158 results for author: Dave Svetlik

UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES

It was to be the “American Century.” Ordained by the Universe and God Himself. America, the “exceptional nation,” was destined to rule the world. At long last, Mackinder’s Heartland, Ukraine, would be brought into the American orbit. Russia would fall, be broken into pieces, its resources opened for plunder. China would be next – Taiwan the sacrificial puppet. It was to be the “American Century.” It would also be the greatest moment of imperial hubris in human history. Rather than allowing Ukraine and Western Europe to live peacefully, with mutually beneficial trade relationships with Russia and China, the US had to move NATO east ...

THE LONG MEMORY

In 1958 the musical film “South Pacific” hit the big screen. Elders remember well the beautiful movie based on the work of author James Mitchner that left us with such lovely music as “Some Enchanted Evening.”  The film was set on a South Pacific island and though the major theme was about the World War II conflict between the US and Japan, the film was really about people trying to understand one another. One of the sub-plots in “South Pacific” was about a young American naval officer who had fallen in love with a young Polynesian woman, and how he struggled to overcome his own learned racism and misunderstanding.  The following ...

NO HISTORY ALLOWED

“Stories of the Nakba still harrow us and live in us, giving us hope of return. Palestinian Nakba survivors have not forgotten their homeland 73 years on.” “Our village resisted the Jewish militias with what little we had. But the well-armed Zionist gangs were singling out unarmed civilians and butchering them in hundreds.”  -  Omar Abedelal, 82, was only 9 years old when he, along with his family members and neighbors, was displaced from his village, Burayr.   Every year on May 15th, millions of Palestinians around the world commemorate the Nakba, the catastrophe, inflicted upon them in 1948. But as told in “The Conversation ...

KNOWING HEARTBREAK

Dr. Gabor Mate, a Jewish survivor of the Nazi holocaust, is now a physician in Canada. Please take 12 minutes to listen to Dr. Mate speak about Palestine and Israel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6_GDDa4bmI&t=757s https://youtu.be/N6_GDDa4bmI?si=E5leofXgspNuzwhZ

THE TOTALLY AVOIDABLE TRAGEDY

In 2014, then U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, and then U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt, with the approval of then Vice President of the United States Joe Biden, orchestrated the violent coup that overthrew the democratically elected President of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, because Yanukovych wanted to keep Ukraine neutral, out of NATO, and on friendly terms with Russia. The following 5-minute video is the intercepted phone call between Nuland and Pyatt as they plan and choose the people to replace Yanukovych after he is overthrown. Nuland’s profanity clearly displays her contempt for the European Union:   ...

THE VOICE OF SANITY, OF WISDOM, OF PEACE

Veterans For Peace is a global organization of military veterans and allies dedicated to building a culture of peace. For their recent 2023 annual convention they chose as their keynote speakers Clare Daly and Jeffrey Sachs. Daly, is an Irish citizen and a member of the European Union Parliament. Sachs is a globally respected professor of economics at Columbia University. Both are courageous voices of sanity, of wisdom, of peace. Please, take the time to watch and listen to the keynote talks of Daly and Sachs. The growing threats of nuclear war and global warming have placed “we the people of Planet Earth” at the most dangerous moment in all of ...

THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF OFFENSE

With almost unanimous bipartisan support, the U.S. Congress now spends nearly a trillion dollars a year – repeat that – a trillion dollars a year, on the Department of Defense.  If one includes the Department of Homeland Security and the care of disabled veterans, it is actually more than a trillion. This represents the lion’s portion of the U.S. discretionary budget. What this “defense” budget means in real terms is that all of the physical resources, all of the knowledge, all of the science and engineering, all of the development, all of the jobs, that might have gone to improving life for average Americans, has been used building ...

THE COMMUNITY CHURCH OF BOSTON

On June 10, 1963, President John Kennedy gave the commencement speech at the American University in Washington D.C. Titled “A Strategy of Peace,” it is considered one of the greatest speeches in modern history. It was given after Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev had, through negotiations, resolved the Cuban Missile Crisis, and not long before Kennedy was assassinated. The Community Church of Boston, in conjunction with the JFK Peace Speech Committee, has been doing a series of videos centering around Kennedy’s speech and how it applies to international events today. The world’s people, perhaps especially Americans, seem oblivi...

DEAR LEGISLATORS – SEPTEMBER 4, 2023

Dear Legislators, Please, for your own wellbeing, but more importantly for the wellbeing of your children, your grandchildren, and for all Earth’s children, spare two minutes to watch the following video:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YX3aAnGwmLo https://youtu.be/YX3aAnGwmLo?si=5hW0fHP_3gV9Amlw Dear Legislators, let us repeat the closing words of the video taken from the book The Green Zone: The Environmental Costs of Militarism by Professor Barry Sanders: “Here’s the awful truth: even if every person, every automobile, and every factory suddenly emitted zero emissions, the earth would still be headed—head first and ...

Propaganda

WHAT WE BELIEVE   George Orwell, author of the novel “1984,” is often quoted about the use of language to control societies and nations. His statements seem contemporary:   “The people will believe what the media tells them they believe.” “The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.” “If he were allowed contact with foreigners, he would discover that they are creatures similar to himself and that most of what he has been told about them is lies. The sealed world in which he lives would be broken, and the fear, ...