War Is A Crime

One cannot help but appreciate the speed with which it became acceptable to produce comedy about the U.S. Space Force. I don’t think any military branch or war or weapon or coup or base or boondoggle has been taken off its holy pedestal more rapidly. Recent clownish yet endearingly murderous efforts to overthrow the government of Venezuela are unlikely to be mocked in a movie for decades to come. But — as with most Hollywood productions — the new Netflix comedy about the Space Force read more

I’m adding Christian Sorensen’s new book, Understanding the War Industry, to the list of books I think will convince you to help abolish war and militaries. See the list below.

Wars are driven by many factors. They do not include protection, defense, benevolence, or public service. They do include inertia, political calculation, lust for power, and sadism — facilitated by xenophobia and racism. But the top driving force behind wars is the war industry, the all-consuming greed for the read more

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

Believe me, moments like this one will haunt a generation for rest of their lives. I was born in 1944. I knew nothing of the Great Depression of the 1930s and yet, in retrospect, it haunted me indirectly. So many decades later, I can still sense how memories of that economic disaster hovered over my parents’ world. Looking back, I can still feel its presence in those years read more

Helena Cobban is a veteran analyst of international affairs and an anti-imperialist activist who campaigns for human equality at all levels. She’s a Quaker who lives in Washington DC, which she describes as “the belly of the beast.” Helena has authored seven books on international issues, four of which have been about the Middle East; and for 20 years she contributed a regular column about global affairs to The Christian Science Monitor. She has also been a publisher. read more

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

Consider it strange. The U.S. has been fighting in Somalia on and off (mostly on) since the early 1990s. (Who, of a certain age, doesn’t remember the “Black Hawk Down” fiasco?) Almost 30 years later, at a time when the U.N. secretary-general, supported by dozens of countries, has reasonably read more

Dan Kovalik’s new book, No More War: How the West Violates International Law by Using “Humanitarian” Intervention to Advance Economic and Strategic Interests — which I am adding to my list of books you should read on why war should be abolished (see below) — makes a powerful case that humanitarian war no more exists than philanthropic child abuse or benevolent torture. I’m not sure the actual motivations of wars are limited to economic and strategic interests — which seems read more

Two months have gone by since the Secretary General of the United Nations proposed an absolutely necessary global ceasefire.

The U.S. government has blocked a vote on the ceasefire in the UN Security Council.

The U.S. government during these past two months has led the world in:

• military spending
• weapons manufacture
• foreign weapons sales
• bombs dropped
• imposition of brutal sanctions
• threats of new wars
• attempted coups
• war rehearsals
• destruction of key disarmament treaties
• COVID-19 cases
• COVID-19 deaths
• vetoes and effective veto threats at the United Nations

The world cannot continue to allow the U.S. government to hold it back. A government misrepresenting 4 percent of humanity has no business controlling global policies. The cause of democratizing the United Nations might be read more

John Perkins, author of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man and this TED Talk, has a new book called Touching the Jaguar. You can pre-order it here and get an online workshop and other bonus materials that I haven’t seen but recommend purely on the basis of having read the book. Perkins also is doing an online workshop in July that you can sign up for here. An interview he’s given about his new book is here. And I’ll soon be interviewing him on Talk Nation Radio.

Perkins has not just been read more

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

Let me quote a rare good guy and once-upon-a-time leader on this increasingly godforsaken planet of ours, former Soviet president and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mikhail Gorbachev. He recently wrote: “What we urgently need read more