Alternatives to Empire » war

The Story of Religion: Joe Volk

andrew — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 03:41:24 +0000

The stories we are told by our leaders and the stories we tell each other help to build our worldview. We have to take back control of these narratives to empower each other and construct a more peaceful world.

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).

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Obama?s empire – Catherine Lutz

andrew — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 07:29:57 +0000

In December 2008, shortly before being sworn in as the 44th president of the United States, Barack Obama pledged his belief that, “to ensure prosperity here at home and peace abroad”, it was vital to maintain “the strongest military on the planet”. Unveiling his national security team, including George Bush’s defence secretary, Robert Gates, he said: “We also agree the strength of our military has to be combined with the wisdom and force of diplomacy, and that we are going to be committed to rebuilding and restrengthening alliances around the world to advance American interests and American security.”

Catherine Lutz is a professor at the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University.

Is America Hooked on War? by Tom Engelhardt

andrew — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 07:04:15 +0000

“War is peace” was one of the memorable slogans on the facade of the Ministry of Truth, Minitrue in “Newspeak,” the language invented by George Orwell in 1948 for his dystopian novel 1984. Some 60 years later, a quarter-century after Orwell’s imagined future bit the dust, the phrase is, in a number of ways, eerily applicable to the United States.