Search Results for: ukraine

By World BEYOND War, August 29, 2022

World BEYOND War’s Second Annual War Abolisher Awards will recognize the work of an environmental organization that has prevented military operations in state parks in Washington State, a filmmaker from New Zealand who has documented the power of unarmed peacemaking, Italian dock workers who have blocked the shipment of weapons of war, and British peace activist and Member of Parliament Jeremy Corbyn who has taken a consistent stand for peace despite intense read more

By David Swanson

Every Single Member of Congress Is Willing to Let Yemeni Children Die.

If you want to prove that statement wrong, I think you’ll want to start by proving wrong one or more of these five points:

1. A single member of the House or Senate can compel a speedy vote on ending U.S. participation in the war on Yemen.
2. Not one single member has done so.
3. Ending U.S. participation would effectively end the war.
4. Despite the temporary truce, millions of lives depend on ending the war.
5. The passionate speeches in 2018 and 2019 by Senators and Representatives demanding an end to the war when they knew they could count on a veto from Trump have vanished during the Biden years chiefly because Party is more important than human lives.

Let’s fill these five points out a little:

1. A single member of the House or Senate can compel a speedy vote on ending U.S. participation in the war on Yemen.

Here’s an explanation from the Friends Committee on National Legislation:

“Any member of the House or Senate, regardless of committee assignment, can invoke section 5(c) of the War Powers Resolution and get a full floor vote read more

By David Swanson

Pope Francis’s new book is called Against War: Building a Culture of Peace.

I’m sure some Catholics will recommend it to you. But let this atheist do so as well.

Perhaps this book won’t be promoted by those Catholics sitting on the U.S. Supreme Court or in the U.S. Congress or just living in the United States and owning a television. But if 5 percent of Catholics in the world were to read this book and act on it, we’d see the abolition of war and militaries. read more

When New York City recently released a grotesque “public service announcement” video explaining that you should stay indoors during a nuclear war, the corporate media reaction was principally not outrage at the acceptance of such a fate or the stupidity of telling people “You’ve got this!” as if they could survive the apocalypse by cocooning with Netflix, but rather mockery of the very idea that a nuclear war might happen. U.S. polling on people’s top concerns read more

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, July 24, 2022

The two sides in the war in Ukraine have negotiated a deal to at least reduce the starvation in Africa and elsewhere that may result from the war, by agreeing to a means of exporting some grain.

The same two sides had previously reached agreements on prisoners of war.

The odd thing about this — although it happens in every war — is that each of the two sides has negotiated with what it characterizes as irrational monsters on the other side with read more

The death and suffering in Ukraine does not yet remotely compare with that in Yemen. Nor does the death and suffering from war in Yemen yet compare with that around the world resulting from the misdirection of resources into war — not to mention the impediments to urgently needed global cooperation created by war.

But we talk about Ukraine, not only because it’s in corporate media and involves relatively wealthy, weapons-dealing, European nations waging war at home instead of in distant read more

Where do all the Lockheed Martin executives vacation?

At the Last Resort!

Joe Biden and Israel are planning to attack Iran as a Last Resort.

Weapons dealers love nothing better than last resorts. Invading Ukraine was a last resort according to Russia. Shipping endless weapons into Ukraine is a last resort according to the U.S.

Win-win! Just pay no attention to the relentless and deliberate escalation of the past decades. Erase how the Baltics kicked out the Soviets 30 years go. Dude, they’re read more

The Jan. 6 hearings are clearly running over a month. Let’s call it a month. There are many countries in which the U.S. has organized, facilitated, or supported one or more coup attempts. Let’s count each country just once. And let’s go back only to the year 2000. Here’s a list of countries and the dates of attempted or successful overthrows. An asterick indicates success:

Yugoslavia 1999-2000 *
Ecuador 2000 *
Afghanistan 2001 *
Venezuela 2002 * and 2018, read more

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, June 29, 2022

It’s impossible for either side to see, but Russia and NATO depend on each other.

Whichever side you’re on, you

• agree with weapons-maker propaganda that the available actions in the world are (1) war, and (2) doing nothing;
• you ignore the historical record of nonviolent action succeeding more often than war;
• and you imagine militarism to be required completely independently from considering what the results will be.

It’s possible for some people to glimpse the stupidity and counterproductive nature of war as long as they look at old wars, and don’t apply any lessons learned to current wars. An author in Germany of a book about the stupidity of World War I is right now busy telling read more

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, June 22, 2022

Let’s say that we are participants in a popular democratic socialist human-rights-loving movement and successful and fairly-elected national government, and we’re invaded and overthrown by a rightwing military, foreign or domestic, with horrific violence. What should we do?

I’m not asking what can we do that might have better results than doing nothing. Almost anything meets that standard.

I’m not asking what can we do that we’ll be able read more