The Problems With Prosecuting Putin

The worst problem is a phony one. That is to say, numerous parties are using the cause of prosecuting Vladimir Putin for “war crimes” as yet another excuse to avoid ending the war — the need for “justice” for war victims as grounds for creating more war victims. This is from The New Republic:

“Inna Sovsun, a Ukrainian parliamentarian from the pro-European Golos Party, believes that the need for justice trumps negotiations to end the war. ‘My understanding is that if we get a deal, read more

Talk World Radio: Arthur Kanegis on Being a World Citizen

AUDIO:

Talk World Radio is recorded as audio and video on Riverside.fm — except when it can’t be and then it’s Zoom. Here is this week’s video and all the videos on Youtube.

VIDEO:

This week on Talk World Radio we’re talking about world citizenship. Our guest, Arthur Kanegis, is President of Future WAVE, Inc., a nonprofit organization dedicated to shifting our culture of violence to a culture of peace. He is the Director/Producer of “The World Is My Country” read more

Tomgram: William Hartung and Julia Gledhill, Ukraine and the Profits of War

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

Back in September 2008, Senator Joe Biden offered a bit of wisdom while running for vice president on Barack Obama’s ticket. In a speech criticizing the Republican presidential campaign of senatorial colleague John McCain, he claimed to be quoting his own father when he said: “Show me your budget and I’ll tell you what you value.”

Almost 14 years later, how apt his father read more

Military and Economic Power Once Again Fail to Produce Happiness

Although the rulers of the world’s major military and economic powers have repeatedly claimed that they are making their nations great again, their policies have not resulted in widespread happiness among their citizens.

That conclusion emerges from the recent World Happiness Report-2022, published by the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network.  Based on Gallup World Polls conducted from 2019 through 2021, this extensive study read more

Famous Haikus Updated

An old silent pond
A frog jumps into the pond—
Thud! Dried up last year.

After killing a spider,
how noble I feel
in the TV glow!

I write, erase, rewrite
Erase again, and then
Twitter deletes me

Useless, useless,
the heavy rain
On Arkansas coast

In the moonlight,
The color and scent of the wisteria
Seems so Norwegian

Plum flower temple:
Voices rise
From fallout shelters

Everything I touch
with tenderness, alas,
Has comments beneath

The wren
Earns his living
Unlike bad Russians

Over-ripe sushi
The read more

Tomgram: Rebecca Gordon, War, Death, and Taxes

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

I don’t normally do this, but in the context of TomDispatch regular Rebecca Gordon’s latest all-too-well-timed piece on paying (or rather not paying) one’s taxes, let me quote a couple of paragraphs I once wrote for this site about my own distant past and then briefly explain why:

“And here’s a little story from the Neolithic age we now call ‘the Sixties’ about read more