Notes on the Empire

Dave Lindorff offers some numbers to ponder for tomorrow's unholy day — Your Tax Dollars at War: More Than 53% of Your Tax Payment Goes to the Military. Too bad more tea partiers don't take up this theme.

Tom Engelhardt says "it's not only the American way of war, but the American way of statecraft that arrives as if from the heavens, ready to impose its own definitions of the good and necessary on the world — Gods and Monsters.

"War crimes, massacres, and, as Al Jazeera properly calls it, 'collateral murder,' are all part of the US involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001," reminds Robert Dreyfuss — War Crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Zotlan Grossman notes the curious fact that "within all five countries [in which we are currently at war], the main targets of the wars are predominantly 'tribal regions,' and the old frontier language of Indian-fighting is becoming the lexicon of 21st-century counterinsurgency" — The Global War on Tribes.

Leave it to The Onion to find a bit of humor in it all — U.S. Flag Recalled After Causing 143 Million Deaths. "Representatives from the nation's leading flag producer claimed that as many as 143 million deaths in the past two centuries can be attributed directly to the faulty U.S. models, which have been utilized extensively since the 18th century in sectors as diverse as government, the military, and public education."