Godzilla, a giant monster mutated by nuclear radiation, first appears in a 1954 Japanese science fiction movie by the same name, ravaging Japan in a symbolic warning about the risks of nuclear weapons. For a couple of decades Godzilla was very popular, appearing in more than 28 films as well as many video games, novels, comic books, and a television series. Then, as a fragile détente developed in the region ...

The Democrats in the US House of Representatives have introduced a bill that would demand the government establish a diplomatic envoy to Iran in an attempt to deal with Tehran’s nuclear energy program. A sponsor of the legislation, Representative Barbara Lee (D-CA), said the government must end its "no contact" policy with Iran, which currently bars Iranian and US officials from holding direct talks, The Hi ...

Being the President of the USA can’t be an easy job; being a president from an ethnic minority, someone from a community that has a long experience of poverty, violence and discrimination, must be even harder.  On one hand in order to succeed in xenophobic US politics you have to be heartless in your dealings with foreigners and show this to everyone in Washington, on the other hand as a human being with th ...

One of the first things you need to know about the U.S. is how difficult it is for us to tolerate ambiguity—especially when untangling our own motives. An example was our second invasion of Iraq. After 9/11 we felt an itch to retaliate against a clear enemy. Because we could not pinpoint one, we scratched the itch by inventing a false enemy— conveniently, one with lots of oil under its sand—and going to war ...

Secret Pentagon studies have cast serious doubt on the effectiveness of the US-planned multi-billion-dollar missile system in Europe, congressional investigators say. The classified studies by the Missile Defense Agency were summarized in a briefing for lawmakers by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), a congressional nonpartisan investigative body. The GAO investigators said the briefing cast seriou ...

We must stop investing in our extinction! For decades the peace movement has been satisfied with scraps from the table of nuclear weapons and their beneficiaries. Even the New START Treaty was offset by the Obama administration promise to spend $185 billion in this decade on modernization of nuclear weapons and delivery systems.  The vulnerable point in the complex of nuclear weapons corporations, their lob ...

By Robert Dodge This year’s presidential inauguration on Martin Luther King Day finds us as a nation and people at a remarkable crossroads. We have the same daunting issues we have faced for years before us; and yet there is something different. There is a developing shift in our consciousness and responsibility. We are witnessing a new awareness of the challenges and necessity of addressing them. What is n ...

Guns. Media. Mental Illness. Lax Security. All these and more have been offered as explanations for the tragic mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary on Friday, December 14 that left 26 people, including 20 children, dead. And all of those things may have played a role. But none are the cause of the problem. And heated debate about them, while important, serves to obscure some other very important conversat ...

We are saved —so our politicians tell us —from a plunge off the fiscal cliff. In all reports, however, it is mentioned that President Obama settled for a slice of what he claimed to be after, which was to raise taxes on those whose income is more than a $quarter million annually. Instead, the Republican bravehearts kept that rapacious goal at bay and made certain that taxes would only increase for those mak ...

As the world hyperventilates over today's successful satellite launch by the DPRK, absolutely no attention whatsoever has been paid to far far more dangerous and unambiguously nuclear weapons related launches in the last ten days by the US (Nov14) and Pakistan, and to a launch by South Korea that received media attention at all only when postponed from last week to 2013. The double-standard is not only brea ...