"60 Words." Radiolab (April 18, 2014) ["This hour we pull apart one sentence, written in the hours after September 11th, 2001, that has led to the longest war in U.S. history. We examine how just 60 words of legal language have blurred the line between war and peace. In the hours after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, a lawyer sat down in front of a computer and started writing a legal justification for taking action against those responsible. The language that he drafted and that President George W. Bush signed into law - called the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) - has at its heart one single sentence, 60 words long. Over the last decade, those 60 words have become the legal foundation for the "war on terror." In this collaboration with BuzzFeed, reporter Gregory Johnsen tells us the story of how this has come to be one of the most important, confusing, troubling sentences of the past 12 years. We go into the meetings that took place in the chaotic days just after 9/11, speak with Congresswoman Barbara Lee and former Congressman Ron Dellums about the vote on the AUMF. We hear from former White House and State Department lawyers John Bellinger & Harold Koh. We learn how this legal language unleashed Guantanamo, Navy Seal raids and drone strikes. And we speak with journalist Daniel Klaidman, legal expert Benjamin Wittes and Virginia Senator Tim Kaine about how these words came to be interpreted, and what they mean for the future of war and peace."]
"'Astoundingly Disturbing': Obama Administration Claims Power to Wage Endless War Across the Globe." Democracy Now (May 17, 2013)
Baraka, Ajamu, Eli Kane and Pamela Spees. "Pipeline Resistance Groups and the film On A Knife Edge; Perpetual War and the Anti-War Movement." Law and Disorder (March 18, 2018) ["Pipeline Resistance Groups and the film On A Knife Edge: It’s now more than one year since law enforcement evicted the last Dakota Access Pipeline resistance camps. The pipeline was near completion and was supposed to cross sacred Indian land in South Dakota in order to bring Canadian tar sand oil from north to south through the United States. Then the project was stalled by a tremendous solidarity movement lead by indigenous peoples along with their allies only to be green lighted by the newly elected Trump administration which has proven to be a handmaiden of the fossil fuel industry. Guest – Eli Kane, a Brooklyn-based producer who has worked in film and music for 15 years. He has made two other documentaries for PBS about land rights and food sovereignty, including Land Rush, which won a Peabody Award in 2013. Guest – Attorney Pamela Spees is an attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights and represents environmental justice groups opposing the efforts of Tigerswan, a private military company which worked with corporate and governmental entities at Standing Rock in an attempt to suppress the movement against the pipeline, to operate in Louisiana.
Perpetual War and the Anti-War Movement: The United States of America has been in a perpetual state of war since September 11, 2001 and before that almost continuously since 1918. The United States has overthrown democratically elected governments it could not control since the invasion of Mexico in 1848. It has overturned elected government and assassinated or attempted to assassinate many heads of foreign states. World War I was a massive slaughter between imperial powers with the United States, France, Britain and Russia on one side against Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire on the other. In one week alone, Great Britain lost 250,000 young men. The war wiped out almost an entire generation. It had been billed as “the war to end all wars.“ November 11th is known as the armistice between the hostile countries and was made a national holiday to venerate peace. It was called Armistice Day. But by 1953 Armistice Day was turned into “Veterans’ Day” and fighting was glorified. Donald Trump plans to spend $30 million on a massive military parade in Washington DC this coming November 11, Veterans’ Day. Tanks, missiles and troops will be paraded through the streets of our nations’ capital in a show of military force and adulation of Trump. A coalition of antiwar organizations are planning mass actions against this military parade and the normalization of war, violence and authoritarianism Guest – Ajamu Baraka, an initiator and leader of the Black Alliance for Peace, an organization which is part of the coalition. He has also just returned from a meeting of international leaders because the USA’s involvement of a possible overthrow of the government of Venezuela. Ajamu Baraka helped organize a conference in Baltimore Last month concerning USA’s 800 bases abroad particularly the new ones in Africa."]
Barber, William. "Tear Gassing Central American Migrants is Inhumane, Unconstitutional, Immoral." Democracy Now (November 26, 2018) ["U.S. border patrol officers fired tear gas into a crowd of desperate Central American asylum-seekers Sunday in Tijuana, Mexico as some tried to push their way through the heavily militarized border with the United States. Mothers and small children were left gagging and screaming as the tear gas spread. The migrants are from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, and are fleeing widespread violence, poverty and mass unemployment. We speak with Rev. Dr. William Barber, co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign and president and senior lecturer of Repairers of the Breach."]
