STWR - Share The World's Resources

22nd February 08 - John Horgan, Adbusters

In the aftermath of World War I, which some optimists were calling the war to end all wars, the philosopher George Santayana demurred, “Only the dead have seen the end of war.” This sort of fatalism is still widespread today, and it cuts across political affiliations. Whether they are hawks or doves, on the political left or right, many people have come to accept war as inevitable, even “in our genes.” The obvious problem with such fatalism is that it can become self-fulfilling. Our first step toward ending war must be to believe that we can do it.

19th February 08 - Noam Chomsky, ZNet

Not long ago, it was taken for granted that the Iraq war would be the central issue in the presidential campaign, as it was in the mid-term election of 2006.  But it has virtually disappeared, eliciting some puzzlement.  There should be none.

16th February 08 - Raúl Zibechi, Nacla News

Urban peripheries in Third World countries have become war zones where states attempt to maintain order based on the establishment of a sort of “sanitary cordon” to keep the poor isolated from “normal” society.

“Army sources confirmed that techniques employed in the occupation of the Morro da Providéncia favela [slum] are the ones Brazilian soldiers use in the United Nations peacekeeping mission in Haiti.”1

15th February 08 - Paul Rogers, Open Democracy

The serious strategic predicament created by the occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq by the United States and its key allies shows no sign of being alleviated. In Afghanistan, the dispute over the appointment of a new United Nations envoy in Kabul (where Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan's president, vetoed the appointment of former British politician Paddy Ashdown to the role) is the surface of a deeper disarray.

14th February 08 - John Pilger, New Statesmen

The recent breakout of the people of Gaza provided a heroic spectacle unlike any other since the Warsaw ghetto uprising and the smashing down of the Berlin Wall. Whereas on the occupied West Bank, Ariel Sharon's master plan of walling in the population and stealing their land and resources has all but succeeded, requiring only a Palestinian Vichy to sign it off, the people of Gaza have defied their tormentors, however briefly, and it is a guarantee they will do so again. There is profound symbolism in their achievement, touching lives and hopes all over the world.

11th February 08 - Paul Rogers, Open Democracy

The United States's military and political project in Afghanistan and Iraq is in terminal trouble. Why, how, and what next?

The military and political problems of United States and coalition policy in Afghanistan and Iraq are causing fresh uncertainty and dispute in western capitals. This short-term concern, however, must be seen against the background of the entire war on terror - and the American unilateralism that propelled it - since its launch in the aftermath of the events of 11 September 2001.

6th February 2008 - Chalmers Johnson, Le Monde Diplomatique

Global confidence in the US economy has reached zero, as was proved by last month’s stock market meltdown. But there is an enormous anomaly in the US economy above and beyond the subprime mortgage crisis, the housing bubble and the prospect of recession: 60 years of misallocation of resources, and borrowings, to the establishment and maintenance of a military-industrial complex as the basis of the nation’s economic life.