HUMAN WRONGS WATCH

Human Wrongs Watch

By John Scales Avery*,  TRANSCEND — Because the world spends roughly 1.7 trillion dollars each year on armaments, it follows that very many people make their living from war. This is the reason why it is correct to speak of war as a social, political and economic institution, and also one of the main reasons why war persists, although everyone realizes that it is the cause of much of the suffering of humanity.

We know that war is madness, but it persists. We know that it threatens the survival of our species, but it persists, entrenched in the attitudes of historians, newspaper editors and television producers, entrenched in the methods by which politicians finance their campaigns, and entrenched in the financial power of arms manufacturers, entrenched also in the ponderous and costly hardware of war, the fleets of warships, bombers, tanks, nuclear missiles and so on.

In his farewell address, US President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned his nation against the excessive power that had been acquired during World War II by the military-industrial complex:

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Human Wrongs Watch

Washington, 5 November 2102 (By Maria Young for RIA Novosti*) – If the 2012 US presidential election is close enough in the right states, the winner could be determined in part by a group of voters barely acknowledged on the national political scene: Russian Americans, who number more than three million in the US and overwhelmingly vote Republican.

Human Wrongs Watch

By Ernest Corea*, IDN-InDepthNews, Washington DC — Voters keeping a sharp lookout for an “October Surprise” – an unexpected event that could affect the November 6 presidential election – could not have been disappointed. They experienced several.

Some past October surprises have been both dramatic and significant.

To name a few: the British-French-Israeli conspiracy and invasion to wrest control of the Suez Cana from Egypt (1956), Henry Kissinger’s announcement about the Vietnam war that “peace is at hand” (1972), and the news leak, subsequently confirmed, that some years earlier George W. Bush was arrested for drunken driving in Texas (2000).

The most dramatic October Surprise of 2012 was, of course, “Frankenstorm” Sandy. It might be argued that the hurricane embedded in a massive storm was not exactly a “surprise” because meteorologists predicted its arrival with awesome accuracy.

What constituted the surprise especially for non-experts living in the areas hit by the storm were its ferocity and the extent of human suffering it wrought.

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