Beauchamp, Scott. "War Games: The Cozy Relationship Between Perpetual War and Total Entertainment." The Baffler #39 (May 2018)
Bica, Camillo. "Rich Man's War and a Poor Man's Fight" TruthOut (February 11, 2011)
Bius, Joel R. "What Cigarettes Tell Us About the Military-Industrial Complex." War College (February 2, 2019) ["Drugs and the battlefield go together like peanut butter and jelly. The Third Reich’s soldier ran on methamphetamine and American soldiers smoked like chimneys. The picture of the US GI with a burning cigarette pressed between their lips is so iconic that few people question it...or realize how young the image really is. Joel R. Bius, assistant professor of national security studies at the U.S. Air Force Air Command and Staff College, is here to help us dispel the myth of the great American military cigarette and walk us through the fascinating history of how cigarettes ended up in the US military kit, and how they left. It’s the subject of his new book, Smoke Em If You Got Em: The Rise and Fall of the Military Cigarette Ration."]
Brown, Raymond, et al. "How Black Students Helped Lead the 1968 Columbia U. Strike Against Militarism & Racism 50 Years Ago." Democracy Now (April 23, 2018) ["Fifty years ago today, on April 23, 1968, hundreds of students at Columbia University in New York started a revolt on campus. They occupied five buildings, including the president’s office in Low Library, then students barricaded themselves inside the buildings for days. They were protesting Columbia’s ties to military research and plans to build a university gymnasium in a public park in Harlem. The protests began less than three weeks after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The 1968 Columbia uprising led to one of the largest mass arrests in New York City history—more than 700 people arrested on April 30. It also inspired student protests across the country. Today, we spend the hour looking back at this pivotal moment. We are joined by Raymond Brown, former leader of the Student Afro-American Society; Nancy Biberman, a Barnard College student who joined the protests as a member of Students for Democratic Society; Mark Rudd, chair of the Columbia University chapter of SDS during the student strike; Juan González, Democracy Now! co-host who was a Columbia student and strike organizer; and Paul Cronin, editor of the new book “A Time to Stir: Columbia ’68.” We also feature excerpts from the 1968 documentary “Columbia Revolt” by Third World Newsreel."]
Cavendish, Julius. "US’ New “Abu Ghraib” in Afghanistan." (March 22, 2011)
Chomsky, Noam. "There Is Much More To Say" ZNet (May 2011)
Cioca, Kori, Kirby Dick and Trina McDonald. "The Invisible War: New Film Exposes Rape, Sexual Assault Epidemic in U.S. Military." Democracy Now (January 30, 2012)
Cole, Matthew, et al. "The Lyin', The Rich, and the Warmongers." The Intercepted (March 14, 2018) ["This week on Intercepted: Exxon Mobil is out at the State Department. A radical Christian ideologue is in. And a veteran CIA officer who tortured detainees and set up the CIA black sites after 9/11 is slated to take the helm at Langley. And all of this happened in one fell swoop on Tuesday morning. The Intercept’s Matthew Cole and Jeremy analyze the major re-shuffle in Trumpland and what it means for the future of the planet. Rep. Jan Schakowsky, who led the investigation of Erik Prince and Blackwater for years in Congress, analyzes the ongoing scandal over his alleged role in the Trump era and explains why she had her house swept for surveillance when she was investigating Prince. Musical artists Ana Tijoux and Lila Downs talk about the politics of colonialism, neoliberalism, and revolution and their new collaboration on the song, “Tinta Roja.” And, fresh off her stellar debut on 60 Minutes, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos stars in “Kindergarten Cop.”"]
Collins, John, et al. "Militarisation and the 'War on Crime.'" London School of Economics and Political Science (November 7, 2017) ["From the 70 year old "War on Drugs", to the more recent "War on Human Smuggling", politicians use militarised responses to look decisive on crime. The deployment of armies, navies, military assets and militarised approaches can send a powerful message, but have produced mixed results. This debate, co hosted between the LSE US Centre and the Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime will discuss four different areas of criminality – wildlife crime, piracy, human smuggling and drug trafficking – to see how effective a militarised response can really be, and what might be lost as collateral damage."]
