War Is a Racket
The life and times of Smedley Butler.
The life and times of Smedley Butler.
Governments want us to respect World War I veterans in an apolitical way. But we should not forget the thousands of veterans who returned home to fight for their rights.
PTSD is a scourge for military veterans. The good news is that the VA system provides specialized, high-quality care for PTSD; the bad news is that corporate-friendly politicians are privatizing this vital public health system.
Nick Turse’s otherwise exhaustive account of the atrocities committed in Vietnam gives short shrift to the movement that made those crimes known.
How should we observe Veterans Day? By working to eradicate war and the economic system that helps produce it.
Smedley Butler was born to privilege and power, becoming a powerful general in the most powerful military in the world. But he realized he was playing a key role in an evil system, US imperialism — and used his privilege and power to speak out against it.
It’s possible to elevate the working class without the jingoism.
For-profit colleges are making Wall Street firms even richer. Bush’s 2008 GI Bill helped make that possible.
In the popular imagination, opposition to the Vietnam War was driven largely by the privileged, while supposedly reactionary blue-collar workers supported the war effort. That memory is wrong.
In New York’s 11th Congressional District, two veterans are competing for the Democratic nomination. One is a centrist who will strengthen the military-industrial complex; the other is a democratic socialist who built her career fighting it.
In the Vietnam War era, radical psychiatrists and antiwar veterans developed a concept of trauma stemming from perpetrating acts of violence. Over the next decade, the idea of soldier trauma was depoliticized and put at odds with antiwar critique.
It’s the fortieth anniversary of Apocalypse Now’s voyeuristic adventure to the dark side of human nature. But the real victims of the Vietnam War are forgotten in its cheap thrills.
The US military has a long history of recruiting poor people by offering benefits like free college. With Joe Biden’s partial student debt forgiveness, GOP war hawks are fretting that the military won’t be able to prey on desperate young Americans anymore.
The 1949 Peekskill Riots remind us of a period of postwar rebellion and reaction that set the stage for the rest of the century.
We’re held hostage by a political and military elite that exploits us to fuel its endless wars.
The federal government is using data gimmicks to mask the true scope of homelessness.
Capitalism has created a world full of bad and brutal jobs, from meatpackers to drone operators. Capitalists created these jobs — only organized workers can get rid of them.
Lionized as a nationalist hero in Ukraine, Stepan Bandera was a Nazi sympathizer who left behind a horrific legacy.