War Is A Crime

By David Swanson

News reports proclaim that the Governor of Virginia has signed into law a bill allowing localities in Virginia to remove Confederate statues. In reality, this new law allows Virginia cities and counties to remove, alter, or relocate any war monuments – something Virginia law had forbidden for 15 wars, including the U.S. Civil War.

The law up until now fairly clearly did not apply to several war monuments in the City of Charlottesville and at the University of Virginia in Albemarle read more

Decades ago, when I began teaching international history, I used to ask students if they thought it was possible for nations to end their fighting of wars against one another.  Their responses varied.  But the more pessimistic conclusions were sometimes tempered by the contention that, if the world’s nations faced a common foe, such as an invasion from another planet, this would finally pull them together.

I was reminded of this on March 23, when the UN Secretary-General, António read more

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

I’m sure you still remember them. The president regularly called them “my generals.” They were, he claimed, from “central casting” and there were three of them: retired Marine Corps General John Kelly, who was first read more

The film “Prosecutor,” tells the story of the International Criminal Court, with a focus on its first chief prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, with lots of footage of him in the year 2009. He held that office from 2003 to 2012.

The film opens with the Prosecutor helicoptering into an African village to inform the people that the ICC is bringing its form of justice to locations all over the world, not just their village. But, of course, we all know it isn’t true, and we know now that even in read more

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

Think of Donald Trump as a revolutionary when it comes to the alphabet. How many presidents have spent so much time on the basic ABCs the way he has? After all, since the moment he arrived at the White House, he’s been laser-focused on eliminating four letters in any association whatsoever from that alphabet. You know which four they are — A-B-O-M — which, curiously read more

David Dayen is the executive editor of The American Prospect magazine. He is the author of Chain of Title: How Three Ordinary Americans Uncovered Wall Street’s Great Foreclosure Fraud, winner of the Studs and Ida Terkel Prize. His next book, Monopolized: Life in the Age of Corporate Power, will be released in June. His work has also appeared in The Nation, The Intercept, The New Republic, Vice, HuffPost, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, read more

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

You know how, every now and then, something just crystalizes everything for you? Here’s an example from my own life. In November 2017, I read a piece at the Guardian website headlined “Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and Warren Buffett are read more