I’m not misusing the word “war” to mean something like the war on Christmas or drugs or some TV pundit whom somebody else insulted. I mean war. There is a new U.S. war in Western Sahara, being waged by Morocco with the support of the U.S. military. The U.S. military, unbeknownst to most people in the United States — it’s perfectly knowable but few give a damn — arms and trains and funds the militaries of the world, inlcuding almost
Re-Learning to Reject War
Chris Lombardi’s fantastic new book is called I Ain’t Marching Anymore: Dissenters, Deserters, and Objectors to America’s Wars. It’s a wonderful history of U.S. wars, and both support for and opposition to them, with a major focus on troops and veterans, from 1754 to the present.
The greatest strength of the book is its depth of detail, the rarely heard individual accounts of war supporters, resisters, whistleblowers, protesters, and all of the complexities that catch so many people in
Talk Nation Radio: Jon Mitchell on Poisoning the Pacific
This week on Talk Nation Radio: the poisoning of the Pacific and who the worst culprit is. Joining us from Tokyo is Jon Mitchell, a British journalist and author based in Japan. In 2015, he was awarded the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan’s Freedom of the Press Lifetime Achievement Award for his investigations into human rights issues on Okinawa. His latest book, Poisoning the Pacific, reveals the environmental damage caused by decades of U.S. military operations.
Total run time: 29:00
Everything Will Fundamentally Change
In June 2019, Joe Biden promised wealthy so-called donors that nothing would fundamentally change. At this moment hundreds of millions of people — from those shooting off fireworks to those ranting as though they will soon shoot up public places in their MAGA hats — seem convinced that everything will fundamentally change. Biden was wrong. Everybody else is right. Either everything will change for the better or one or both of the twin dangers of environmental and nuclear apocalypse will change
Talk Nation Radio: Steven Youngblood on Peace Journalism
This week on Talk Nation Radio, we’re discussing peace journalism. Our guest Steven Youngblood is the founding director of the Center for Global Peace Journalism at Park University in Parkville, Missouri, where he is a communications and peace studies professor. He has organized and taught peace journalism seminars and workshops in 27 countries and territories. Youngblood is a two-time Fulbright Scholar (Moldova 2001, Azerbaijan 2007). He also served as a U.S. State Department Senior Subject
In 1940, the United States Decided to Rule the World
By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, November 3, 2020
Stephen Wertheim’s Tomorrow, The World examines a shift in elite U.S. foreign-policy thinking that took place in mid-1940. Why in that moment, a year and a half before the Japanese attacks on the Philippines, Hawaii, and other outposts, did it become popular in foreign-policy circles to advocate for U.S. military domination of the globe?
In school text book mythology, the United States was full of revoltingly backward creatures called isolationists
Glory: The Deadliest Drug
Yale Magrass and Charles Derber’s latest book is called Glorious Causes: The Irrationality of Capitalism, War, and Politics. I hope people are reading it. I worry, because after Mom, apple pie, and shopping, what are more popular than capitalism, war, and politics? Probably not . . . oh, I don’t know . . . analyses of the similarities between the histories of Nazi Germany and the United States. Those are in this book too, and are probably the most interesting parts of it.
In the book’s defense,
Lies and the Fascists Who Believe Them
A Brief History of Fascist Lies is the title of a new book by Federico Finchelstein, the author of a number of books on fascism and populism. Finchelstein both draws distinctions that slot politicians into categories (such as fascist or populist) and points out the overlaps and the shades of gray, the forerunners and the enablers.
Not only have there been politicians who resembled Trump in other countries in recent decades, but the appearance of Trump — I think — depended on the regimes
Troops Out of Germany and Down a Rabbit Hole
I read this nightmare fantasy in the Financial Times:
“Of course, a second term for Mr Trump would have a wholly different impact on US-German relations than would a Joe Biden presidency. It is conceivable that a victorious Mr Trump would push hard to end US wars in Afghanistan and the Middle East, and take American troops out of Europe. He might even hope to make an ally of Russia against China. It would almost certainly be the end of Nato.”
Of course, virtually anything is “conceivable,”
Talk Nation Radio: Yes, the U.S. Worked to Start the Soviet War on Afghanistan
This week on Talk Nation Radio, as we begin year number 20 of the U.S. war on Afghanistan that Obama pretended to end, Trump promised to end, and it seems every U.S. presidential candidate from here on out (including Trump again) will promise to end, we look at how exactly destroying Afghanistan got started over 40 years ago. Our guests are Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould, whose article at World Beyond War dot org is called “President