SearchDemocracy LinksMember's Off-site Blogs |
Asserting Our Right to Kill and Maim CiviliansBy George Monbiot The central mystery of the modern state is this. The necessary resources, both economic and political, will always be found for the purpose of terminating life. The project of preserving it will always struggle. When did you last see a soldier shaking a tin for a new rifle? Or a sponsored marathon raising money for nuclear weapons? But we must beg and cajole each other for funds whenever a hospital wants a new dialysis machine. If the money and determination expended on waging war with Iraq had been used to tackle climate change, our carbon emissions would already be in freefall. If as much money were spent on foreign aid as on fighter planes, no one would ever go hungry. When the state was run by warrior kings, this was comprehensible: they owed their existence to overwhelming force. Now weapons budgets and foreign wars are, if anything, an electoral liability. But the pattern has never been broken.
|
User login |
Recent comments
3 hours 18 min ago
5 hours 21 min ago
5 hours 26 min ago
7 hours 50 min ago
8 hours 45 min ago
6 hours 23 min ago
9 hours 17 min ago
9 hours 27 min ago
10 hours 17 min ago
12 hours 21 min ago