The Nuclear Danger Gone?

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, June 8, 2021

You can talk with perfectly intelligent, educated, well-rounded people in the United States who don’t happen to work on trying to save the world from war (this is one of the dangers of relaxing your social distancing, that you run into these people), and when you raise the topic of war they’ll sometimes mention how there used to be a Cold War and a danger of nuclear apocalypse “back in the 80s.”

Just a month ago in U.S.-media-created-reality read more

Talk World Radio: Alexandra Klein on Ending the Death Penalty

Talk World Radio is recorded as audio and video on Riverside.fm. Here is this week’s video and all the videos on Youtube.

This week on Talk World Radio, we’re discussing that barbaric vestige of uncontrollable ignorance and sadism, capital punishment. Our guest is Alexandra Klein. Professor Alexandra Klein researches and teaches in the area of criminal law, criminal procedure constitutional law, and the death penalty. Her scholarship has been published in, or is forthcoming in the Ohio read more

A World Beyond War or No World at All

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, June 7, 2021
Remarks on June 7, 2021, to North Texas Peace Advocates.

In a world beyond war, . . . death, injury, and trauma from violence would be radically reduced, homelessness and immigration driven by fear would be largely eliminated, environmental destruction would slow considerably, government secrecy would lose all justification, bigotry would take a huge setback, the world would gain over $2 trillion and the United States alone $1.25 trillion every year, read more

Tomgram: Engelhardt, A Formula for National (In)Security

This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To receive TomDispatch in your inbox three times a week, click here.

A World at the Edge What Planet Will Our Children and Grandchildren Inherit? By

Let me start with my friend and the boat. Admittedly, they might not seem to have anything to do with each other. The boat, a guided-missile destroyer named the USS Curtis Wilbur, reportedly passed read more

Tomgram: Nina Burleigh, How to Make Money Off a Pandemic

This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To receive TomDispatch in your inbox three times a week, click here.

Let me do something I’ve seldom done in one of these introductions and quote at length from a book. In this case, the initial paragraph of the preface to Nina Burleigh’s striking new work, Virus: Vaccinations, the CDC, and the Hijacking of America’s Response to the Pandemic:

“One of my first instincts in the surreal early days of lockdown in March 2020 was to hunt down read more

How John Hersey Blew the Whistle on the Reality of Nuclear War

Review of  Fallout:  The Hiroshima Cover-up and the Reporter Who Revealed It to the World

In this crisply-written, well-researched book, Lesley Blume, a journalist and biographer, tells the fascinating story of the background to John Hersey’s pathbreaking article, “Hiroshima,” and of its extraordinary impact upon the world.

In 1945, although only 30 years of age, Hersey was a very prominent war correspondent for Time magazine—a key part of publisher Henry Luce’s magazine empire—and read more

Talk World Radio: Scott Horton on Ending the War on Terrorism

Talk World Radio is recorded as audio and video on Riverside.fm. Here is this week’s video and all the videos on Youtube.

This Week on Talk World Radio, it’s time to end the terrorism-generating war on terrorism. Our guest is Scott Horton. Scott Horton is the director of the Libertarian Institute, editorial director of Antiwar.com, host of Antiwar Radio on KPFK 90.7 FM in Los Angeles, and author of Fool’s Errand: Time to End the War in Afghanistan, and of the new book we’ll read more

Tomgram: Belle Chesler, Living in Pandemic Purgatory, Up Close and Personal

This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To receive TomDispatch in your inbox three times a week, click here.

I’ve thought about my situation more than once (who hasn’t?) in these pandemic months. As it happens, I was in the equivalent of a work lockdown for years before Covid-19 hit our shores. I deserted an office setting early in this century and I’ve been running TomDispatch, while editing books from the small office in my apartment in New York City, ever since.

Nonetheless, read more

Malcolm Gladwell Claims Satan Won WWII But Jesus Does Drone Strikes

I wish I were joking, even a little. Malcolm Gladwell’s book, The Bomber Mafia, maintains that Haywood Hansell was essentially Jesus tempted by the Devil when he refused to burn Japanese cities to the ground. Hansell was replaced, and Curtis LeMay put in charge of U.S. bombings of Japan during WWII. LeMay, Gladwell tells us, was none other than Satan. But what was very much needed, Gladwell claims, was Satanic immorality — the willingness to intentionally incinerate perhaps a million read more