Tomgram: William Astore, Imagining a Progressive Pentagon

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

In September 2007, retired Air Force lieutenant colonel and historian William Astore emailed me out of the blue. He’d been reading TomDispatch articles on this country’s Global War on Terror, especially the invasion of, and never-ending conflict in, Iraq. And as a former military man, something struck him: the staggering rows of medals and ribbons our military read more

Speaking Truth to Empire

Speaking Truth to Empire on KFCF 88.1 FM independently owned and locally operated since 1975 in Fresno, Dan Yaseen interviews Alice Slater, she is on the boards of World BEYOND War and the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space. As a member of the Lawyers Alliance for Nuclear Arms Control, she travelled to Russia and China on numerous delegations engaged in ending the arms race and banning the bomb. The topics of discussion include Ukraine War, read more

World Peace and Security Require a Stronger United Nations

Addressing the UN Security Council on September 20, 2023, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky delivered a heartfelt plea “to update the existing security architecture in the world, in particular, to restore the real power of the UN Charter.”

This call for strengthening international security under the aegis of the United Nations makes sense not only for Ukraine―a country suffering from brutal military invasion, occupation, and annexation by its much larger, more powerful neighbor, the read more

Tomgram: Rebecca Gordon, Consider the Alternative

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

Yes, I know, I know. There are all-too-modern ways to keep your friends’ addresses, phone numbers, and emails, but this old guy still uses an address book. Unfortunately, the pages of the one I’d kept for endless years finally grew so worn, so tattered, that I bought a new one and, name by name, copied my contacts, my friends, my family from one to the other.

That, however, read more

Let’s Watch This Antiwar Sylvester Stallone Film

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, September 19, 2023

I confess to not having been aware that Sylvester Stallone had been in a movie in which all wasn’t solved by punching somebody, stabbing somebody, shooting somebody, or blowing somebody up.

Times change, apparently.

Stallone’s first serious movie was made in 1973 and set in 1969. The director, Robert Schnitzer, has now created a Director’s Cut version to show in theaters, beginning with the Lumiere read more

Tomgram: John Feffer, More Butterflies, Fewer Billionaires — Unrigging the Global Economy

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

It’s strange to try to come to grips with this increasing wreck of a planet. When you’re my age, you have to wonder about the future. That’s especially true in a world where the two top greenhouse gas emitters, the historically most massive one (the United States) and the present leader read more

There Is No Nuclear Option

Think about somebody you love. Are you doing it?

Now think about them on fire, and you’re holding a bucket of water. Your course of action is easy and obvious.

Now think about 1,000 people on fire and 1,000 other people holding buckets of water. You use yours and yell for others to do the same, but for some bizarre collection of reasons many of them don’t. People fight over and spill some of the buckets, etc.

Now think about four billion people on fire and 4 billion other people with read more