Tomgram: Andrea Mazzarino, War Doesn’t End When It “Ends”

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

We normally think of wartime and peacetime as two distinct and separate realities. When wars end, they end. Period. Unfortunately, when it comes to modern wars, that’s been anything but the case, as TomDispatch regular Andrea Mazzarino makes clear in a striking fashion today. She read more

Together for Peace

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, September 21, 2024

Remarks via zoom to conference in St. Petersburg, Russia, on September 21, 2024.

It’s wonderful to be joining you even virtually in St. Petersburg, which I am informed is even more beautiful than Moscow, which I was fortunate enough to visit seven years ago — Moscow is a wonderful city 20 times the size of Washington, D.C. Just the long hours of sunlight were amazing to me. I met a lot of wonderful people when I was there. I didn’t agree read more

Speaking Truth to Empire

On Speaking Truth to Empire on KFCF 88.1 FM independently owned and locally operated since 1975 in Fresno, Dan Yaseen interviews Oliver Boyd-Barrett, Professor Emeritus from Bowling Green State University, Ohio and from California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. He is an author, blogger and a geopolitical analyst. They discuss American Imperial wars in Ukraine and Palestine, pager explosions in Lebanon and Putin’s warning to US and NATO.  You can access read more

Please Stop Saying That Every War Is Not a War But Something Bad

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, September 20, 2024

Yes, I’m going to say this again. I’ve heard not the slightest hint of a refutation or objection to it, and yet so many, many people ignore it.

For the love of all that is decent, immediately stop the self-defeating idiocy of calling every goddamned war “not a war.”

Please. With all due respect.

“It’s not a war. It’s terrorism.” “It’s not a war. It’s genocide.” “It’s not a war. It’s an occupation.” “It’s not read more

Tomgram: Juan Cole, A Centrist Muslim Alliance Against an Extremist Israel?

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

Here’s a strange connection between Israel and the United States. Let me put it to you as a kind of quiz: Which two leaders on this planet have, at least in part, organized their political lives to avoid trial convictions and/or possible jail time? Yes, in case you hadn’t guessed, I’m thinking of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the former American president read more

Portraits of Peacemakers

The great portraitist Robert Shetterly has a new collection out in a book titled Portraits of Peacemakers: Americans Who Tell the Truth.

I recommend getting a copy for every person you know who enjoys art or history or activism or who is concerned by the mass killing of war.

I don’t think I’m biased by the honor I feel at having my portrait included in a collection of such wonderful people. I may be biased by my interest in advancing the cause of peace — but outside of corporate read more

Tomgram: Michael Klare, Ensuring the Collapse of Civilization?

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

I was born on July 20, 1944, in the midst of the Second World War. Barely a year later, the U.S. ended that conflict in the Pacific by dropping atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and creating two all-too-literal hells on Earth.

To this day, fortunately, no other nuclear weapons have ever been used (if, that is, you don’t count all the ones tested, read more

The Law of Force or the Force of Law

Are the nations of the world doomed to go on fighting the brutal, horrifying wars that have long characterized human history?

We might well wonder about that as we watch, aghast, while Israeli armed forces slaughter thousands of Palestinian civilians, Russian military might relentlessly pounds Ukrainian towns and cities into rubble, and new, bloody wars erupt in numerous other lands.

Why does such widespread destruction and human suffering persist in the modern, ostensibly “civilized,” world?

A read more