Peace and War

Our elected and unelected officials tell us that drone strikes target top level enemies of the United States who are imminent threats to us, and that killing innocent people is avoided altogether or minimized. 

Congressional hearings, with a couple of excellent exceptions, question outside academics about the legality of this purported strategy.  The Obama administration declines to send any witnesses.

But drone pilots have begun talking read more

The CIA has been so busy consulting on Zero Dark Thirty, not to mention funding Hamid Karzai, bribing Russians, lying about weapons, and conducting humanitarian drone murders, that it didn’t have any time at all to help out with Hit and Stay, and yet arguably the latter turned out to be the better film despite such a severe handicap.  You can check it out at http://hitandstay.com

This is a film about people taking risks to prevent killing rather than to engage in it.  The focus read more

Jack Gilory has written a short 2-act play called The Predator.  The script is available here.

The characters include a college student, a drone pilot, a senator, and a peace activist.  The drone pilot supports war.  The senator supports herself.  The peace activist opposes murder.  And the student is almost in agreement with the peace activist.  All four of them turn toward the audience at the end of the play and ask “What do you think?”

What a great way read more

Some human rights groups, especially Amnesty International, seem to have forgotten an important human right: peace.  A petition has been launched to remind them.

These organizations are not the warmongers. They do tremendously great work addressing some of the symptoms of warmaking, including imprisonment and torture.  But, because they avoid taking any position on war, and because of an apparent bias in favor of U.S. military intervention, they sometimes find themselves effectively promoting read more

The following statement of Leah Bolger, Secretary of Defense and David Swanson, Secretary of Peace, of the Foreign Affairs Branch of the Green Shadow Cabinet, is available online here. It may be republished with attribution and a link back to its original web location.

  The Obama administration has seemingly painted itself into yet another military corner by announcing that use of chemical weapons by Syria would constitute a red line that would mandate military action on the part read more