Tomgram: Andrea Mazzarino, War Doesn’t End When It “Ends”

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

We normally think of wartime and peacetime as two distinct and separate realities. When wars end, they end. Period. Unfortunately, when it comes to modern wars, that’s been anything but the case, as TomDispatch regular Andrea Mazzarino makes clear in a striking fashion today. She read more

Together for Peace

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, September 21, 2024

Remarks via zoom to conference in St. Petersburg, Russia, on September 21, 2024.

It’s wonderful to be joining you even virtually in St. Petersburg, which I am informed is even more beautiful than Moscow, which I was fortunate enough to visit seven years ago — Moscow is a wonderful city 20 times the size of Washington, D.C. Just the long hours of sunlight were amazing to me. I met a lot of wonderful people when I was there. I didn’t agree read more

Please Stop Saying That Every War Is Not a War But Something Bad

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, September 20, 2024

Yes, I’m going to say this again. I’ve heard not the slightest hint of a refutation or objection to it, and yet so many, many people ignore it.

For the love of all that is decent, immediately stop the self-defeating idiocy of calling every goddamned war “not a war.”

Please. With all due respect.

“It’s not a war. It’s terrorism.” “It’s not a war. It’s genocide.” “It’s not a war. It’s an occupation.” “It’s not read more

Tomgram: Juan Cole, A Centrist Muslim Alliance Against an Extremist Israel?

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

Here’s a strange connection between Israel and the United States. Let me put it to you as a kind of quiz: Which two leaders on this planet have, at least in part, organized their political lives to avoid trial convictions and/or possible jail time? Yes, in case you hadn’t guessed, I’m thinking of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the former American president read more

Portraits of Peacemakers

The great portraitist Robert Shetterly has a new collection out in a book titled Portraits of Peacemakers: Americans Who Tell the Truth.

I recommend getting a copy for every person you know who enjoys art or history or activism or who is concerned by the mass killing of war.

I don’t think I’m biased by the honor I feel at having my portrait included in a collection of such wonderful people. I may be biased by my interest in advancing the cause of peace — but outside of corporate read more

Tomgram: Michael Klare, Ensuring the Collapse of Civilization?

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

I was born on July 20, 1944, in the midst of the Second World War. Barely a year later, the U.S. ended that conflict in the Pacific by dropping atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and creating two all-too-literal hells on Earth.

To this day, fortunately, no other nuclear weapons have ever been used (if, that is, you don’t count all the ones tested, read more

Ukraine: They’re Admitting the Lies and Escalating the War While We Look at Pet Eating Memes

One of the most impressive things about U.S. elections always appears to be the way in which the 96% of humanity outside of the United States consents to doing nothing at all for the better part of a year, so that U.S. media outlets can focus fulltime on the election. Of course, it could be that this, like much else in U.S. elections, is a bit of an illusion.

The highlights of the recent debate would seem to be, from the discussion that has followed:

  1. an aging fascist buffoon falsely claiming that a group of people he’s demonizing wants to eat your pets — the wrong kind of animals, you should be serving the livestock industry that is helping render the Earth uninhabitable — and
  2. the same racist nitwit fumbling around about having “concepts of a plan” for healthcare — but please pay no attention to the healthcare solution long since found by every other wealthy nation on the planet and shunned by both major political cartels in Washington.

And yet, the most significant bit of the debate read more