Recent Stories
- Analysis
WNV is hiring an Interviews Writer
Waging Nonviolence is hiring a writer to interview leading movement figures and analysts and produce one Q&A-style article per week. The writer will work with our small editorial team to identify the interview subject each week. For the most part, we’ll be looking to hear from activists, organizers and scholars who can shed light on… More
- Analysis
How protests that double as trainings are growing this fossil fuel divestment campaign
By melding theory and practice, Philadelphia’s Vanguard S.O.S. are building skills and collective power.
- Analysis
How a small activist sailing ship successfully challenged the nuclear arms race
The 1958 voyage of the Golden Rule offers important strategic lessons on how to confront an overwhelming evil and win.
WNV Top Reads
“A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction.”
Can anyone guess who said this and what speech it was from?
Personally, I have no problem that my tax dollars go to national defense. It’s a whole lot better than wealth redistribution which seems to be a favorite passtime of the left.
“Not since WWII has so much of our resources gone to military purposes”
Laughably false. The measure of military spending as a percentage of GDP is quite useful. It’s around 4%.
Yes, I’m sure the average Israeli also knows that the rockets shot into Israel are made in Palestine and funded by the Islamic Republic of Iran. Geesh. I’m sure it is quite confusing to the Arabs and Palestinians when the Israelis used both French and American aircraft…and British, American, and overhauled Soviet tanks…oh, now the us domestic tanks.
This video is a poor excuse of a Michael Moore type “documentary” equally short on accuracy while long on dogma.
“attempt to push the world in a positive direction…poverty, health crisis, climate change those are going to require an enormous amount of money…”
I laughed milk through my nose when I listened to this part. I was expecting him to offer kool-aid. Good luck Comrade.
The possibility for nonviolent solutions isn’t the only thing that suffers. As well indicated in this trailer, such enormous spending of tax dollars on militarism makes it impossible for our society to deal with major problems in the realms of education, healthcare and social services. Simply because when it comes to such important things, we’re told “there’s no money.”
These financial ineptitude then lead to many lesser talked about social ills, such as child prostitution INSIDE the US (see the documentary titled “Very Young Girls”), increased violence, bankruptcies due to medical debt, and many others, which effect minorities and low income neighborhoods disproportionately. It’s fitting, then, to recall that while Martin Luther King, Jr. was a alive, he often warned us that our society depends upon a “revolution in values.”
Clearly, by “revolution in values” he didn’t mean we should privatize everything from prisons to the military, which is what we have done. In the US, the profit motive is active in far too many basic social functions. Invariably, this means human beings are not valued in and of themselves but valued only as potential profit. Hence, private prison systems are intrinsically tied to racially biased drug laws. My point here is that war is only the most drastic but not the only symptom of our social disease.
Perhaps most fitting of all is that King talked of a three-headed monster ravaging our nation. And that three-headed monster was the monster of “Racism, Materialism and Militarism.” This is more relevant today than the day King was murdered. It’s easy to wage simple arguments that focus on the obvious need of a military (which I do not disagree with) but not so simple to engage the deeper discussion of HOW MUCH needs to be invested in militarism, WHO profits from it and what the multifaceted CONSEQUENCES of that spending are in the many spheres of American life.
First and foremost, it seems, the three headed monster ravages our brains. Indeed, “racism, materialism and militarism” each contain the capacity to limit our ability to think clearly.
None of this is any laughing matter.
check out fcnl.org for accurate depictions of how much the pentagon budget uses of GDP . 4%!!!!! not hardly , more like 46%. and before we spent so much bailing out the banks it was over 50%
You mean 4.6%, right? If you think it’s 46% or 50% of GDP, you need to retake 2nd grade math.