Tomgram: Frida Berrigan, Tick, Tock, TikTok, the Nuclear Conundrum Today

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Despite fears of the possible use of tactical nuclear weapons in the Ukraine war — recently, Vladimir Putin ominously announced a plan to store some of Russia’s in neighboring Belarus — we are not (yet!) in a nuclear moment. In any case, the generation of young Americans growing up today seems far more focused on a different world-ending scenario: climate change.

Still, read more

The Collapse of the War System Is Not Outpacing the Collapse of the Earth’s Climate and Ecosystems

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, April 5, 2023

The Collapse of the War System: Developments in the Philosophy of Peace in the Twentieth Century by John Jacob English, published in 2007, describes the collapse, or the beginning of the collapse, in Western culture, of the inevitability of war. In other words: the popularization of the idea that war might be ended. Unfortunately, we cannot yet recount the collapse of the practice of war, with war spending, weapons dealing, conflict between read more

Goodbye, Doctrine of Discovery

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, March 31, 2023

We should all applaud the Vatican, after almost six centuries, repudiating the Doctrine of Discovery.

Exactly two centuries ago, the Doctrine of Discovery was put into U.S. law in the same year in which the Monroe Doctrine was created.

The Doctrine of Discovery is, in short, the idea that a European nation can claim any land not yet claimed by other European nations, regardless of what people already live there. It was put into U.S. law in 1823, read more

Hell Is Other People’s Thinking About War

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, March 30, 2023

The flyer described the author like this: “Ex-Marine Charles Douglas Lummis has written extensively on the topic of US foreign relations, and is a vocal critic of US foreign policy. His works include Radical Democracy, and A New Look at the Chrysanthemum and the Sword. Susan Sontag has called Lummis ‘one of the most thoughtful, honorable, and relevant intellectuals writing about democratic practice anywhere in the world.’ Karel van Wolferen read more