Are veterans of the U.S. military disproportionately likely to be mass killers in the United States? Asking such a question is difficult, first because of concerns of profiling, discrimination, etc., and second, because it’s hard to answer.

It’s important to answer because it’s important for us to know whether military training is contributing to this epidemic, a fact that (one must rush to say) would not somehow eliminate the roles played by gender, guns, mental illness, domestic violence, read more

First they tell you what to think the wars are for. They’re for protection from evil enemies, for spreading democracy and human rights.

Then you discover that wasn’t so. The evil enemies were actually human beings and no threat. The wars on terrorism have created many more enemies and spread terrorism far and wide. They’ve endangered rather than protected. They’ve damaged democracy at home and abroad. They’ve violated human rights and normalized their violation.

Then they tell you to keep read more

By David Swanson, World Beyond War

HUNTER OF STORIES

The late Eduardo Galeano’s forthcoming book, Hunter of Stories, has five or ten sentences on each page — each page a tiny story, their combination engaging and powerful. Galeano includes the story of a war resister who chose to die rather than kill, and that of an Iraqi who foretold and pre-grieved the 2003 looting of the National Museum, also the story of former drone pilot Brandon Bryant who quit after killing a child read more

Exactly at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, 99 years ago, people across Europe suddenly stopped shooting guns at each other. Up until that moment, they were killing and taking bullets, falling and screaming, moaning and dying. Then they stopped, on schedule. It wasn’t that they’d gotten tired or come to their senses. Both before and after 11 o’clock they were simply following orders. The Armistice agreement that ended World War I had set 11 o’clock as quitting time.

And read more

This week on Talk Nation Radio: Climate chaos and militarism. We’re joined by Nick Buxton, who is the co-editor of an important book called The Secure and the Dispossessed – How the military and corporations are seeking to shape a climate-changed world. Nick Buxton is a communications consultant, working as a publications editor and supporting online learning and support of activist scholar communities for Transnational Institute. He works read more

Congress Members Jones and Garamendi are going to screen and discuss a hilarious movie mockery of militarism. They’re going to do it in the U.S. Capitol. They’re going to go right on funding the war madness, sanctioning possible new enemies, and risking all of our lives. But for a moment, they’re going to open a window and let a bit of sanity in. And you can sign up here to join them.

Here’s my review of the film to be screened, written back on June 5th:

Brad Pitt Does Stanley McChrystal: When Netflix’ War Movie Stops Being Funny

The new movie, War Machine, read more

The state capitol of Illinois is ground zero of a contagious outbreak of war fever. The origins, I’m afraid, may lie in part in a resolution I drafted that was passed, with various modifications, by numerous cities around the United States and by the U.S. Conference of Mayors.

The resolution did educate some people, create some good discussion, generate some attention for antiwar organizing, and bring some peace groups together in a coordinated read more