War Is A Crime

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, September 30, 2022

I wholeheatedly and enthusiastically recommend Andrew Bacevich’s latest book, On Shedding An Obsolete Past, to almost everybody. I have second thoughts only on recommending 350 pages of denouncing warmaking to those who are already out ahead of it and have come to understand the need to abolish wars and militarism before those things abolish us.

Bacevich names not one war relevant to the current day that he supports or justifies. He vaguely read more

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

Here’s the curious thing: since at least the Vietnam War era of the 1960s and early 1970s, the United States has been almost continuously at war. Certain of those conflicts like the Vietnam War itself and those in Iraq and Afghanistan in this century are still remembered by many of us. Honestly, though, who remembers read more

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, September 27, 2022

What would we do in a world lacking police, prisons, surveillance, borders, wars, nuclear weapons, and capitalism? Well, we might survive. We might sustain life on this little blue dot a little longer. That — in contrast to the status quo — ought to be sufficient. We might, in addition, do a lot more than sustain life. We might transform the lives of billions of people including each person reading these words. We might have lives with read more

AUDIO:

Talk World Radio is recorded as audio and video on Riverside.fm — except when it can’t be and then it’s Zoom. Here is this week’s video and all the videos on Youtube.

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

Burning Books (or Rather Book Companies) Looking Back on My Years in — And out of — Publishing By Tom Engelhardt

No one listened better than Studs.  For those of you old enough to remember, that’s Studs Terkel, of course. The most notable thing about him in person, though, was this: the greatest interviewer of his moment, perhaps of any moment, never stopped talking, except, of course, when he was listening to produce one of his memorable bestselling oral histories — he essentially read more

By David Swanson, September 24, 2022

Remarks in Seattle on September 24, 2022 at https://abolishnuclearweapons.org

I am so sick and tired of wars. I’m ready for peace. What about you?

I’m glad to hear it. But pretty much everybody is for peace, even the people who think the surest way to peace is through more wars. They have a peace pole in the Pentagon, after all. I’m pretty sure they ignore it more than worship it, although they do make a lot of human sacrifices for the cause.

When I ask a read more

A preview of the film “Riotsville” is here.

There’s a good review of the film here, and another here.

In the late 1960s, the U.S. military built a fake town called Riotsville (or a fake “inner city” actually) on the Fort Belvoir base in Virginia, and then another at Fort Gordon in Georgia — the same state where the Atlanta police are now working on the construction of an enlarged, updated, high-tech Riotsville commonly called “Cop City.”

The film “Riotsville” includes some stunning read more

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

In so many ways, you still wouldn’t know it — not, that is, if you focused on the Pentagon budget or the economic growth paradigm read more

By World BEYOND War, September 21, 2022

Debate set up by World BEYOND War on September 21, 2022, International Day of Peace.

Arguing that war can never be justified was David Swanson, an author, activist, journalist, and radio host. He is executive director of World BEYOND War and campaign coordinator for RootsAction.org. Swanson’s books include War Is A Lie. He hosts Talk World Radio. He is a Nobel Peace Prize nominee, and U.S. Peace Prize recipient.

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