Opinion

By David Swanson

http://davidswanson.org/thinking-beyond-exceptionalism/

Excepted from Curing Exceptionalism: What’s wrong with how we think about the United States? What can we do about it? (April, 2018).

he Pentagon, having spent three years creating famine and spreading cholera on an unprecedented scale in one of the poorest countries in the world, Yemen, now lies, baldly but with lawyerly gracelessness, that the American bombs guided by American officers to targets as often as not civilian is somehow “noncombat.” Effectively, the Pentagon argues that when US military forces only enable genocide, it’s not combat. Strictly speaking, the Pentagon is only following orders to commit ongoing war crimes.

My new book is coming out very soon. Get in touch regarding interviews or publishing excerpts.

Barbara Freeman, a survivor of human trafficking and the first graduate of Franklin County’s CATCH Court, will celebrate the opening of a sober living home for survivors of human trafficking with a ribbon cutting ceremony. Those who were instrumental in making the home a reality joined in the celebration Saturday, March 10, at 4 p.m., 1191 Whittier Street.

Friday, March 23
Ohio Shorts, 7-8:45pm, Drexel Theater, 2254 E. Main St.
Not Quite Midnight Shorts. 9:30-11:30pm, Drexel Theater, 2254 E. Main St.

Tuesday’s debate and vote in the U.S. Senate on whether to end (technically whether or not to vote on whether to end) U.S. participation in the war on Yemen can certainly be presented as a step forward. While 55 U.S.

The Other Side of the News March 9 2018-Trump, Manafort, Connell and local news

http://www.wcrsfm.org/audio/by/title/the_other_side_of_the_news_march_9…

http://www.wcrsfm.org/audio/by/title/the_other_side_of_the_news_march_2…

In 2014 I wrote an article titled ‘The Global Elite is Insane’. I want to elaborate what I explained in the earlier article so that people have a clearer sense of what we are up against in our struggle to create a world of peace, justice and ecological sustainability.

Of course, as I explained previously, it is not just the global elite that is insane. All those individuals – politicians, businesspeople, academics, corporate media editors and journalists, judges and lawyers, bureaucrats…. – who serve the elite, including by not exposing and resisting it, are also insane. And it is important to understand this if we are to develop and implement effective strategies to resist elite violence, exploitation and destruction but also avert the now-imminent human extinction driven by their insane desire for endless personal privilege, corporate profit and political control whatever the cost to Earth’s biosphere and lifeforms (human and non-human alike).

In Friedrich Engels’ 1880 book Socialism: Utopian and Scientific the co-founder of communism wrote about the difference between an idealistic conception of socialism and one rooted in historical, material reality. Raoul Peck’s new movie biopic The Young Karl Marx deals with this disparity and shows how during the 1840s Marx and Engels rooted the emerging notion of socialism in the real world and class struggle. In John Morogiello’s play Engaging Shaw the dramatis personae all belong to the former decidedly fanciful, airy-fairy trend of socialistic thought - and they sure act like it.