Politics

By MWC News

By David Swanson

The idea that wars are waged out of humanitarian concern may not at first appear even worthy of response. Wars kill humans. What can be humanitarian about that? But look at the sort of rhetoric that successfully sells new wars:

"This conflict started Aug. 2, when the dictator of Iraq invaded a small and helpless neighbor. Kuwait, a member of the Arab League and a member of the United Nations, was crushed, its people brutalized. Five months ago, Saddam Hussein started this cruel war against Kuwait; tonight, the battle has been joined."

Read more: Humanitarian War vs. Humanity

By MWC News

by Jacob G. Hornberger

More proof that licensing of lawyers doesn’t guarantee that judges won’t engage in judicial idiocy comes out of the state of Oklahoma.

Three days before Christmas, a state judge named Susie Pritchett, whose retirement would become effective on December 31, sentenced a 25-year-old mother of four named Patricia Marilyn Spottedcrow to ten years in the state penitentiary.

Read more: Drug-War Idiocy in Oklahoma

By MWC News

By Josh Steiber

Earlier this week, Michael Lind wrote an article for Salon about the misplaced energy in demeaning alarmists like Glenn Beck. [1] Having friends and family who often revere the inflammatory rhetoric of Beck, Palin, Limbaugh, and others as a light in the darkness, the temptation to dwell on and ridicule these figures, ones that have even caused divisions between conservative commentators, is strong. Lind’s point is crucial though: the question is not primarily whether or not Beck’s theories are sane. Actually, the less sane they seem, the more likely it is that these theories are moves of desperation and the more important it is that we should stay focused on the actual issue.

Read more: Dear Mr. Beck: I Shook Hands with the Antichrist

By MWC News

By Khalid Amayreh

In Libya, the Qaddafi regime's mercenaries, thugs and henchmen have been massacring peaceful demonstrators protesting political tyranny, economic deprivation and the shocking absence of human rights and civil liberties.

In the capital Tripoli, helicopter gunship and even air force fighters have been machineguning unarmed protesters, killing and maiming hundreds.

Read more: A mass murderer named Muammar al-Qaddafi

By MWC News

by Jacob G. Hornberger

America’s Founding Fathers would not be surprised by what is happening in places like Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain, Libya, Yemen, and Iran. They understood that the real value of a standing army, from the standpoint of dictatorial regimes, is that the military can usually be relied upon to do its duty and protect the regime by killing protestors or rounding them up, torturing them, detaining them indefinitely, and even executing them.

Read more: Standing Armies, Gun Control, and Middle East Tyranny