Craven, Jasper. "Veterans of Domestic Wars." The Baffler #51 (April 2020) ["On the home front, vets battle for decent health care."]
Crespo, Glenn and Larry Hildes. "Inside the Army Spy Ring & Attempted Entrapment of Peace Activists, Iraq Vets, Anarchists." Democracy Now (February 25, 2014)
Cultures of Resistance. "A Look at Global Militarization." We Are Many (November 2010)
Debusmann, Bernd. "America's Problematic Remote Control Wars." Reuters (July 8, 2011)
Documenting Hate: New American NAZIs Frontline (November 20, 2018) ["In the wake of the deadly anti-Semitic attack at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, FRONTLINE and ProPublica present a new investigation into white supremacist groups in America – in particular, a neo-Nazi group, Atomwaffen Division, that has actively recruited inside the U.S. military. Continuing FRONTLINE and ProPublica’s reporting on violent white supremacists in the U.S. (which has helped lead to multiple arrests), this joint investigation shows the group’s terrorist objectives and how it gained strength after the 2017 Charlottesville rally."]
---. "Vatican Canonizes Salvadoran Archbishop Óscar Romero, Who Was Killed by a U.S.-Backed Death Squad." Democracy Now (October 15, 2018) ["Pope Francis has named Salvadoran Archbishop Óscar Romero a saint. Romero was a champion for the poor and oppressed who was murdered by a U.S.-backed right-wing death squad in 1980 at the beginning of the brutal U.S.-backed military campaign in El Salvador. Wearing the blood-stained rope belt that Romero wore when he was assassinated, Pope Francis praised Romero for disregarding his own life “to be close to the poor and to his people.” We speak with Matt Eisenbrandt, a human rights lawyer and the author of “Assassination of a Saint: The Plot to Murder Óscar Romero and the Quest to Bring His Killers to Justice.” Eisenbrandt served on the trial team that brought the only court verdict ever reached for Romero’s murder."]
Elias, Robert. "National Pastimes: Mindless Militarism in American Sports." No Citations Needed #59 (December 5, 2018) ["F-22 flyovers, 160-foot flags draped across the playing field, full color guards, camouflage uniforms, The Star-Spangled Banner, God Bless America, Support The Troops Nights, special perks for vets. What is the origin of the runaway military worship so ingrained in our sports? How did our professional baseball and football leagues become so infused to our military state and what can fans of these sports do to deconstruct and pushback against the forces of jingoism and military fetishizing?"]
Ellerby, Kara and Sumita Mukherjee. "How Empire Uses ‘Feminist’ Branding to Sell War and Occupation." Citations Needed #65 (February 6, 2019) ["Since the dawn of the American Empire, thin moral pretexts in our politics and press have been used to justify our wars and conquest. The invasion of Cuba and Philippines in 1898 was declared to be a fight for freedom from Spanish oppression. Vietnam was about stopping Communist tyranny. The pioneer myth of Manifest Destiny and “westward expansion” was built about “taming” and “civilizing’ the land from violent savages. But one current that flows through all of these imperial incursions has been the idea that the United States – as well as its allies the Great Britain and Israel – are out to protect women. Today's endless occupations in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan are, in large part, justified in perpetuity because the United States is a self-declared, unique protector of modernity and women’s rights. All the same, the Pentagon is increasingly promoted, in press releases and media puffy pieces, as a place where women can exercise their agency: the ultimate apex of meritocracy and a vanguard of equality. But what if this approach misses the point of equality altogether? What if this is simply a craven branding exercise, putting a liberal face on what is a fundamentally oppressive system of violence? On this episode, we explore various ways women’s rights and empowerment has been used to sell colonial objectives and how one can differentiate between actual progress and the superficial language of inclusion used cynically in service of mechanized violence."]
