Talk Nation Radio: Barry Sweeney on Ireland, Peace, and Neutrality

Barry Sweeney is a member of the coordinating committee of World BEYOND War, of which I’m the director. Barry is based in Ireland, but is often in Vietnam and Italy. His background is in education and environmentalism. He taught as a primary school teacher in Ireland for a number of years, before moving to Italy in 2009 to teach English. His love for environmental understanding led him to many progressive projects in Ireland, Italy, and Sweden. He became more and more involved in environmentalism read more

Greatest Crime on Earth

By David Swanson, Director, World BEYOND War
Remarks at No Bases Conference in Dublin, Ireland, November 18, 2018

I’m willing to bet that if I asked everyone in Ireland whether the Irish government should take orders from Donald Trump, most people would say no. But last year the Irish Ambassador to the United States came to the University of Virginia, and I asked her how allowing U.S. troops to use Shannon Airport to get to their wars could possibly be in compliance with Irish neutrality. read more

Lurching Toward Catastrophe: The Trump Administration and Nuclear Weapons

In July 2017, by a vote of 122 to 1, with one abstention, nations from around the world attending a United Nations-sponsored conference in New York City voted to approve a treaty to ban nuclear weapons.  Although this Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons received little coverage in the mass media, its passage was a momentous event, capping decades of international nuclear arms control and disarmament agreements that, together, read more

Pelosi’s deceptive plan to ‘protect’ people from tax increases: Blocking a Medicare Payroll Tax Rise Could Rule Out Medicare-for-All and Bolstering Social Security

By Dave Lindorff

In the surreal alternative reality world of the US Congress, there are many bills passed each year that on the surface may sound like good ideas — they even give them high-sounding names like the US PATRIOT ACT or Better Care and Reconciliation Act, that in fact are the opposite of what they claim to be (the former actually being an unpatriotic undermining of the Bill of Rights and the latter actually being an unsuccessful attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act (itself a deceptively read more

Ending the War in Yemen- Congressional Resolution is Not Enough!

November 15, 2018

On November 14, the Republican majority in the U.S. House of Representatives blocked a resolution that its supporters say would end U.S. participation in the war and famine in Yemen. It is unclear, however, what effect this resolution would have on the ground even if it were passed into law. It imposes no limits on arms sales to Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates. It does not propose any oversight or limitation of activities CIA or of private contractors from the U.S. in read more

Tomgram: Engelhardt, An “Earned Media” Presidency

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

The Donald and the Fake News Media
An Affair to Remember
By Tom Engelhardt

Face it: it’s been an abusive time, to use a word he likes to wield. In his telling, of course, it’s he or his people who are always the abused ones and they — the “fake news media” — are the abusers. But let’s be honest. You’ve been abused, too, and so have I. All of read more

No to NATO, No to Bases, No to Wars in Distant Places

As I head over to Ireland for a conference on closing U.S. and NATO military bases around the world — and at which some of us will make plans for protesting NATO in Washington on April 4, 2019 — the presidents of France and Germany are talking up the need for a European military that can fight the United States, Russia, and/or China. There are three responses to this development, two of which will get us all killed more quickly than the other.

One is this. Down with the stupid, ungrateful, read more

Talk Nation Radio: Stephen McKeown on Armistice Day

Steve McKeown was a radio operator in the 4th Infantry Division of the U.S. Army in Vietnam in 1966 to 1967. He was a founding member of Veterans For Peace Chapter 27 in Minneapolis / St. Paul, and is the coordinator for their newsletter. Steve has spoken to hundreds of classes in elementary and high schools, colleges, churches, and community groups on matters of war and peace. And he has been part of organizing all kinds of peace activism including related to Armistice Day, the 100th anniversary read more