War Is A Crime

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, March 25, 2023

The question of a Ukraine agreement is not a question, for two reasons. One, the warmaking parties want the war to continue. Two, if they were willing to make an agreement, everybody on all sides knows exactly (or darn near exactly) what it would have to be, and always has. Sooner or later, it will have to be agreed to, or the world end. (Yes, I’m aware that post-nuclear-apocalypse a rock will still be here with possibly some cockroaches on it; read more

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, March 24, 2023

I can’t recommend highly enough a new book by A.B. Abrams called Atrocity Fabrication and Its Consequences: How Fake News Shapes World Order. Despite using the term “fake news” there is not the slightest speck of a hint of Trumpism. Despite reporting on atrocity fabrication, there is not the slightest glimmer of a reference to nonsense claims that school shootings are staged, or any mention of anything at all that is not read more

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

Prophesies, Then and Now My Life at World’s End By Tom Engelhardt

Indulge me for a moment. This is how “The Prophecy” in my 1962 high school yearbook began. It was written by some of my classmates in the year we graduated from Friends Seminary in New York City.

“Being an historian, I am jotting down these notes out of habit, but what I saw and experienced two days ago I am sure no one else as civilized as I am will ever see. I am writing read more

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, March 22, 2023

It ought to be easy. Open bank vault, remove weapons dealers, close bank vault. In reality, we need a ton of tools, work, and luck.

In constant dollar terms, after Korea, Vietnam, Reagan’s second term, and Obama’s first term U.S. military spending went down, just never as much as it had gone up. So, ending wars, including Cold Wars, may help.

We now have a war underway in which the U.S. participation is understood as primarily spending read more

On the 20th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the documentary War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death is getting renewed attention. The film takes a blistering look at how U.S. media outlets from Fox News to MSNBC enthusiastically disseminated propaganda and helped sell wars that would directly kill thousands of American troops and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi and Afghan people. This documentary is based on the acclaimed book by Norman Solomon, and narrated read more

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

Just in case you were wondering where your tax dollars went in this century, consider the American war, now 20 years old, in Iraq (and after 2014 in Syria as well). Neta Crawford of the invaluable Costs of War Project has just released her read more

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

I can still remember sneaking into one of those old Broadway movie palaces (of the sort you can see in Edward Hopper’s classic painting) with two friends. It was 1959, in the midst of a global “Cold War,” and I was 15 years old, too young as I recall to be allowed in to see Stanley Kramer’s On the Beach without a grown-up.

We sat in the first row of the balcony (it was read more

World BEYOND War supports getting in the streets everywhere on April 2nd for peace and nonviolent action with Europe for Peace. World BEYOND War members in Europe will spread the word and take part, and we will encourage our chapters around the world to join in. I’m executive director of World BEYOND War, and I live in the United States where antiwar activism is most needed and least present. We have lots of excuses: the vast distances over which we are spread out, the intense propaganda read more

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, March 18, 2023

I want to begin with three lessons from 20 years ago.

First, on the question of launching a war on Iraq, the United Nations got it right. It said no to the war. It did so because people around the world got it right and applied pressure to governments. Whistleblowers exposed U.S. spying and threats and bribes. Representatives represented. They voted no. Global democracy, for all its flaws, succeeded. The rogue U.S. outlaw failed. But, not only did read more