Author: Common Dreams

The final big legislative achievement of 2021 was a bill authorizing $768 billion in military spending for the next fiscal year. President Biden signed it two days after the Christmas holiday. Dollar figures can look abstract on a screen, but they indicate the extent of the mania. Biden had asked for “only” $12 billion more than President Trump’s bloated military budget of the previous year — but that wasn’t enough for the bipartisan hawkery in the House and Senate, which provided a boost of $37 billion instead. Overall, military spending accounts for about half of the federal government’s total...

“When we ban books in schools before we ban guns, we admit we are more afraid of our children learning than we are of them dying.” – Baratunde Thurston The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum on January 26 countered a Tennessee school board’s decision to ban the Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel Maus, directing educators to its resources for teaching about the Holocaust and warning that it was more important than ever for students to learn this history. The McMinn County school board’s decision to remove Maus from its eighth grade classrooms over its depiction of the atrocities committed by...

As the U.S. and South Korea continue to discuss an end-of-war declaration, they have a real opportunity to close this last chapter of the Cold War. However, the Biden administration is squandering this opportunity by continuing the same playbook that has failed for decades and resulted in a nuclear-armed North Korea: ramping up military deployments, adding more crippling sanctions, and continuing hostile rhetoric. To lower the chance of renewed military conflict and work toward lasting peace in Korea, the Biden administration must not only sign an end-of-war declaration but also reorient policy toward diplomacy and peace. While an armistice...