Search Results for: "Human Rights Watch"

By World BEYOND War, October 9, 2023

Needless to say, the horrors underway in Palestine and Israel did not just begin and trace their roots to the Nakba and to the criminal violence that has not ended since then. It’s very necessary to add that nothing excuses the violence committed by Hamas. The Israeli government has not chosen to learn that its violence may produce more violence. Hamas has not chosen to learn that its violence may produce more violence. It’s very necessary to be mature enough read more

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, April 4, 2021

After months of demand from World BEYOND War and others, the Biden administration has finally lifted Trump-imposed sanctions on the ICC, stating a preference for a subtler approach to imposing lawlessness in the name of upholding the rule of law.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken states:

“We continue to disagree strongly with the ICC’s actions relating to the Afghanistan and Palestinian situations. We maintain our longstanding objection to read more

Dan Kovalik’s new book, No More War: How the West Violates International Law by Using “Humanitarian” Intervention to Advance Economic and Strategic Interests — which I am adding to my list of books you should read on why war should be abolished (see below) — makes a powerful case that humanitarian war no more exists than philanthropic child abuse or benevolent torture. I’m not sure the actual motivations of wars are limited to economic and strategic interests — read more

August 27, 2019, remarks, Chicago

By David Swanson

Happy Kellogg-Briand Pact Day! As you all know, but most people do not, the Peace Pact was signed 91 years ago today. And, as you all probably know, but most people do not, the inspiration and vision and endless labor behind it came from a mass movement begun and led, not by Mr. Kellogg or Monsieur Briand but by a lawyer from Chicago named Salmon Oliver Levinson. You could point that out to Minnesotans from Frank Kellogg’s Twin Cities if, read more

For those of us who fully expected most U.S. peace activists to vanish once Barack Obama became president but expected them to come back once Donald Trump ascended the throne, the failure of our second expectation has been hard, crushingly hard. But there are a few silver linings.

First, there is now a multi-issue campaign that, unlike the women’s march or the climate march or so many other marches, and perhaps because it draws its platform in part from one written 50 years ago, opposes war read more

Tuesday’s debate and vote in the U.S. Senate on whether to end (technically whether or not to vote on whether to end) U.S. participation in the war on Yemen can certainly be presented as a step forward. While 55 U.S. Senators voted to keep the war rolling along, 44 voted read more

When I wrote a book about the Kellogg-Briand Pact my goals were to draw lessons from the movement that created it, and to call attention to its existence as a still-current law being routinely violated — in hopes of encouraging compliance. After all, it is a law that bans nations from engaging in war — the primary thing my nation’s government does, with a half-dozen U.S. wars going at any time now.

Now Oona Hathaway and Scott J. Shapiro have published The Internationalists: read more