Peace and War

Talk Nation Radio: Joseph Gerson on NATO's Drive Toward War with Russia

  https://soundcloud.com/davidcnswanson/talk-nation-radio-joseph-gerson-on-natos-drive-toward-war-with-russia

Dr. Joseph Gerson has just attended an anti-NATO summit in Poland and has just authored an article called Imperial NATO: Before and After Brexit. Gerson is Director of Programs for the American Friends Service Committee’s Northeast Region and Director of AFSC’s Peace read more

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U.S. Plans to Saturate Globe With Weapons

My headline above is a plain English translation of this Pentagonspeak found in a Reuters headline today: “Demand for U.S. arms exports set to keep growing, official says.”

As the United States and NATO antagonize Russia, and pressure NATO members to buy more weapons, and showcase U.S. weapons in numerous wars, and use every carrot and stick in the State Department to market U.S. weapons, an “official” who happens to have been located at a giant read more

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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

To Prosecute Blair for War You Do Not Need the ICC Read More »

If Afghan Lives Mattered, Dallas Lives Would Matter

The man who murdered police officers in Dallas, Texas, this week had earlier been employed in a massive operation, now in its 15th year, that has killed many thousands of people in Afghanistan. He was trained to kill by the U.S. military using U.S. tax dollars. He was conditioned to believe violence an appropriate response to violence by the examples everywhere to be found in U.S. public policy, history, entertainment, and language.

Murdering police officers because some other police officers committed read more

If Afghan Lives Mattered, Dallas Lives Would Matter Read More »

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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Talk Nation Radio: Mel Duncan on why unarmed civilian protection is better than war

  https://soundcloud.com/davidcnswanson/talk-nation-radio-mel-duncan-on-why-unarmed-civilian-protection-is-better-than-war

Mel Duncan is a co-founder and current Director of Advocacy and Outreach for Nonviolent Peaceforce, an international non-governmental organization that provides direct protection to civilians caught in violent conflict and works with local civil society groups on violence deterrence throughout the world.  He has received numerous awards. The Utne Reader named 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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Talk Nation Radio: Harvey Wasserman on Environmental and Antiwar Activism

  https://soundcloud.com/davidcnswanson/talk-nation-radio-harvey-wasserman-on-environmental-and-antiwar-activism

Harvey Wasserman is a life-long activist who speaks, writes and organizes widely on energy, the environment, history, the drug war, election protection, and grassroots politics. He teaches (since 2004) history and cultural & ethnic diversity at two central Ohio colleges. He works for the permanent shutdown of the nuclear power industry and the birth of Solartopia, a democratic read more

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The Sacrifice of an American Gladiator

Dan Ireland’s The Ultimate Arena: The Sacrifice of an American Gladiator is a fictionalized account, speculative in some of the details, but true in all the major facts, to the story of Pat Tillman. Any Good American who “supports the troops” has a duty to read this book, as it recounts the life and death of just about the only troop in recent years to be given a face and a name, if not a voice, by the U.S. media.

The most disturbing question raised for me by this story, as by read more

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Talk Nation Radio: Peter Kuznick on Untold Nuclear History and No War 2016

  https://soundcloud.com/davidcnswanson/talk-nation-radio-peter-kuznick-on-untold-nuclear-history-and-no-war-2016

Peter Kuznick is Professor of History at American University, and author of Beyond the Laboratory: Scientists As Political Activists in 1930s America, co-author with Akira Kimura of  Rethinking the Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Japanese and American Perspectives, co-author with Yuki Tanaka of Nuclear Power and Hiroshima: read more

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Put a Peace Pole in Charlottesville

To sign this petition to Charlottesville City Council, click here.

Set aside 1 square foot of space in a prominent public place, on the Downtown Mall or in a park, where a peace pole can be erected.

A peace pole is a popular means of expressing a desire for peace around the world, including in the United States, where peace poles are found in public plazas and parks in many locations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_pole

A peace pole can be purchased for $200 with “May Peace Prevail on Earth” written on four sides in four chosen languages: 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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