Tomgram: Liz Theoharis, On Choosing Community Over Chaos

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

Only recently, almost four decades after his death, I discovered that my father still liked to have some of his friends call him “major.” That was his ultimate rank in what was then known as the U.S. Army Air Corps, not the U.S. Air Force, for which he volunteered within days of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. (He would, symbolically enough, die on Pearl Harbor Day read more

Learning From Vamik Volkan

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, August 9, 2021

A new film by Molly Castelloe called “Vamik’s Room,” introduces the viewer to Vamik Volkan and psychoanalysis of international conflict.

The idea is not as mystical as it may sound. There’s no notion that a conflict has a psychology, but rather that those engaged in it do, and that anyone engaged in diplomacy or peace making should be aware of what are often unstated and even unacknowledged motivations in the parties engaged read more

Knowing Humanity’s End Is Near and Staying Sane

I read Daniel Sherrell’s Warmth: Coming of Age at the End of Our World sitting on the edge of what was left of the Shenandoah River after a summer of very little rain. Six inches is enough to canoe in but it’s less than that in many places. Fish are few and far between, yet humans are out there in canoes, dragging them over rocks, casting their lines, luring the last fish to their doom. I know the fish murders are not the problem, not read more

Tomgram: Andrew Bacevich, The Other Big Lie

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

Here’s my question of the week: When it comes to America’s twenty-first-century wars, does the word “end” have any meaning at all? Almost 20 years after George W. Bush and crew invaded Afghanistan, the war there is officially “ending” (as the Taliban takes read more

Hiroshima Is A Lie

Mushroom cloud of unspeakable destruction rises over Hiroshima following the first wartime dropping of an atomic bomb on August 6, 1945 (US government photo)

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, August 5, 2021

In 2015, Alice Sabatini was an 18-year-old contestant in the Miss Italia contest in Italy. She was asked what epoch of the past she would have liked to live in. She replied: WWII. Her explanation was that her text books go on and on about it, so she’d like to actually see it, and she wouldn’t read more

Tomgram: Kelly Denton-Borhaug, Why Are So Many of Our Military Brothers and Sisters Taking Their Own Lives?

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

In what seems like another life, I used to interview American veterans of the Vietnam War. Over the course of a decade, I spoke with hundreds of them, mostly about one topic: war crimes. Some were unrepentant. An interrogator who had tortured prisoners, for instance, told me that such actions — beatings, waterboarding, electric shock — were standard operating procedure read more

Talk World Radio: Robert Gray on Peace in the Streets

Talk World Radio is recorded as audio and video on Riverside.fm. Here is this week’s video and all the videos on Youtube.

This week on Talk World Radio: Peace in the Streets. Our guest Robert Gray is Co-Founder of Uhuru, an organization based where I am, in Charlottesville, Virginia. Gray is a visionary, businessman, brand strategist, and social entrepreneur with a passion for education reform and economic empowerment. He’s done a wide range of organizing work, and in 2019 received read more

William Astore Is Talking About Lessening the Damage, Not Actual Defense

A U.S. soldier stands guard in March of 2003 next to an oil well at the Rumayla oil fields set ablaze by retreating Iraqi troops. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, July 29, 2021

William Astore’s latest article on TomDispatch proposes to “Reinvent the U.S. Military for Real National Defense.” The specific proposals are all to the good: stop adding to the nuclear weapons pile, shrink the Army read more