The PeaceWorker – Oregon PeaceWorks' monthly news magazine

Analysis, June 2018

Why Are the Poor Patriotic?

by Oregon PeaceWorks • June 19, 2018 • 0 Comments

DAVID SWANSON – We should be very grateful to Francesco Duina for his new book, Broke and Patriotic: Why Poor Americans Love Their Country. He begins with the following dilemma. The poor in the United States are in many ways worse off than in other wealthy countries, but they are more patriotic than are the poor in those other countries and even more patriotic than are wealthier people in their own country. Their country is (among wealthy countries) tops in inequality, and bottoms in social support, and yet they overwhelmingly believe that the United States is “fundamentally better than other countries.” Why?

Analysis, June 2018

Is the U.S. Engaged in a “Great Waking Up?”

by Oregon PeaceWorks • June 17, 2018 • 0 Comments

ROBERT KOEHLER – We’re stuck, at least here in the USA, with a pseudo-democracy partially but not completely controlled by certain special interests. We possess a fair amount of freedom of thought and action. Maybe it’s not enough to dislodge the entrenched, money-blessed military-industrialism that is our ruling god — but maybe it is, if we can foment a Great Waking Up and start undoing the harm we have been inflicting on ourselves for so long now. The collapse of the Republican Party may signal that change is underway. So is the message from a few millennia back: Love thy enemy as thyself.

Analysis, June 2018

The North Korea Summit Through the Looking Glass

by Oregon PeaceWorks • June 15, 2018 • 0 Comments

BRANKO MARCETIC – As much of the world celebrates a modest step towards peace in Korea, Western pundits seem to be panicking.

Analysis, June 2018

Attacking the Roots of War: a True Peace Movement

by Oregon PeaceWorks • June 13, 2018 • 0 Comments

DR. KENT D. SHIFFERD – We need to uproot the “tree of war.” That means to persuade people that the myths we hold about war are just that, that War makes us less secure, and that there are other ways to manage conflict that make us more secure. It means to stop saying “No” and to start saying “Yes.” It means to place before them a positive peace system. And that is a long-term project so the sooner we all focus on that, the sooner we end War.

Analysis, June 2018

Amid ‘Russiagate’ Hysteria, What Are the Facts?

by Oregon PeaceWorks • June 10, 2018 • 0 Comments

JACK F. MATLOCK JR. – “Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.” That saying—often misattributed to Euripides—comes to mind most mornings when I pick up The New York Times and read the latest “Russiagate” headlines, which are frequently featured across two or three columns on the front page above the fold. This is an almost daily reminder of the hysteria that dominates our Congress and much of our media.

June 2018, What's Happening In the Movement

The End of Project Maven at Google Shows the Power of Tech Workers who Take a Stand

by Oregon PeaceWorks • June 8, 2018 • 0 Comments

KHARI JOHNSON – We’re roughly halfway through 2018, and one of the most important AI stories to emerge so far is Project Maven and its fallout at Google. The program to use AI to analyze drone video footage began last year, and this week we learned of the Pentagon’s plans to expand Maven and establish a Joint Artificial Intelligence Center. We also learned that Google believed it would make hundreds of millions of dollars from participating in the Maven project and that Maven was reportedly tied directly to a cloud computing contract worth billions of dollars. Today, news broke that Google will discontinue its Maven contract when it expires next year.