How It Could Finally Be Possible to Prosecute War as a Crime

War is a crime. The International Criminal Court has just announced that it will finally treat it as a crime, sort-of, kind-of. But how can war’s status as a crime effectively deter the world’s leading war-maker from threatening and launching more wars, large and small? How can laws against war actually be put to use? How can the ICC’s announcement be made into something more than a pretense?

The Kellogg-Briand Pact made war a crime in 1928, and various atrocities became criminal charges read more

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Talk Nation Radio: Christmas Truce

This week’s show looks at the Christmas truces.

Resources here:
https://davidswanson.org/christmastruce

Olympic truce here:
https://act.rootsaction.org/p/dia/action4/common/public/?action_KEY=13181

Total run time: 29:00
Host: David Swanson.
Producer: David Swanson.
Music by Duke Ellington.

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Syndicated by Pacifica Network.

Please encourage your local radio stations to carry this program every week!

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Talk Nation Radio: Thomas Buonomo on Humanist Foreign Relations

Thomas Buonomo is the Humanist Studies Coordinator with the American Humanist Association. His areas of concern revolve around the influence of religion in politics, U.S.-Middle East relations, conflict prevention and resolution, energy and climate security, and human rights. His writing on these subjects has been published by the Atlantic Council, The National Interest, Securing America’s Future Energy, Forbes, The Cipher Brief, Oil&Gas Investor, Renewable Energy read more

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Oh For Godsake, Leave Jill Stein Alone

I’ve known Jill Stein for years. I knew weeks ago that the Senate “Intelligence” Committee was coming after her. I set up this petition to put reasonable limits on Russiagate. But I’ve not heard from Jill, nor had any secret communication from my good friend Vladimir, nor any such nonsense. I criticize the Russian and U.S. governments as they deserve it. Nearly three years ago, Russia read more

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The Even More Dangerous Case of Donald Trump

Twenty-Seven psychiatrists and mental health experts have produced a book called The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, which I think, despite stating that the fate of the world is in the hands of an evil madman, understates the danger.

The case that these authors make is one that I believe would strike most readers not loyal to Trump as common sense. The evidence that they compile, and with which we’re mostly already familiar, strongly supports their diagnosis of Trump as hedonistic, narcissistic, read more

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Why Russiagate’s not Watergate.

Watch the film All the President’s Men.

If you accept the premise that Woodward and Bernstein brought down Nixon, and you watch them waste half the damn movie trying to discover basic public facts using phone books and pay phones and typewriters and automobiles, it becomes clear that had these reporters been in possession of the internet, Nixon would not have had a second term.

Now roll ahead to 2017. Virtually everything Nixon was blamed for has either remained perfectly acceptable (illegal read more

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Gorbachev Was Promised No NATO Expansion

For decades the pretense has been maintained that there is some doubt as to whether the United States really promised Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev that if Germany reunited, then NATO would not expand eastward. The National Security Archive has put such doubts to rest at least until the de-neutering of the internet succeeds.

On January 31, 1990, West German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher made a major public speech in which, according to the U.S. Embassy in Bonn, he made clear “that read more

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Linguistic Devolution and Ye Ol’ Resistance

Trump has banned doctors from using seven words: “vulnerable,” “entitlement,” “diversity,” “transgender,” “fetus,” “evidence-based” and “science-based.”

Pretty lame words compared with the seven words that George Carlin famously ranted about because they were banned from television: shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, and tits.

To try to recover a bit of our culture, I’d like to make a humble proposal to U.S. government doctors doing their research read more

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The Case Against Iraqing Iran

The case against Iraqing Iran includes the following points:

Threatening war is a violation of the U.N. Charter.

Waging war is a violation of the U.N. Charter and of the Kellogg-Briand Pact.

Waging war without Congress is a violation of the U.S. Constitution.

Have you seen Iraq lately?

Have you seen the entire region?

Have you seen Afghanistan? Libya? Syria? Yemen? Pakistan? Somalia?

War supporters said the U.S. urgently needed to attack Iran in 2007. It did not attack. The claims turned out to be lies. read more

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