War Is A Crime

Video of a Workshop I Just Did in Santa Cruz on Abolishing War:

Workshop first half:

Workshop second half:

Speech the night before:

Speech and Q&A second half:

Speech text

We Need a New Armistice Day

Speech and Q&A in another video:

Speech later that day in Berkeley text:

Making the World Great for the First Time

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

You want the nitty-gritty on the Bermuda Triangle of injustice that the U.S. created at the CIA’s global black sites and its detention center in Guantánamo, Cuba? Well, here’s a true story about an American National Guardsman at Gitmo who was read more

One should not sell bombs to a government that abuses human rights, which means murders a man without using one of the bombs.

If Saudi Arabia had murdered a man using a bomb, it would be fine to sell Saudi Arabia more bombs.

But Saudi Arabia murdered with a non-bomb weapon, and so shouldn’t have bombs anymore.

One should, in fact, bomb people whose government abuses human rights, which means murders children without using bombs.

Syria allegedly killed children using chemical weapons, and so Syrian read more

Remarks at Fellowship Hall at Berkeley, Calif., October 13, 2018.

Video here.

Slogans and headlines and haikus and other short combinations of words are tricky things. I wrote a book looking at many of the themes in how people commonly talk about war, and I found them all without exception — and the marketing campaigns before, during, and after every past war without exception — to be dishonest. So I called the book War Is A Lie. And then people who misunderstood my meaning started read more

Remarks at the Resource Center for Nonviolence in Santa Cruz, Calif., on October 12, 2018.

Video slowly uploading will be at https://youtu.be/jKhnteeo4k8

Exactly at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, in 1918, 100 years ago this coming November 11th, people across Europe suddenly stopped shooting guns at each other. Up until that moment, they were killing and taking bullets, falling and screaming, moaning and dying, from bullets and from poison gas.

Wilfred Owen put it this way:

If in read more

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

The other day as I was passing through a waiting room in my gym, I suddenly saw — well, who else in 2018? — Donald Trump on a giant TV screen. He was trying on a specially made hardhat and preparing to address read more

1. What would you like the U.S. discretionary budget to look like? With 60% now going to militarism, what percentage would you like that to be? 2. What program of economic conversion to peaceful enterprises would you support? 3. Would you end, continue, or escalate U.S. war making in: Afghanistan? Iraq? Syria? Yemen? Pakistan? Libya? Somalia? 4. Would you end the exemption for militarism in Kyoto, Paris, and other climate agreements? 5. Would you sign / ratify any of these treaties: Paris Climate Agreement? Convention on the Rights of the Child? International Convention on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights? International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights optional protocols? Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women? Convention Against Torure optional protocol? International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families? International Convention on the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance? The Convention on the Rights of Persons With Disabilities? International Convention Against the Recruitment, Use, Financing, and Training of Mercenaries? Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court? Convention on the Non-Applicability of Statutory Limitations to War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity? Principles of International Cooperation in the Detection, Arrest, Extradition, and Punishment of Persons Guilty of War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity? Convention on Cluster Munitions? Land Mines Convention? Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons? Proposed treaties banning the weaponization of space and banning cyber crimes? 6. Would you halt or continue expenditures on the production and so-called modernization of nuclear weapons? 7. Would you end weapons sales and the provision of military training to any governments? Which? 8. Would you close any foreign bases? Which? 9. Would you halt or continue the practice of murder by missiles from drones? 10. Do you recognize the ban on war, with exceptions, contained in the United Nations Charter? And the ban on threatening war? 11. Do you recognize the ban on war, without exceptions, contained in the Kellogg-Briand Pact? 12. Will you end discriminatory bans on immigrants? 13. Should actual, non-military, no-strings-attached foreign aid be eliminated, reduced, maintained, or increased? How much? 14. 84% of South Koreans want the war ended immediately. Should the United States block that? 15. Should NATO be maintained or abolished? 16. Should the CIA be maintained or abolished? 17. Should the ROTC be maintained or abolished? 18. Should domestic police forces be trained by, collaborate with, and be armed by militaries? 19. Should the U.S. military pay sports leagues, secretly or openly, to celebrate militarism? 20. How large should the U.S. military’s advertising budget be, and how much should the U.S. government spend promoting the concepts of nonviolent dispute resolution and the abolition of war?

Peter Kuznick is Professor of History at American University, and author of Beyond the Laboratory: Scientists As Political Activists in 1930s America, co-author with Akira Kimura of Rethinking the Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Japanese and American Perspectives, co-author with Yuki Tanaka of Nuclear Power and Hiroshima: The Truth Behind the Peaceful Use of Nuclear Power, and co-editor with James Gilbert of Rethinking Cold War Culture. In 1995, he read more

Here’s a story that’s never left my mind. Back in 2011, Secretary of Defense James “Mad Dog” Mattis was the head of U.S. Central Command, which oversaw the war on terror across the Greater Middle East, and he was obsessed with Iran. He cooked up read more

The recent announcement by the founder of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, that his company would give substantial raises to its lowest-paid employees should not blind us to the fact that most American workers are not receiving big wage increases.  In fact, the real wages (that is, wages adjusted for inflation) of average American workers are declining.

When justifying the Republicans’ December 2017 $1.5 trillion tax cut for corporations and the wealthy, President Donald Trump and House Speaker Paul Ryan read more