How War Pollutes the Potomac River

By David Swanson and Pat Elder, World Beyond War

The Pentagon’s impact on the river on whose bank it sits is not simply the diffuse impact of global warming and rising oceans contributed to by the U.S. military’s massive oil consumption. The U.S. military also directly poisons the Potomac River in more ways than almost anyone would imagine.

Let’s take a cruise down the Potomac from its source in the mountains of West Virginia to its mouth at the Chesapeake Bay. The journey down this mighty read more

Tomgram: Rebecca Gordon, Is Anything the Moral Equivalent of War?

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

Ever since 2001, when President George W. Bush launched an endless “global war” not on al-Qaeda but on a phenomenon, or perhaps simply a feeling (“terror”) and those who could potentially induce it, America’s all-too-real conflicts have become, as TomDispatch regular Rebecca Gordon writes today, ever more read more

Talk Nation Radio: James Loewen on the Lies That Confederate Statues Tell

James Loewen’s books include Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong, Lies My Teacher Told Me and Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism. Earlier this year, he spoke at a symposium in Richmond on Confederate monuments and memorials, available on C-SPAN. And a couple of years ago he wrote an article in the Washington Post called “Why do people believe myths about the Confederacy? Because our textbooks read more

Focus: China and North Korea – Aug 14, 2017

Top 10 Misconceptions About Charlottesville

1. Let’s start with the obvious. Charlottesville, Virginia, and Charlotte, North Carolina, are actually two completely different places in the world. The flood of concern and good wishes for those of us here in Charlottesville is wonderful and much appreciated. That people can watch TV news about Charlottesville, remember that I live in Charlottesville, and send me their kind greetings addressed to the people of Charlotte is an indication of how common the confusion is. It’s read more

Focus: The DNC hack in the 2016 presidential election – Aug 11, 2017

Playing Nuclear “Chicken” With Our Lives

What kind of civilization have we developed when two mentally unstable national leaders, in an escalating confrontation with each other, threaten one another―and the world―with nuclear war?

That question arises as a potentially violent showdown emerges between Kim Jong Un of North Korea and Donald Trump of the United States.  In recent years, the North Korean government has produced about 10 nuclear weapons and has read more

Get U.S. Planes Out of Syria

Purposeless Death in Syria

Statement by David Swanson as Director of World Beyond War at DC press conference August 8, 2017.

C-Span video: https://www.c-span.org/video/?432288-1/activists-call-withdrawal-us-military-aircraft-syrian-airspace&start=2259

I won’t have time to list all the reasons I want U.S. military planes and drones out of Syrian skies much less all the reasons people have noted in comments on our petition, but there’s no question what my first reason is, although it’s not a reason always given much read more

Tomgram: Andrew Bacevich, The Great Hysteria

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

Slouching Toward Mar-a-Lago
The Post-Cold-War Consensus Collapses
By Andrew J. Bacevich

Like it or not, the president of the United States embodies America itself. The individual inhabiting the White House has become the preeminent symbol of who we are and what we represent as a nation and a people. In a fundamental sense, he is us.

It was not always so. Millard Fillmore, the read more