Feitlowitz, Marguerite. "A Lexicon of Terror: Argentina and the Legacies of Torture." The New York Times (Reproduction of Ch. 1 from the book of the same name)
Frost, Amber. "‘Hours of Racist, Imperialist Fun!’: Toy predator drone + snarky Amazon comments." Dangerous Minds (December 31, 2012)
"Getting Away With Torture: The Bush Administration and Mistreatment of Detainees." Human Rights Watch (July 12, 2011)
Goodman, Amy. " 50 Years After My Lai Massacre in Vietnam, Revisiting the Slaughter the U.S. Military Tried to Hide." Democracy Now (March 16, 2018) ["Fifty years ago, on March 16, 1968, U.S. soldiers attacked the Vietnamese village of My Lai. Even though the soldiers met no resistance, they slaughtered more than 500 Vietnamese women, children and old men over the next four hours, in what became known as the My Lai massacre. After the massacre, the U.S. military attempted to cover up what happened. But in 1969 a young reporter named Seymour Hersh would reveal a 26-year-old soldier named William Calley was being investigated for killing 109 Vietnamese civilians. Today, memorials have been held in My Lai to mark the 50th anniversary of this horrific attack."]
Greenwald, Glenn. "FBI's abuse of the surveillance state is the real scandal needing investigation: That the stars of America's national security establishment are being devoured by out-of-control surveillance is a form of sweet justice." The Guardian (November 13, 2012)
Grossman, David. On Killing: On the Psychological Costs of Learning to Kill in War and Society. Black Bay Books, 1996.
The Guantanamo Testimonials Project Center for the Study of Human Rights in the Americas (Ongoing Archive) [" Pursuant to its mission, the UC Davis Center for the Study of Human Rights in the Americas (CSHRA) launched, in Fall 2005, a long term research project to assess the effects of the U.S. war on terror on human rights in the Americas. Whether invoked as the rationale for the "extraordinary rendition" of Canadian citizen Maher Arar to Syria or as the basis for the suppression of indigenous movements in South America, the war on terror has had significant effects on human rights in the Americas. But nowhere have these effects been greater than at the detention facilities of the U.S. naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Consequently, it seemed appropriate to begin our project by looking into the human rights situation at these facilities. We begin our endeavor with The Guantánamo Testimonials Project. The goals of this project are to gather testimonies of prisoner abuse in Guantánamo, to organize them in meaningful ways, to make them widely available online, and to preserve them there in perpetuity. The strength of these testimonies is considerable. Based on them, a number of distinguished individuals and organizations have called for the closure of Guantánamo."]
Hastings, Michael. "Another Runaway General: Army Deploys Psy-Ops on U.S. Senators." Rolling Stone (February 23, 2011)
Hedges, Chris. "The Death of Truth." TruthDig (May 5, 2013)
---. "War is Betrayal: Persistent Myths of Combat." Boston Review (July/August 2012)
Henry, Marsha. "Reimagining Peacekeeping: Gender, Race, and Militarisation in the Global Order." The London School of Economics and Political Science (September 20, 2017) ["Marsha Henry argues for reimagining peacekeeping, which starts with a return to critical theories and concepts in order to acknowledge the production of gendered, racial and classed inequalities in peacekeeping spaces and relations. In particular, turning to critical concepts such as standpoint, power geometries and space-time continuum, the colour line, militarised femininities, and intersectionality, the lecture traces the practical and policy dead-ends that arise when peacekeeping studies relies on policy and practice driven objectives, alone. Marsha Henry is Associate Professor in the Department of Gender Studies and Deputy Director of the Centre for Women, Peace and Security."]
Horton, Scott. "The Torture Doctors." Harpers (November 4, 2013) [An expert panel concludes that the Pentagon and the CIA ordered physicians to violate the Hippocratic Oath.]
Hussain, Murtaza. "War on the World: Industrialized Militaries Are a Bigger Part of the Climate Emergency Than You Know." The Intercept (September 15, 2019)
Hynes, H. Patricia. "The Military Assault on Global Climate." Truth-Out (September 8, 2011)
Immerwahr, Daniel. "'How to Hide an Empire': Daniel Immerwahr on the History of the Greater United States." Democracy Now (March 5, 2019) ["“How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States.” That’s the title of a new book examining a part of the U.S. that is often overlooked: the nation’s overseas territories from Puerto Rico to Guam, former territories like the Philippines, and its hundreds of military bases scattered across the globe. We speak with the book’s author, Daniel Immerwahr, who writes, “At various times, the inhabitants of the U.S. Empire have been shot, shelled, starved, interned, dispossessed, tortured and experimented on. What they haven’t been, by and large, is seen.” Immerwahr is an associate professor of history at Northwestern University."]
---. "'United States' to Imperial America." Empire Files (August 19, 2019) ["The global expanse of US military bases is well-known; but it's actual territorial empire is largely hidden. The true map of America is not taught in our schools. Abby Martin interviews history Professor Daniel Immerwahr about his new book, 'How To Hide An Empire,' where he documents the story of our "Greater United States.""]
