Telling the Truth About Peace

Some acts of truth-telling about war and peace are easy, and some involve extreme risk. Some are simple, and some require great strategic planning. Some involve facts, some analysis, and some storytelling.

Yes, storytelling. I don’t believe war could go on existing long if major communications systems told large numbers of people the detailed sympathetic stories of war victims on all sides of all wars, similar to the way U.S. corporate media outlets “humanize” Ukrainian or Israeli war victims read more

Why Sign a Declaration of Peace

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, March 6, 2024

At World BEYOND War and other groups that I work for and work with we often flood elected officials with emails or phone calls — or bodies in their offices — with very urgent and specific demands to stop killing particular populations. At the same time, at the height of crises and otherwise, we find it valuable to press in a different direction. We don’t want one nation saved and some other nation bombed. We don’t want the read more

Tomgram: Engelhardt, A Big-Time War of Terror

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

Living on the Wrong World A Planetary Cease Fire Is Desperately Needed By

On this planet of ours, it almost doesn’t matter who’s right and who’s wrong when it comes to our wars.

Actually, let me correct that thought slightly: it certainly does matter, but what matters so much more is that we humans simply can’t stop fighting them. That is (or at least should be) a stunning and deeply saddening reality. What obvious lessons we seem congenitally read more

BDS The U.S. — The World Must Hold the U.S. Government to the Rule of Law

By World BEYOND War, March 4, 2024

We don’t need a “Rules-Based Order.” We need a U.S. government that obeys laws.

The Problem

The Vetoes

Since 1972, the U.S. government has been far and away the leading user of the veto in the UN Security Council, often blocking the will of every or nearly every other national government on Earth. It has vetoed U.N. condemnation of South African apartheid, Israel’s wars and occupations, chemical and biological weapons, nuclear weapons proliferation and first use and use against non-nuclear nations, U.S. wars in Nicaragua and Grenada and Panama, the read more

Talking Like the CIA Is Bad for You

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, March 3, 2024

There’s a guide at wordsaboutwar.org to some of the standard war language used for big bucks by professional propagandists and for free by almost everyone else who has normalized it and not given it another thought. Manufacturing tools for mass murder is called “the defense industry,” those murdered are called “collateral damage,” the purpose is labeled “the national interest,” etc.

The trouble with talking like the Pentagon or CNN read more

Tomgram: Andrea Mazzarino, War’s Cost Is Unfathomable

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

Consider it strange that the cost in lives, in wounds, in illness — the actual numbers or at least estimates when it comes to Israel’s nightmarish campaign in Gaza in response to Hamas’s horrifying October 7th assault — are so much a part of the news these days. I mention this only because while you can now sit at home and read or hear about the estimated read more