I wrote this last year in August for From The Wilderness, for whom I am the military affairs editor. I am reprinting it now in response to a recent post on Smirking Chimp, reposted from Consortium News, about the construction of detention facilities around the US. I am not updating or editing this piece, “The Global Battlefield,” because whatever might prove to have been flawed about this assessment should be as instructive as anything I might have gotten right. And I’m too old to care overmuch if I make a mistake.

Right-wing diehards are trying very hard to “move on” about Dick Cheney shooting his rich hunting buddy. But there are moralists from left of the midline who are making the demand to back off on Cheney’s mishap, albeit in a more oblique way.

We already know what class the federal government represents. In any choice between profit and people in need, the people will lose every time. Our government is big business writ large, and big business is Darwinian.

Antiwar veterans groups and Katrina survivors are planning a very politically significant action this coming March 14-19. They need your endorsement and support.

by Julian Real, 2006

After participating in a rather long, unproductive discussion about
racism and heterosexism, I decided to do “the research thing” and
bring to light the subtle and sophisticated social analytic work of
Patricia Hill Collins.

There’s been a lot to remind me of mortality lately. Close calls. Three friends with cancer. Our son going back to Iraq. My mother’s voice in the absence of my father’s. The increasing number of dead animals in the road where Raleigh is trying to become Atlanta.