Where Did the War on Cancer Come From?

Did you ever wonder whether Western culture focuses on destroying rather than preventing cancer, and talks about it with all the language of a war against an enemy, just because that’s how this culture does things, or whether the approach to cancer was actually created by people waging a real war?

This story was not actually a secret anymore, yet I didn’t know much about it until I read The Great Secret by Jennet Conant.

Bari is a lovely Southern Italian port city with a cathedral where Santa read more

27 Things You Can Do to Let There Be Peace on Earth

1. Reports on the climate collapse have stopped in some cases the nonsense talk about needing the United States to “lead,” and even gone beyond urging it to get out of last place, and begun demanding that it do its fair share to undo its share of the damage. That’s the same thing we need on militarism, when U.S. weapons are on both sides of most wars, almost all foreign bases are U.S. bases, and most people in the U.S. can’t begin to name its current wars, drone murders, read more

Top 10 Ways Neera Tanden Has Been Misunderstood

When Neera Tanden emailed her colleagues in support of forcing Libya to pay for the privilege of having been bombed, many misunderstood, including one of her colleagues who emailed back objecting to creating what he supposed was an obvious financial incentive for bombing more countries.

Now that Tanden has been nominated for high office and will face confirmation hearings in the U.S. Senate, we have an obligation to get this right. The top ways in which Tanden has been misunderstood are:

  1. Tanden
read more

I agree with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on Foreign Bases

You may have heard that the U.S. House of Representatives just passed a bill to spend $741 billion renaming military bases that have been heretofore named for Confederates. You may think that’s a grand idea but still wonder at the price tag.

Of course, the secret is that — even though most of the media coverage is about the renaming of bases — the bill itself is almost entirely about funding (part of) the world’s most expensive military machine: more nukes, more “conventional” weapons, read more

Tomgram: William Astore and Danny Sjursen, Pen Pals of War

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

TomDispatch is essentially a no-submissions site. The only exception I’ve made over the years has been for those in the U.S. military or retired from it who, miraculously enough, became critical of it and the forever wars that it so relentlessly pursued. I’ve always felt that they had something of importance to offer the rest of us. The first such out-of-the-blue read more

Talk Nation Radio: Alison Cole on Demilitarizing Policing

Alison Cole is a former researcher and activist living in Portland, Oregon. She is working with a coalition of community organizations to demilitarize their local law enforcement agencies.

See: https://worldbeyondwar.org/policing

Total run time: 29:00
Host: David Swanson.
Producer: David Swanson.
Music by Duke Ellington.

Download from LetsTryDemocracy.

Download from Internet Archive.

Pacifica stations can also download from Audioport.

Syndicated by Pacifica Network.

Please encourage your read more

Withdraw? You can’t do that! For the US in Afghanistan’s Endless War, Surrender is Apparently Not an Option

By Dave Lindorff

The US War in —or on—Afghanistan has rightly been called the “Forever War.”

Launched on October 7, 2001, while the ruins of the World Trade Center were still smoldering from the 9/11 attacks five weeks earlier, the war is now in its 19th year, making it almost nine years longer than the Vietnam War.

And yet, over the years, almost any time a president has attempted to ratchet down the war, or to talk about ending it — while that may have been read more

Tomgram: Andrea Mazzarino, Stop Thanking the Troops and Lend a Hand

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

Nineteen years ago, the administration of George W. Bush responded to the 9/11 attacks by invading Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. And, yes, you won’t be shocked to learn that the Taliban is stronger now than at any time since that moment. Though U.S. troop strength in Afghanistan has read more