Jamail, Dahr. "The Military Wants to Dictate Private Land Use -- and Washington State Might Let It." TruthOut (January 24, 2018)
Jindia, Shilpa. "Psychologists Vote Not to Return to Guantanamo Amid Heated Debate Over Torture Legacy." The Intercept (August 9, 2018)
Jones, Ann. "How US Wars Came Home With the Troops: Up Close, Personal and Bloody." Truthout (April 17, 2014)
Junger, Sebastian. "Why Veterans Miss War?" TED Talks (January 2014)
Kaiser, Brittany. "Meet Brittany Kaiser, Cambridge Analytica Whistleblower Releasing Troves of New Files from Data Firm." Democracy Now (January 7, 2020) ["New details are emerging about how the shadowy data firm Cambridge Analytica worked to manipulate voters across the globe, from the 2016 election in the United States to the Brexit campaign in Britain and elections in over 60 other countries, including Malaysia, Kenya and Brazil. A new trove of internal Cambridge Analytica documents and emails are being posted on Twitter detailing the company’s operations, including its work with President Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton. The documents come from Cambridge Analytica whistleblower Brittany Kaiser, who worked at the firm for three-and-a-half years before leaving in 2018. We speak with Jehane Noujaim and Karim Amer, co-directors of the Oscar shortlisted documentary “The Great Hack”; Brittany Kaiser, the Cambridge Analytica whistleblower featured in “The Great Hack” and author of “Targeted: The Cambridge Analytica Whistleblower’s Inside Story of How Big Data, Trump, and Facebook Broke Democracy and How It Can Happen Again”; and Emma Briant, a visiting research associate in human rights at Bard College whose upcoming book is titled “Propaganda Machine: Inside Cambridge Analytica and the Digital Influence Industry.”" Part Two: "The Great Hack: Big Data Firms Helped Sway the 2016 Election. Could It Happen Again in 2020?" Part Three: "Propaganda Machine: The Military Roots of Cambridge Analytica’s Psychological Manipulation of Voters."]
Kelly, Kathy. "Forty-One Hearts are Still Beating in Guantanamo." The Progressive (January 11, 2018)
Klay, Phil. "The Lesson of Eric Greitens, and the Navy SEALs Who Tried to Warn Us." The New Yorker (May 17, 2018) ["The charges facing the embattled governor of Missouri have stunned voters, but in the tight-knit Naval Special Warfare community, Greitens has been a divisive figure for years."]
Leopold, Jason. "Air Force Pulls Christian-Themed Ethics Training for Nuclear Missile Officers After Publication of Truthout Report." Truthout (July 29, 2011)
Lish, Atticus. "On Becoming a Scumbag." Harper's (October 2018) ["A poignant, profane novel of addiction."]
Lutz, Catherine. "Troop Veneration and American Empire." The Dig (January 3, 2018) ["The protest movement against the onset of the Iraq War was countered by a call to “support our troops” from militarists on the Right. But venerating American soldiers is not about supporting actual American soldiers; it's a rhetorical device to preclude questioning or criticism of the wars they are sent to fight. In a face-to-face interview at Brown University’s Watson Institute, anthropologist Catherine Lutz discusses John Kelly’s recent diatribe, Khizr Khan, Trump’s attack on protesting NFL players, and the roots of it all in the Nixon administration’s response to GI rebellion against the Vietnam War. "]
Madar, Chase. "The Over-Policing of America: Police Overkill Has Entered the DNA of Social Policy." TomDispatch (December 8, 2013)
McGirk, Tim. "In Exiting Iraq, U.S. Military Discards Trove of Found Documents on 2005 Haditha Massacre of Iraqis." Democracy Now (December 21, 2011)
Miller, T. Christian. "Invisible Wounds of War." Pro Publica Podcast (March 28, 2011)
Miller, Todd. "The Border Industrial Complex." Against the Grain (October 4, 2017) ["In the wake of the devastation of Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria, and while wildfires continue to rage across the West, it would seem like the perils of global warming are self-evident. And in fact, there’s one part of the U.S. government that, unlike President Trump, sees climate change as an undeniable danger: the military and Homeland Security. But not surprisingly, as journalist Todd Miller illustrates, their solution to the dislocations of climate change is a militarized one, imperiling all of us."]
