War Is A Crime

Remarks at Veterans For Peace Convention, St. Paul, Minnesota, August 26, 2018.

There are a lot of things named Kellogg around here, and few who know why. The two biggest names in the news in 1928 were those of future white supremacist Charles Lindbergh and of Frank Kellogg. One of those names has lasted longer.

The author at Frank Kellogg’s house

Frank Kellogg was a U.S. Secretary of State, and probably the one most worth teaching people about.

The list of U.S. Secretaries of State is quite a read more

By Dave Lindorff

I found them today: five plump zebra-striped caterpillars munching with gusto on milkweed leaves in an area of the tall dark-leaved plants growing in my front yard.

The beautiful orange-and-black monarch butterfly that I saw a few weeks ago flitting from plant to plant in that milkweed patch I have nurtured and allowed to expand naturally in my front yard over the last few years, apparently deposited an egg on each plant it landed on, read more

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These days, demonstrations follow the president and his policies the way day follows night.  There are the determined protesters who go regularly to the Clarence Dillon Public Library in Bedminster, New Jersey, while the president read more

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In 1958, Chinese leader Mao Zedong launched an attempt at the instant industrialization of an agricultural society, including the creation of little backyard steel furnaces in its rural countryside. That vast convulsion went by the optimistic name of the Great Leap Forward. It ended up disrupting the country’s read more

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I can remember lying on my bed with a crumpled up piece of paper in my hand and throwing it at the wall while, in my mind, the announcer’s voice carried on: “It’s a long drive to right field… Furillo is going back, back, back… He leaps! He’s got it!” And I would, of course, catch the paper as it bounced off that wall. It was perhaps the World Series year read more

Rashida Tlaib has nothing about war or peace on her website. And she’s going to be elected to the seat held by Congressman John Conyers, famous for giving speeches for things like impeaching George W. Bush while telling reporters and colleagues that impeaching Bush needed to be avoided. So, take statements for what they’re worth (very little until followed by action). But action rarely follows silence, and Tlaib just said this:

“I don’t support military operations. If you go to the Department read more

A few days after an over-hyped white supremacist rally in Washington, D.C., was massively outnumbered by people opposed to racism, and one day after 187 organizations (more than that now) publicly committed read more

By Dave Lindorff

            Some 300 newspapers, large and small, joined today in publishing, often on their front pages, editorials defending the First Amendment’s freedom of the press, often making note of their own efforts to combat current threats to that freedom posed by President Trump’s attacks on journalists and the entire Fourth Estate, which Trump routinely denounces in tweets and at rallies as “enemies of the people.”

read more

            However, read more

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

The War Piece to End All War Pieces
Or How to Fight a War of Ultimate Repetitiousness
By Tom Engelhardt

Fair warning. Stop reading right now if you want, because I’m going to repeat myself. What choice do I have, since my subject is the Afghan War (America’s second Afghan War, no less)? I began read more