War Is A Crime

By David Swanson, Director, World BEYOND War
Remarks at Rally outside White House, January 7, 2019.

There are a number of problems with the idea that maintaining and expanding giant military bases in other people’s countries protects freedom in the U.S. or in the occupied land.

For one thing, the United States maintains these bases in everything from the most brutal dictatorships to the most liberal so-called democracies. Are the U.S. troops in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia protecting the same freedoms read more

According to numerous reports, the world’s billionaires keep increasing in number and, especially, in wealth.

In March 2018, Forbes reported that it had identified 2,208 billionaires from 72 countries and territories.  Collectively, this group was worth $9.1 trillion, an increase in wealth of 18 percent since the preceding year.  Americans led the way with a record 585 billionaires, followed by mainland China which, despite read more

“She’ll cut your head off.” That’s Nancy Pelosi’s daughter’s praise for her mother.

I guess you’re supposed to imagine it always being somebody else’s head and to really hate all those somebody elses.

But then, what is PayGo? This looks like a deal aiming a big ole Pentagon bone saw at so many heads that our powers of hatred are likely to fall far short.

Pelosi’s PayGo rule says that any money spent must be made up for by cutting other spending or raising revenue. This must sound read more

By John Grant

Robert Kaplan is too much of an imperialist-military cheerleader for my taste. His 2005 book, Imperial Grunts, was an account of travels around the world reporting on the US military in all those 700-plus foreign bases. “I wanted to cut myself off from civilians as much as possible.” If one likes that sort of thing, it’s an excellent book about the “grunts” who fight US wars. Personally, after four read more

My father was a doctor in the British Royal Navy, and I grew up traveling by troop-ship between the last outposts of the British Empire – Trincomalee, Gibraltar, Hong Kong, Malta, Aden, Singapore – and living in and around naval dockyards in England and Scotland.

The British naval bases where I grew up and the fading empire they supported are now part of history. Chatham Dockyard. a working dockyard for over 400 years, is now a museum and tourist attraction. Trincomalee Dockyard, where I was read more

Bernie Sanders has added the existence of foreign policy onto the bottom of emails like the one below, after having posted a video of himself quoting the usual Eisenhower quotes on military spending. These changes match the request made when World BEYOND War and RootsAction.org asked 100 prominent people to sign an open letter to U.S. Senator Bernie read more

By Dave Lindorff

            In a surprise order signed Dec. 27, a Philadelphia Common Pleas supervising judge has offered a new chance for Mumia Abu-Jamal to challenge his 1982 conviction for the murder of white Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner.

Specifically, Judge Leon Tucker has ordered the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to reconsider four Post Conviction Relief Act (PCRA) hearings and petitions for hearings in the Abu-Jamal case that the state’s high court had rejected read more

Maybe those delirious crowds chanting “USA, USA” have got something.  When it comes to military power, the United States reigns supreme.  Newsweek reported in March 2018:  “The United States has the strongest military in the world,” with over 2 million military personnel and vast numbers of the most advanced nuclear missiles, military aircraft, warships, tanks, and other modern read more