WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS, #83

83 WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS, #83, July 20, 2022

Hedges.  “The Pimps of War.”

AFSC: Cut the Pentagon Budget.

US Conference of Mayors’ Peace Resolution.

UPJ: Resources for Understanding the War.

Chris Hedges.  “The Pimps of War.”   The Chris Hedges Report.  Apr 10, 2022. 

The coterie of neocons and liberal interventionists who orchestrated two decades of military fiascos in the Middle East and who have never been held to account are now stoking a war with Russia.
[I could not copy the graphic “The Pimps of War” by Mr. Fish.  Click on url.]

The same cabal of war mongering pundits, foreign policy specialists and government officials, year after year, debacle after debacle, smugly dodge responsibility for the military fiascos they orchestrate. They are protean, shifting adroitly with the political winds, moving from the Republican Party to the Democratic Party and then back again, mutating from cold warriors to neocons to liberal interventionists. Pseudo intellectuals, they exude a cloying Ivy League snobbery as they sell perpetual fear, perpetual war, and a racist worldview, where the lesser breeds of the earth only understand violence. 

They are pimps of war, puppets of the Pentagon, a state within a state, and the defense contractors who lavishly fund their think tanks – Project for the New American Century, American Enterprise Institute, Foreign Policy Initiative, Institute for the Study of War, Atlantic Council and Brookings Institution. Like some mutant strain of an antibiotic-resistant bacteria, they cannot be vanquished. It does not matter how wrong they are, how absurd their theories, how many times they lie or denigrate other cultures and societies as uncivilized or how many murderous military interventions go bad. They are immovable props, the parasitic mandarins of power that are vomited up in the dying days of any empire, including ours, leaping from one self-defeating catastrophe to the next.

I spent  20 years as a foreign correspondent reporting on the suffering, misery, and murderous rampages these shills for war engineered and funded.   MORE https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/the-pimps-of-war

Tell Congress: Invest in peace—not war and militarism: This week, the House of Representatives took up the National Defense Authorization Act. Members voted on Pentagon spending, nuclear weapons, and other critical issues that affect the lives, safety, and health of people around the globe. We need to keep up the pressure on Congress to move away from militarism and invest in peace. If you haven’t already, urge your representative to cut the Pentagon budget!

U.S. Conference of Mayors Adopts Bold New Mayors for Peace Resolution
At the close of its 90th Annual Meeting in Reno, Nevada, on June 6, the final plenary of the United States Conference of Mayors (USCM) unanimously adopted a sweeping new resolution, titled “Forging a Path to Peace and Common Security.” The resolution calls for a negotiated end to the war in Ukraine, global elimination of nuclear weapons, and the redirection of military and nuclear weapons spending to support safe and resilient cities and meet human needs. This is the seventeenth consecutive year the USCM has adopted resolutions submitted by U.S. members of Mayors for Peace. The USCM is the official nonpartisan association of America’s big cities. Resolutions adopted at its annual meetings become official policy that guides the organization’s advocacy efforts for the coming year. READ MORE.

Organizations against War via United for Peace and Justice (June 2022)

Ukraine War Resources
The Ukraine war goes on, and so does the debate over how those working for peace should respond. United for Peace & Justice continues to update our Ukraine resource page with materials ranging from organizational statements by peace groups to commentary from the Ukraine independent Left to statements by the Russian government. Some links worth visiting include a new site featuring commentary from Russia, Ukraine, and their neighbors, including interviews with Russian student anti-war activists, and the Permanent Assembly Against the War, bringing together antiwar activists from across Europe.