Search Results for: Russia

To Prosecute Blair for War You Do Not Need the ICC

To prosecute Tony Blair or George W. Bush or others responsible for the criminal attack on Iraq, or other top officials for other recent wars, does not require the International Criminal Court (ICC).

It is commonplace to insist that the ICC cannot handle the supreme crime of aggression, although it might at some point in the future. The United States is also believed to be immune from prosecution as a non-ICC member.

But this focus on the ICC is a sign of weakness in a global movement for justice read more

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Impeach and Prosecute Tony Blair

The Chilcot report’s “findings” have virtually all been part of the public record for a decade, and it avoids key pieces of evidence. Its recommendations are essentially to continue using war as a threat and a tool of foreign policy, but to please try not to lie so much, make sure to win over a bit more of the public, and don’t promise any positive outcomes given the likelihood of catastrophe.

The report is a confused jumble, given that it records evidence of the supreme read more

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Guess Who Wants Authority to Murder by Drone

If you haven’t been hiding under a partisan rock for the past several years, you’re aware that President Barack Obama has given himself the sort-of legalish right to murder anyone anywhere with missiles from drones.

He’s not the only one who wants that power.

Yes, President Obama has claimed to have put restrictions on whom he’ll murder, but in no known case has he followed any of his self-imposed non-legal restrictions. Nowhere has someone been arrested instead of killed, read more

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What is a Global Citizenry, and Can It Save Us?

First published in The Humanist.

Headlines this past spring claimed that for the first time ever, more than half of poll respondents around the world said they saw themselves more as global citizens than as citizens of a country. What did they mean in saying that?

First of all, to lower the heart rate of certain U.S. readers we should state that they clearly didn’t mean they’d sworn loyalty to a secret global government for the period of time until the Dark Side crushes all light from the Force, read more

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Unreported Mass Killing Leaves Thousands Dead

In what’s being called the worst mass killing by the United States in the past six months, numerous mentally disturbed individuals, with the extensive backing of a well-financed terrorist organization, and support from a growing circle of allied gang members, have gruesomely slaughtered 1,110 to 1,558 innocent men, women, and children.

This incident, which has left shocked and speechless a handful of people who’ve heard and thought about it, took place between December 1, 2015, and read more

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Gorbachev Disagrees With Obama on Nukes

Mikhail Gorbachev and Barack Obama have radically different views on what is involved in doing away with nuclear weapons.

Reading Gorbachev’s new book, The New Russia, is a bit disappointing, but it contains some key insights. It may also be a cure for insomnia; it’s no page turner. It’s part decades-long diary and travelogue, part petty self-aggrandizement (by someone in no need), and part ill-informed conservatism.

Gorby claims that Obama “honoured his promise to withdraw read more

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Orlando Killer's Secret Shared by Other Terrorists

As with becoming a whistleblower or an activist or an artist there must be numerous reasons why any individual becomes a terrorist — whether military, contract, or independent. Various irrational hatreds and fears (and promises of paradise after death) and the ready availability of weaponry certainly play roles.

But did you know that every single foreign terrorist in the United States in recent decades, plus domestic terrorists claiming foreign motivations, plus numerous poor suckers set read more

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Brexit Violence Deeply Rooted, With Lessons for U.S.

On Thursday, in a political move more typical of the United States than Europe, a member of the British Parliament was murdered. She was an opponent of Brexit (Britain exiting the European Union), and her murderer reportedly shouted “Britain First!”

There is a case to be made, on the one hand, that exiting the EU is actually the move away from violence. There are many areas, from banking to farming read more

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Talking About Forgiveness

By David Swanson

An atheist’s sermon on Luke 7: 36-50 delivered at Saint Joan of Arc in Minneapolis, Minn., on June 12, 2016.

Forgiveness is a universal need, among those of us who are not religious and among believers in every religion on earth. We must forgive each other our differences, and we must forgive much more difficult occurrences.

Some things we can forgive easily — by which, of course, I mean eliminating resentment from our hearts, not granting an eternal reward. If someone read more

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