Children

The Activist as a Young Girl

Clare Hanrahan’s memoir The Half Life of a Free Radical: Growing Up Irish Catholic in Jim Crow Memphis is a remarkable feat: part Jack Kerouac, part Dorothy Day, part Howard Zinn, and a bit of Forest Gump.

First and foremost this is an entertaining and irreverent tale of childhood and adolescence told with great humor, honesty, and empathy. But it’s also told by someone who became a peace and justice and environmentalist activist in later life, someone able to look back on the poverty, read more

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U.S. Standing Alone Against Children

Lawrence Wittner points out that the United States will soon be the only nation on earth that has not ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

And why not? Wittner focuses on general backward stupidness: the treaty would “override” the Constitution or the importance of families or the rights of parents. He points out the treaty’s support for parents and families and the impossibility of overriding the Constitution — which we might note in any case says nothing read more

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Peace Work Because of You

A note from David Swanson:

You may have seen this article I wrote recently on ongoing U.S. use of depleted uranium weapons. It’s on dozens of websites, including my own WarIsACrime, but also Al Jazeera, Truthout, Counterpunch, FireDogLake, OpEdNews, Washington’s Blog, Z, and many others.

Guess what I got paid, in total, from all of those outlets? —–>>>

But I can pay the bills and keep working for peace if you help read more

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There Are No Bad Bears

When he was a tiny little bear cub, Nelson would scamper over to be close to his mother when he heard any loud noise.  When he got a little bigger, if something scared him he would growl.  Bigger still, and he would stand up on his hind legs, growl, and wave his paws about.  And when he got even bigger than that — when he began to look like a full-grown bear — if Nelson heard something that might be dangerous, he would stand calmly still and listen harder.

Nelson’s read more

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New Book for Ages 6 to 10: Tube World

Tube World is the first children’s book by David Swanson, author of several nonfiction adult books. The illustrations for Tube World are by Shane Burke.

Parents: Have your kids been tired in the morning?  Have you found wet bathing suits in their beds?  Do they know things about far-away places that you didn’t teach them and they didn’t learn in school?  Do children visiting your town from halfway around the world always seem to be friends read more

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Funding Teachers Doesn't Get Embassies Attacked

We’re not out of money. We’ve stopped taxing billionaires and corporations, and we’re funding war-preparation so generously that we’re sparking a global arms race that will eventually generate some enemies with which to justify the war preparation . . .  which will make sense to students who were never taught to put events into chronological order.  They couldn’t be taught that because their teachers had to be laid off so that greedy billionaires could stuff read more

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Talk Nation Radio: Clinical Psychologist Bruce Levine Says U.S. Citizenry Particularly Inactive

Clinical psychologist Bruce Levine says the U.S. public is particularly inactive.  Levine explains how we got this way, and how we might be cured.  Levine is the author of Get Up, Stand Up: Uniting Populists, Energizing the Defeated, and Battling the Corporate Elite.  He also contributed a chapter to The Military Industrial Complex at 50.  Levine’s website is http://brucelevine.net

Total run time: 29:00

Host: David Swanson.
Producer: David Swanson.
Engineer: Christiane read more

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Our Schools Look Like Our Government

A government that works for Wall Street and a war machine will sooner or later create schools that work for the same ends.

Here’s a vicious cycle: rather than funding good schools, we fund the military and its recruiters. Then we lower the qualifications for teachers as long as the applicants have participated in wars. We funnel the same “Troops to Teachers” applicants into “public charter schools” too, even though we’re paying them public dollars. And we read more

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