On August 12, 1945, six days after the U.S. government obliterated the city of Hiroshima with a single atomic bomb, Robert Hutchins, the president of the University of Chicago, delivered a remarkable public address. Speaking on his weekly radio program, the Chicago Roundtable, Hutchins observed that
Democrats need backbone on militarism to win in 2020: Iran is NOT Responsible for US Dead in Iraq
By John Grant
Who exactly is responsible for US casualties in Iraq during the Iraq War? The question has been raised thanks to President Trump’s decision to assassinate Iranian General Qessim Suleimani.
On January 13, the New York Times published a front-page story about a lawsuit filed against Iran in federal court by US veterans and veteran families; it charges Iran with wounding or killing these men. The crux of the lawsuit is that the explosive devices that killed and maimed these
Video: How Do You Blow the Whistle on a Whole Society?
Tomgram: Danny Sjursen, Mad Policies for a Mad World
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What’s the value of an American life in the age of Donald Trump? If you were judging by the death of Nawres Hamid, an Iraqi-American contractor killed in late December after an American base in Iraq was mortared by a Shiite militia believed to have ties to Iran, the answer would be obvious: enough to risk
What happens when people no longer want our money?: Papering the World with Benjamins
By Allen Baker
Benjamin Franklin was a prolific inventor and a brilliant thinker. But even he would be amazed at the vast profits that arise simply from printing his portrait on the U.S. hundred-dollar bill.
Here’s how it works: Each year, the U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing rolls out roughly a billion crisp new hundreds bearing Franklin’s image. (Think of a goose laying golden eggs.) It then sells those bills to banks. The U.S. pockets, well, $100 billion
CNN: Sanders Is The Most Electable
Remember CNN’s attack-debate last week? CNN did what it could to end Bernie Sanders’ campaign for president.
Well, just after that, CNN conducted a poll to measure its success. According to its own report on its own poll, CNN failed miserably.
Among “Democrats/Democratic-leaning independents who are registered to vote” the leading candidate is Bernie Sanders, up 7 percentage points since the previous CNN poll, with Biden and Warren each down 2.
Also, when asked which candidate they would
Talk Nation Radio: Phill Gittins on Educating to End War
Phill Gittins is World BEYOND War’s Education Director. Phill has lived, worked, and travelled in over 50 countries across 6 continents; taught in schools, colleges, and universities in eight countries; and led experiential training and training-of-trainers for hundreds of individuals on peace and conflict processes. Other experience includes work in youth offending prisons; oversight management for youth and community projects; and consultation for public and non-profit organisations on peace,
Tomgram: Mandy Smithberger, A Recipe for Disaster
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In late December 2018, when James “Mad Dog” Mattis resigned as secretary of defense after President Trump announced that he was going to pull U.S. troops out of Syria, it was a hell of a story.
Tomgram: Greenberg and Dratel, The Gitmo Era
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In these years, Washington has, in a sense, tortured history.
Early in this century, the Guantánamo Bay detention facility would become the crown jewel of a mini-gulag of torture and mistreatment that the CIA and the U.S. military — remember those infamous photos from Abu Ghraib prison in
How Do You Blow the Whistle on a Whole Society?
By David Swanson
Remarks at Peace Center, Los Angeles, January 18, 2020
Video
Like perhaps most people who visit Los Angeles, I consider it my duty to offer a brilliant new idea for a film script. My idea is in the genre of science-fiction mafia, a genre that I think has not been sufficiently exploited. In this film, the protagonist wakes up to the fact that without knowing it, he has somehow joined the mafia. I expect people to be able to relate to the story because I believe that this entire