War Is A Crime

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

Back in the mid-1990s, I wrote the following in my book The End of Victory Culture, with memories of the American world of my 1940s and 1950s childhood in mind:

“The worlds of the warrior and of abundance were, to my gaze, no more antithetical than they were to the corporate executives, university research scientists, and military officers who were using a rising military budget read more

An invitation from the Nevada Desert Experience, April 13-19, 2019

On Indigenous People’s Day, formerly known as Columbus Day, October 8, 2018, Nye County, Nevada, prosecutors and Sheriff’s deputies ended a three decades old policy concerning arrests of protesters at the Nevada National Security Site, NNSS, formerly known as the Nevada Test Site, 60 miles from Las Vegas.

From 1986 through 1994, two years after the United States put a hold on full-scale nuclear weapons testing, 536 anti-nuclear read more

Suyapa Portillo Villeda is an Associate Professor of Chicano/a-Latino/a Transnational Studies at Pitzer College. She recently published an article in Counter Punch called An Illegitimate, US-Backed Regime is Fueling the Honduran Refugee Crisis.

Total run time: 29:00
Host: David Swanson.
Producer: David Swanson.
Music by Duke Ellington.

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Please encourage your local read more

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

Last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin issued a warning. As the New York Times described it: “If the United States deploys new intermediate-range missiles in Europe after withdrawing from a nuclear treaty prohibiting these weapons, European nations will be at risk read more

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War

“Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good!”
“Don’t be such a purist!”
“Be strategic!”
“Do what’s possible!”
“You can’t deny reality / human nature / religious text.”

The phrases used to oppose proposals for major change haven’t changed much for centuries, in both meanings of that phrase. No doubt these sayings sound better in certain circumstances than others, depending on the details. But in general, I find that they sound worse read more

By Dave Lindorff

Trump has been tearing up treaties since taking office, from halting negotiations on the TPP to NAFTA, but his latest threat to pull out of the nuclear deal, negotiated by President Reagan in the 80s, may be his biggest mistake.

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Meanwhile, while US President Donald Trump and his National Security Advisor, the neoconservative firebrand John Bolton, justify their threat by accusing Russia of read more

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

In June, Austin “Scott” Miller, the special-ops general chosen to be the 17th U.S. commander in Afghanistan, appeared before the Senate Armed Services Committee. Like so many of the generals who had preceded him, he suggested that he saw evidence of “progress” in the Afghan war, even if he refused to “guarantee you a timeline or an end date.” Smart move, general!

As read more

Does it matter whether Catholic church officials really believe that they have the power to turn dead people into magical demigods? I don’t think so. I think it matters whether large numbers of people believe that, and I think they don’t. I think making someone a saint is, at this point, just a high honor like any other high honor, and that, as long as the practice exists, we’re better off with better people, rather than worse people, being made saints, for better reasons, rather than worse read more