On August 3, 2022, two Montreal activists, Dimitri Lascaris and Laurel Thompson, disrupted a public-relations presentation by Canadian Foreign Minister Melanie Joly and her German homologue Annalena Baerbock. The disrupters spoke out against Joly and Baerbock’s support for NATO expansionism and increased military spending.
A policy of healing rather than warfighting has never been seriously considered, articulated, or deployed in any manner by this country.
For years I’ve appreciated the Global Peace Index (GPI), and interviewed the people who make it, but quibbled with exactly what it does.
Laurel Thompson recently attended Canada’s largest defense industry trade show CANSEC. What she saw left her with questions for those who work in the industry.
Humanitarian crises and violent conflicts take place in an interlinked, multidimensional context. Killian McCormack and Emily Gilbert challenge the idea that humanitarianism is a neutral endeavor and instead aim to reveal the “violent geographies produced through militarized humanitarianism.”
The parallels between the police-prosecution-prison system and the war system are extensive. I don’t mean the direct connections, the flow of weapons, the flow of veterans. I mean the similarities: the intentional failure to use superior alternatives, the ideology of violence used to justify horrible ideas, and the expense and corruption.
I saw “Top Gun: Maverick” yesterday. It was absolutely horrible. The film sets a new standard for state-orchestrated, pro-military, mass indoctrination.
Nobody wins in war but the profiteers. We must end war or it will end us.
Bruce Kent was inspirational – both by example, and with his knack of encouraging people to be involved, and to achieve more than they thought they could.