Morris, Errol. "Anatomy of a Photograph: Authoritarianism in America." The Atlantic (August 22, 2020)
Ng, Brady. "Drowning out the peacemakers in Nanjing." Waging Nonviolence (March 11, 2013)
Novak, Matt. "U.S. Army Assures Public That Robot Tank System Adheres to AI Murder Policy." Gizmodo (March 6, 2019)
Parenti, Michael. "The Sword and the Dollar." Unwelcome Guests #4 (April 5, 2000)
Potter, Gary. "A Bullet for Barney: The Department Of Defense and Small Town Police Forces." Uprooting Criminology (December 19, 2013)
"Private Corporation May be Sued for Role in Abu Ghraib Torture, Judge Rules." Center for Constitutional Rights (February 21, 2018)
"Resisting The Military Financial Complex (Just Say No To Debt Repayment)." Unwelcome Guests (September 22, 2012)
Savell, Stephanie. "Fueling the Backfire: Our Everywhere War on Terror." Keeping Democracy Alive (March 7, 2019) ["Always out of the headlines, on purpose, America’s military footprint truly spans the globe. And how well is our nearly 18 year old “war on terror” going? Is it working? After what she calls a “research odyssey” Stephanie Savell of CostsofWar created a map for Smithsonian magazine, showing there are 80 countries involved in the US war on terrorism, including 7 that are sites of air and drone strikes, 14 that see direct combat by American troops against militant targets, and other sites of military exercises, bases, and training/assistance to military, police, and other ill-defined security forces. Often in places like Africa and South America, what is labeled terrorist is really internal dissidents. Savell calculated the cost to US taxpayers as $5.9 trillion, all of it borrowed money, meaning another $8 trillion paid in interest. Perhaps actually addressing the grievances might yield better results in terms of stopping terror attacks."]
Scheer, Robert. "There Goes the Republic." Truthdig (December 14, 2011)
Shah, Anup. "The Arms Trade is Big Business." Global Issues (January 5, 2013)
Singh, Nikhil Pal, with Jeremy Scahill. "Talk and Conversation." Lannan Foundation (September 26, 2018) ["Nikhil Pal Singh is an associate professor of social and cultural analysis and history at New York University and the founding faculty director of the NYU Prison Education Program. He is the author of Race and America’s Long War (2017), in which, historian Robin Kelley argues, “Singh obliterates any myth of American peace, revealing instead that the thread tying America’s past and present is long and continuous war—”hot, vicious, global, and racial.” Singh’s work helps us understand the historical sweep of racist ideology that brought us to the election of Donald Trump in 2016 and shows the connection between the election and US military defeats abroad. He writes, 'Marred by military atrocities, torture scandals, fiscal waste, toxic exposure, popular opposition, and public disgust, the US invasion of Iraq induced a regional death spiral and inspired new terrorist networks of the kind that the war was ostensibly fought to vanquish.'"]
"US Military." History Commons (Ongoing Historical Timeline)
"Veterans Reach Their Tipping Point Against Our Post-9/11 Wars." The American Conservative (September 10, 2019)
Wright, Ann and Ed Kinane. "Drones on Trial: 38 Protesters Face Charges for Disrupting Syracuse Base Used in Overseas Attacks." Democracy Now (November 4, 2011)
Zelter, Annie, et al. "Let Your Life Be A Friction (To Stop The Machine)." Unwelcome Guests (March 3, 2012)
Cinemark theater screened this Disney World advertisement (opportunistic selling of images of disturbed veterans as a means of promoting/selling a corporate image) right before Thor: Ragnarok last night (after a long series of other militarized ads/promotions). It is not only corporate propaganda, but it also perpetuating a repeatedly disabused cultural lie (across many cultures) - the myth of people spitting on returning veterans. Furthermore, the advertisement is riddled with other obvious falsities/distortions. The represented veteran claims in the advertisement for Disney World that no one welcomed him home (the unspoken claim is that Disney World is the only entity that welcomes returning veterans like him). Can you really believe "no one" welcomed him home in a hyper-militaristic country (even in the aftermath of our invasion and occupation of Vietnam)? I wonder how his family feels about this advertisement for Disney World (if no one welcomed him they would be included in that claim)?
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