By David Swanson, Executive Director of World BEYOND War, December 24, 2019

I think every U.S. student should be required to spend a year as an exchange student living in another country with a family that lives outside of but within five kilometers of a U.S. or NATO military base. If such a program were instituted, it could be funded by some fraction of 1 percent of the U.S. military budget. And of course the U.S. military would be happy to do it, to allow U.S. citizens to bask in the gratitude read more

Al Capone wasn’t prosecuted for tax evasion because it’s cool or smart or strategic to prosecute murderers for lesser crimes, but because proving murder in court was going to be more difficult.

That’s not analogous to a Congressional impeachment, but the opposite of how Congress operates. Congress sits on indisputable evidence of the greatest crimes while impeaching presidents for lesser offenses that are harder to prove.

Andrew Johnson publicly did everything he could to limit read more

Why in the world should Elizabeth Warren choose to run for vice president?

The obvious answer that can save you the time of reading further or, you know, thinking, is my blatant sexism. Clearly, every time I’ve supported female candidates in the past for City Council, House of Delegates, Congress, and the White House has been part of an elaborate plot — no doubt hatched in Moscow — to create a cover for my secret but very real sexism, which I was saving for just this crucial moment. read more

First the good news.

If one of the worst pieces of legislation ever drafted becomes law, there is one small measure in it that we can be pleased with. RootsAction.org and World BEYOND War and many other organizations and activists from Puerto Rico and the rest of the United States and beyond urged Congress through a petition and a variety of lobbying approaches to provide $10 million for the purchase of closed detonation chambers in the clean-up of military contamination in Vieques, Puerto Rico.

This read more

The House and Senate have agreed upon a catastrophic military spending bill.

The House has happily tossed under the bus the following measures that had been in its version prior to “compromising” by going with what the Senate (and the campaign funders) wanted:

Cleaning up Vieques.

[UPDATE: silver lining on Vieques!]

Justifying the Supposed Benefit of Every Foreign Base.

And all of these are virtually or entirely gone:

–repeal the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq read more

Roger Hallam is of course right in his short book, Common Sense for the 21st Century: Only Nonviolent Rebellion Can Now Stop Climate Breakdown and Social Collapse. While some portion of humanity heaps scorn on the victims of the fossil fuel propaganda who deny climate science, only a much smaller portion points out the equally delusional and disastrous denial of the need for nonviolent revolution.

Facts are facts, as Hallam points out. The current political systems cannot change fast enough. They read more