Joe Biden hasn’t entered any Italian beauty contests (so, you see, he has done something right!), but supposing that Biden went for a stroll on the beach with Sabatini and Vladimir Putin, and they found a magic lamp . . . .
This episode devoted a great deal of time discussing on “If wars are EVER justifiable?” and World Beyond War’s big online conference which will be held early July of this year from July 8th-10th.
Most Americans wouldn’t believe these things can happen in the Land of the Free Press because it runs counter to a lifetime of received popular culture steeped in magical thinking. Wrenching free of that is psychologically painful, indeed impossible for some. Harsh realities await.
The worst problem is a phony one. That is to say, numerous parties are using the cause of prosecuting Vladimir Putin for “war crimes” as yet another excuse to avoid ending the war.
There is dominant propaganda that seems to suggest war can be conducted according to a set of acceptable, standardized, and abstract rules. It can’t.
Russia’s war in Ukraine — like the USA’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq — should be understood as barbaric mass slaughter. For all their mutual hostility, the Kremlin and the White House are willing to rely on similar precepts: Might makes right.
The belief in the justice and glory of past wars is absolutely critical to the acceptance of current wars, such as the Ukraine war. And the gargantuan price tags of wars is highly relevant to imagining creative alternatives to escalating a war that’s placed us closer to nuclear apocalypse than ever before.
For decades, the U.S. public seemed largely indifferent to most of the horrible suffering of war. The corporate media outlets mostly avoided it, made war look like a video game, occasionally mentioned suffering U.S. troops, and rarely touched on the countless deaths of local civilians as if their killing were some sort of aberration.
Watch World BEYOND War’s David Swanson speak on ‘How to Think About Ukraine’ in an event in Washington, D.C.
