19 Nov, 2021
National defense and dead children
A new defense budget looms. Maybe we’re running out of wars to fight, but no matter.
11 Nov, 2021
American history: Let’s face the truth
When you’re losing the game, summon the commies! And conservative white America has been losing for quite some time — losing control of the future, that is.
6 Nov, 2021
The myth of redemptive violence
Several million dollars’ worth of fiction exploded the other day, leaving cinematographer Halyna Hutchins...
4 Nov, 2021
A world without money
And climate change begins . . . “Three or four thousand years ago the gods began a migration from the lakes, forests, rivers, and mountains into the sky, becoming the imperial overlords of nature rather than its essence.”...
14 Oct, 2021
A Zen koan on Columbus Day
It’s too easy, right? Too simple — shoving Christopher Columbus off the historical honor roll, pulling down his statues, yanking his “day” away from him and renaming it in honor of the people he murdered...
5 Oct, 2021
Wrestling with infinity
I use walking sticks when I walk nowadays, kind of like cross-country skiing in late summer, but I had no idea doing so would connect me with a guy named Joe and open a flow of aching love...
29 Sep, 2021
Separating the cross and the sword
What is a gaffe but an inadvertent uttering of an awkward truth? For instance: “This crusade, this war on terrorism, is going to take a while.”...
24 Sep, 2021
Women’s rights: Afghanistan and beyond
Suddenly there’s major concern across the country — from the mainstream media to every last rock-ribbed Republican — for the rights of Afghan women and girls to be able to work, to go to school...
16 Sep, 2021
A national rite of passage: Beyond war
A recent New York Times op-ed was perhaps the strangest, most awkward and tentative defense of the military-industrial complex — excuse me, the experiment in democracy called America...
9 Sep, 2021
Letting the future out of its cage
We pretend to have enemies, but mostly what we “have” are people whose lives simply don’t matter. And then we kill them, either directly — via airstrikes or other war games, turning them into collateral damage — or indirectly . . . by simply failing to notice that they exist...
2 Sep, 2021
After Afghanistan . . . A Truth Commission?
“Ten members of one family — including seven children — are dead after a US drone strike targeting a vehicle in a residential neighborhood of Kabul . .
25 Aug, 2021
Growing old in the newborn universe
Growing old in the newborn universe by Robert C. Koehler 939 words Published in: Press Reader, Counterpunch, Daily Advent, Westside...
13 Aug, 2021
War, herbicides and moral disengagement
On August 10, 1961, the United States, several years before it actually sent troops, started poisoning the forests and crops of Vietnam with herbicides...
29 Jul, 2021
Democracy: Enemy of the powerful
Perhaps the best possible thing we could acknowledge being is a “divided nation.” Failing to do so justifies — or at least avoids noticing — all manner of violent cruelty and repression in the name of so-called democracy, from the jailing of whistleblowers who reveal U.S. war crimes and global criminality, to the lynching of men and women of color . . . to the waging of endless war.
22 Jul, 2021
Civilizing the savage
We crossed the Atlantic, encountered a bunch of savages, defeated them, claimed the continent. We won!