PRESS ROOM

This is a fascinating discussion with Maj. Danny Sjursen on what the concept of patriotism should ideally be, as well as a deep dive explanation on what the military-industrial complex is.
Maj. Sjursen is a combat veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, a West Point military-historian, author, speaker, and now prominent anti-war activist. He talks about his experiences in Iraq and his new book "Patriotic Dissent," which re-examines what the concept of patriotism should be in a modern America of never-ending warfare.

"Dozens of human rights organisations have called on Formula One champion Lewis Hamilton to boycott a Grand Prix set to be held in Saudi Arabia later this year and speak out against the kingdom's human rights abuses.

In a letter sent on Monday, a copy of which was shared with MEE, 45 groups urged the British driver to "reconsider" his participation in the race in Saudi Arabia, citing the kingdom's ongoing war in Yemen, detention of women's rights activists and the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Signatories to the letter included Code Pink, Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain, Yemen Relief and Reconstruction Foundation, Freedom Forward and International Service for Human Rights."

A review late last year by the Center for International Policy of 50 major U.S. think tanks found that CNAS was the single largest recipient of defense contractor money from 2014 to 2019. In our report, we were able to identify 29 different defense companies that have contributed to the think tank, with Northrop Grumman (the 5th largest U.S. defense contractor in 2019) as their biggest financial backer by far.

A more effective and progressive foreign policy requires more than just undoing the damage of the Trump years. It means putting the real risks to human security—from the pandemic to climate change to racial and economic injustice—front and center. A good place to start would be reducing the Pentagon’s bloated budget.

"Ivory Coast lost 47,000 hectares (116,000 acres) of forest in its cocoa-growing regions in 2020, an environmental group said on Thursday, despite industry pledges to halt deforestation.

The area deforested last year showed some improvement from 2015, when about 60,000 hectares (148,000 acres) were being destroyed annually, said the U.S.-based environmental group Mighty Earth, which maps deforestation based on satellite data."

The Center for International Policy‘s Foreign Influence Transparency Initiative has a new report out today on the massive amounts of money US ally South Korea spends on lobbying and public relations firms to influence US policymakers and public opinion.

"In the case of Ivory Coast, the country has reportedly lost around 80% of its forest areas since the 1960s due to commercial activities – with cocoa growing serving the confectionery sector high among that list, which comes as campaign group Mighty Earth produces a study that revealed a study reportedly claiming 47,000 hectares of deforestation in Ivory Coast alone within the past year, mapped by satellite data, representing an area four times as large as the city of Paris."

After 20 years of less-bad-strategies that never stuck or meaningfully moved the Afghan needle — maybe, for once, it’s Band-Aid time, baby! That’s right, ditch all the arguments to stay and fail — whilst only maintaining the fiction of not-yet-losing — and head home. Bring the boys and girls back, and fast.

Pity we didn’t do it back in 2016, 2009 — or 2003, for that matter. Nothing would have meaningfully changed — in the long-term, at least — on the ground if we had…and thousands of the troops Americans pretend-to-adore might be alive today.

"“Supermarkets need to go beyond their sustainability rhetoric by setting strict requirements for their suppliers, banning deforestation, monitoring their suppliers for compliance, and dropping contracts with the worst offenders like JBS,” said Lucia von Reusner. Reusner is the senior campaign director of Mighty Earth, an environmental campaign organization.

Mighty Earth vice-president Sarah Lake accused the U.S. of complicity in global deforestation. The European Union, United Kingdom, and France have passed legislation restricting the import of products tied to deforestation, she said. Lake called on the Biden administration to follow suit."

"“This is the fourth straight year that palm-oil deforestation has been at a fraction of historic levels, and trending down,” said Glenn Hurowitz, CEO of the environmental nonprofit, Mighty Earth.

“We had hoped that the big companies would do their own monitoring and enforcement, but we found that companies like Korindo Group were able to clear 10,000 hectares and get away with it,” Hurowitz said. And so activists began guarding the forests themselves, using satellite imagery provided by Global Forest Watch, the online forest-monitoring program, and others. Mighty Earth, or another watchdog, wil now alert big palm-oil buyers and prompt a crackdown."

If Biden is going to bring to fruition his campaign promises of supporting human rights and democratic values, the United States will need to fundamentally alter its relationship with Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

An issue brief from our Arms & Security Program, "FUELING CONFLICT: U.S. Arms Sales to the United Arab Emirates and the U.S./UAE Military Alliance" is cited in this article for Just Security.

President Biden took the occasion of his first foreign policy speech on February 4 to make a pledge to end “all American support for offensive operations in the war in Yemen, including relevant arms sales.” The administration has since indicated that it will put an indefinite pause on two bomb sales to Saudi Arabia that the Trump administration announced in late December. The administration’s new policy should include a review of all U.S. sales to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the nations that are primarily responsible for the humanitarian catastrophe in Yemen.