same rhetoric of “good” and “evil” and the best way to fight them is to tackle the problems that drive people to extremism, according to a report obtained by Reuters.

It said extremists from each of the three faiths often have tangible grievances — social, economic or political — but they invoke religion to recruit followers and to justify breaking the law, including killing civilians and members of their own faith.

The report was commissioned by security think tank EastWest Institute ahead of a conference on Thursday in New York titled “Towards a Common Response: New Thinking Against Violent Extremism and Radicalization.” The report will be updated and published after the conference.

The authors compared ideologies, recruitment tactics and responses to violent religious extremists in three places — Muslims in Britain, Jews in Israel and Christians in the United States.

“What is striking … is the similarity of the worldview and the rationale for violence,” the report said.

It said that while Muslims were often perceived by the West as “the principal perpetrators of terrorist activity,” there are violent extremists of other faiths. Always focusing on Muslim extremists alienates mainstream Muslims, it said.

The report said it was important to examine the root causes of violence by those of different faiths, without prejudice.

“It is, in each situation, a case of ‘us’ versus ‘them,’” it said. “That God did not intend for civilization to take its current shape; and that the state had failed the righteous and genuine members of that nation, and therefore God’s law supersedes man’s law.”

Read more here.