Peace and War

Chasing a Northern Confederate Out of the South

Leave a Comment /

The Washington Post proclaims: “Protesters mob provocative Va. governor candidate as he defends Confederate statue.” Six seconds of video of the incident involved is likely to show up eventually here or here.

I was there on Saturday shouting down the “provocative” celebrator of racism and war, together with my kids and some friends. The only hostility I saw came from supporters of keeping the giant statue of Robert E. Lee in the park here in Charlottesville.

This was an email read more

Chasing a Northern Confederate Out of the South Read More »

Good Riddance to Robert E. Lee

Leave a Comment /

Inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement, the city of Charlottesville, Va., city council has voted to remove an imposing statue of Robert E. Lee (and the horse he never rode in on) from Lee Park, and to rename and redesign the park.

The statue of this non-Charlottesvillian had been put up in a whites-only park during the 1920s at the whim of an extremely wealthy and racist individual. So, for a representative government to vote, following a very public deliberative process with voluminous and read more

Good Riddance to Robert E. Lee Read More »

Mapping the War Machine

Leave a Comment /

Republished from a multipage article at http://worldbeyondwar.org/mapwar

When it comes to understanding wars, for some people, a picture of the dead or of the injured or of the traumatized or of those made refugees can be worth ten million words. And, for at least some of us, a picture of where war is in the world can be worth at least a thousand.

What follows are two dozen pictures mapping war and militarism and the struggle for peace overlaid on a global image of nations. These are drawn from read more

Mapping the War Machine Read More »

The United States Is Innocent and Has Never Killed Anyone

Leave a Comment /

It was bound to be the case that if a U.S. president ever admitted that the United States murdered people and did so on a scale at least as significant as other countries, he would be defending the practice, not denouncing it.

It is not a secret in much of the world that the United States is (as that Putin stooge Martin Luther King Jr. put it) the greatest purveyor of violence on earth. The United States is the top weapons dealer, the top weapons buyer, the biggest military spender, the most widespread read more

The United States Is Innocent and Has Never Killed Anyone Read More »

A Nuclear Kellogg-Briand Pact Is An Even Better Idea Than Its Author Thinks

Leave a Comment /

A Georgetown Law professor named David Koplow has drafted what he calls a Nuclear Kellogg-Briand Pact. In an article proposing it, Koplow does something all too rare, he recognizes some of the merits of the Kellogg-Briand Pact. But he misses others of those merits, as I described them in my 2011 book When The World Outlawed War.

Koplow acknowledges the cultural shift that the pact was central to, that shifted common understanding of war from something that just happens like the weather to something read more

A Nuclear Kellogg-Briand Pact Is An Even Better Idea Than Its Author Thinks Read More »

No, Trump Did Not Make a Mistake in Yemen

Leave a Comment /

I gather these are the features people have concerns about in the recent U.S. raid in Yemen.

1. It was fought on the ground rather than from the air.

2. An American died.

3. The American was a Navy SEAL Team 6 member, more valuable than other Americans.

4. Trump approved it instead of Obama.

5. Trump didn’t have “proper” “intelligence.”

6. Trump had the wrong accomplices in the room.

7. Trump wasn’t in the room.

8. The U.S. hasn’t declared war against Yemen.

9. read more

No, Trump Did Not Make a Mistake in Yemen Read More »

Apologies to Norway

Leave a Comment /
To my friends and cousins in Norway:  Re this story. 

Your former prime minister was abused in the way that thousands of people are by my government — mine because my great grandparents abandoned your relatively civilized land for this one.
 

I am deeply sorry and apologize on behalf of the United States. Please forgive it. It knows not what it does.  

This happened at an airport named for a criminal. It happens all the time, all over the United States, but people are starting to resist it. There are big protests that you’ll have to send your own reporters to see. The U.S. media won’t inform you.

If you’d like to see dangerous trends reversed in the United States, you can help. Stop buying U.S. weapons. Stop collaborating with NATO. Start giving the Nobel Peace Prize to

actual read more

Apologies to Norway Read More »

The Next Step in Caring

Leave a Comment /

Airport resistance is the biggest step forward by the U.S. public in years.

Why do I say that? Because this is unfunded, largely unpartisan activism that is largely selfless, largely focused on helping unknown strangers, driven by compassion and love, not political ideology, greed, or vengeance, and in line with activism around the globe. It’s also targeted at the location of the harm, directly resisting the injustice, and achieving immediate partial successes, including very meaningful successes read more

The Next Step in Caring Read More »