• Tony Valencia
• Vietnam War
• My Lai
• Seymour Hersh
• Agent Orange
• Glioblastoma

I believe the good book says “Blessed are the Peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.” Yet it seems like our leaders want to become God. They play chess, we are the pawns.

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Nov 17, 2025 / Tony Valencia /  Tectony9.substack.com - Pain, defeat, anger, sadness. Fifty years after the Vietnam War ended, these emotions continue to resonate deeply among many, myself included. My grandfather, an infantry sniper in 1968, chose to serve his country out of love, rather than being drafted. To him, fighting communism was more than a duty, it was a personal calling shaped by the absence of his father. He believed that doing what his country wanted was a way to fill the masculine void inside of him. There is nothing more fulfilling than to fight for the freedoms that millions of civilians take for granted every day. However, that pursuit let to experiences he never anticipated.

One year, one event: That is all it took for his life to change forever, along with the lives of countless innocent civilians and unsuspecting American soldiers, who believed they were fighting for the freedoms of the Vietnamese people. Around this time, the tide of the Vietnam war shifted dramatically. A horrific massacre occurred in the village of My Lai, involving no more than three dozen soldiers from Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment, 11th Infantry Brigade, and Americal Division. Innocent men, women, and children were slaughtered in their homes. Bodies lay piled upon one other, homes were burned to the ground, and women and girls were raped indiscriminately.

To them, it was “search and destroy,” even if it meant taking innocent lives. Almost no civilian escaped this scene alive. Those soldiers believed that they could evade the consequences of their actions. However, a journalist by the name of Seymour Hersh would bring their crimes to light, acting on a tip from Geoffrey Cowan, a lawyer from Washington. He revealed that a Lieutenant by the name of William Calley had been court-martialed for the murder of Vietnamese civilians. He claimed to have been ordered to carry out the mission by another soldier. By the grace of God, a warrant officer by the name of Hugh Thompson Jr. intervened, landing his helicopter between the soldiers and the civilians, saving countless lives as the massacre halted in its tracks.

• military draft
• Sophie Hurwitz
• Silicon Valley
• Palantir
• Alex Karp
• The Technological Republic
• Mother Jones

 (And also the Axis Powers.)

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April 20, 2026 / Sophie Hurwitz / Mother Jones MoJo Wire - On Sunday afternoon, Palantir, the defense-tech company that sells software to clients like ICE, the US military, and the Israeli military, decided to give us all a piece of their mind. The company’s official X account published a list of excerpts from co-founder Alex Karp’s 2025 book The Technological Republic.

The book frames Silicon Valley’s move into military technology as the righteous repayment of a “moral debt” owed to the country that built the tech billionaire class. “The engineering elite of Silicon Valley has an affirmative obligation to participate in the defense of the nation.”

If you read past the post and dig into the book itself, you’ll find that this sentence continues: “the engineering elite must also, Karp said, participate in “the articulation of a national project—what is this country, what are our values, and for what do we stand.”

That is to say: Men like Karp should decide what this country is.

• Counter-recruitment
• Pentagon
• militarization of youth
• Army STEM Experience

  Part of NNOMY’s “Grooming Youth for Military Enlistment” Series

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April 06, 2026 / NNOMY Staff / The National Network Opposing the Militarization of Youth - Each spring, workplaces across the United States participate in “Bring Your Child to Work Day,” a tradition meant to give young people a glimpse into the adult world of employment. In most offices, the day is lighthearted and educational, offering children a chance to see how their parents spend their time and to imagine their own futures. But at the Pentagon, this event has evolved into something far more consequential. According to the Pentagon’s own reporting, more than 8,300 children were welcomed into the building for a day filled with demonstrations of military technology, immersive simulations, and carefully curated messages about pride, service, and national security. What appears on the surface to be a harmless family event reveals itself, on closer inspection, as a sophisticated exercise in youth militarization and soft recruitment.

The emotional framing of the day is central to its purpose. Pentagon officials repeatedly told children that their parents’ work is special, essential, and something they should be deeply proud of. The message is clear: the military is not simply a workplace, but a moral identity. When a child is told that the Pentagon exists to “make your life better” and “ensure that you live in a country that’s free,” the institution becomes synonymous with safety, goodness, and loyalty. This is not civic education; it is emotional conditioning. It binds family identity to military identity long before a young person has the capacity to evaluate the political and ethical dimensions of war. The event’s tone is not neutral or informational. It is celebratory, reverent, and designed to cultivate admiration.

The activities offered throughout the day reinforce this emotional groundwork. Children were invited to try on augmented‑reality combat helmets, peer through night‑vision goggles, manipulate thermal imaging systems, operate explosive‑ordnance disposal robots, and handle drones. These are not neutral STEM tools. They are instruments of war, presented without context or consequence. The Pentagon’s own write‑up notes that children were more excited to wear the gear than to ask questions, a predictable outcome when weapons technology is framed as entertainment. This is how desensitization works: the tools of violence become toys, and the line between curiosity and militarism begins to blur. The event transforms the machinery of war into a source of wonder, fascination, and play.

• George W. Bush
• Donald Trump
• ICE
• Eric Blanc
• SDS
• Venezuela
• No Kings
• Labor Politics
• Antiwar Movement
• Iran

Opinion: Trump’s war on Iran is unpopular, dangerous, and escalating. But without organizing, public anger will not stop it

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Mar 02, 2026 / Eric Blanc / Labor Politics - Donald Trump’s war on Iran is very unpopular. As pollster G. Elliot Morris notes, it is the most unpopular a US war has ever been when it started. And “with just 38% of Americans in favor, support for bombing Iran is lower than retrospective support for the war in Iraq was in 2014.”

Why then has there been so little collective protest against the US-Israel offensive? Answering this question is not easy. What follows are seven hypotheses rather than definitive conclusions. But exploring why we’re lacking an anti-war movement today can help us move to actually start building one. And for the sake of Iranians, the Middle East, and working people in the US, we’d better do so as soon as possible.

Americans Feel Powerless

A key reason why so many young people in the 1960s threw themselves into the fight against US military involvement in Vietnam was that the civil rights movement had recently demonstrated the power of mass action. As Students for a Democratic Society (SDS)’s founding manifesto in 1962 put it, “the Southern struggle against racial bigotry … compelled most of us from silence to activism.” Looking back, one participant recalled that such examples of success “gave the feeling that you could actually make a difference, that you needed to take a stand.”