Portside

There are as many reasons to desert military service as there are deserters. All countries’ militaries like to snatch young men when they are uneducated, inexperienced, and unemployed. It takes a soldier far greater courage to throw down his weapon than to kill a stranger. There are deserters in every country that has an armed forces. Armies demand blind obedience and human beings crave liberty. Why do men desert? Certainly not from cowardice.

A revelatory look at how a unique border-crossing set of partnerships among Israel’s high-tech companies (many involved in developing border wall technology in their own land), an Arizona tech park, and Mexican low-wage factories is intent on creating a “virtual wall” to shut down and militarize the U.S.-Mexican border.

Frackers think pink; Gamer rage; Myths about black voters; Pulling the plug on Emma; Warrior cops; Euroleft dreams

Reader Comments- 2014 Elections; Jim Crow Returns; Toni Morrison, Angela Davis; U.S. Used 1,000 Nazis; Syrian Labyrinth; Draft Could Be Next; Responses to Joel Klein; Nobel Peace Laureates Call Full Torture Disclosure; Activists Block an Israeli Shipping Ship; Women of Afghanistan; Saudi Arabia and ISIS; Fukushima; Announcements-Miners Shot Down-Film Screening-Nov 10; Elections-Who Won? Who Lost?-Nov 14; Folk music greats honor David Amram-Nov 20; PM Press Book Sale

Reader Comments - Defending Immigrants; Protecting Detroit's Water; Israeli and Palestinian Families Comfort Each Other; Hobby Lobby; Peoples Climate March; Overtime Pay; Global Action on Antibiotics; Homeopathy was quackery - readers respond; Full Employment and Shared Prosperity; Mapping Militarism; Limits of Corporate Citizenship; Abe Cohen - R.I.P. Seeger Family's Memorial Concert Series for Pete and Toshi - July 17 - 21 - New York City and surrounding area

Reader Comments - Defending Immigrants; Protecting Detroit's Water; Israeli and Palestinian Families Comfort Each Other; Hobby Lobby; Peoples Climate March; Overtime Pay; Global Action on Antibiotics; Homeopathy was quackery - readers respond; Full Employment and Shared Prosperity; Mapping Militarism; Limits of Corporate Citizenship; Abe Cohen - R.I.P. Seeger Family's Memorial Concert Series for Pete and Toshi - July 17 - 21 - New York City and surrounding area

World Beyond War has created a set of online interactive maps to help us all see where and how war and preparations for war exist in the world today.

If you want to understand why it's the case that on the one hand, the U.S. public and the majority of Congress turned against the war in Afghanistan a long time ago, and yet on the other hand, it's been so hard to end the war, this week's warmonger media storm against the diplomatic rescue of U.S. prisoner of war Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl has been very instructive.

Injustice in Knoxville - Anti-war trio took part in plowshares action in 2012 at the Y-12 Highly-Enriched Uranium Manufacturing nuclear weapons production facility. An 84-year old nun and two others were just sentenced to up to five years in jail.

Military chaplains seem to be another cog in the apparatus of making war maximally effective. Christian chaplains seem to not pay much attention to the Ten Commandments either, especially the ones that say "thou shalt not kill" or "thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's oil". 99 years ago one of the most unusual aberrations in the bloody history of warfare - never allowed to be repeated again - occurred.