Portside

An Iraqi politician once said that the problem in his country was that parties and movements were “too weak to win, but too strong to lose.” This is increasingly the pattern for the whole region and is spreading elsewhere. It carries with it the possibility of an endless cycle of indecisive wars and an era of instability that has already begun.

In launching a cycle of plays grounded in English history, Shakespeare was able to show his audiences the blood-soaked story of their own becoming, the history of their creation as a nation. (From an American vantage, it would be as though a present-day playwright were to track our history from Jamestown to World War II, focusing most intently on the span stretching from the Revolutionary through the Civil Wars.

Rev. Daniel Berrigan, the renowned anti-war activist, award-winning poet, author and Jesuit priest, who inspired religious opposition to the Vietnam war and later the U.S. nuclear weapons industry, died at age 94, just a week shy of his 95th birthday.

Out-of-control U.S. nuclear weapons programs accelerate spending, proliferation, health and safety risks. Despite a clear obligation under Article VI of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty the US continues to pursue exotic elective changes to the nuclear stockpile. Many LEPs will result in nuclear weapons with new military capabilities—contrary to promises and assertions made by President Obama.

Rachel Maddow | Bernie Sanders. Masters of War. Transporters and Quantum Teleportation. Making A Killing: Guns, Greed & the NRA. Samantha Bee | Cruz 101.

The chaos in the Middle-east which has led to hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing ISIL’s barbarous rule is the result of fifteen years of Western interventionism. How can France ever take a convincing stand against ISIL while claiming to be the main ally, and provider of fighter planes, to the Gulf monarchies. The real question, to which French diplomacy has so far given no convincing answer, is not how to win the war but how to put an end to it.

The recent U.S. deployment of special operations forces to Syria expands a global U.S. battlefield that is at a historic size. This year, special ops have been sent to a record 147 countries—75 percent of the nations on the planet. It’s a 145 percent increase from the days of George W. Bush. And it means that on any given day elite U.S. forces are on the ground in 70 to 90 countries.

Estimating civilian casualties of U.S. military operations is extremely difficult . . . “There was essentially no record kept in Afghanistan and Pakistan for a few years of any U.S.-caused civilian casualties, and most especially the killing of children" . . . “the harm to children in war is also indirect--morbidity and mortality due to the destruction of infrastructure which impairs delivery of medical care, makes drinking water unsafe, and makes food scarce.”