War Is A Crime

The Jan. 6 hearings are clearly running over a month. Let’s call it a month. There are many countries in which the U.S. has organized, facilitated, or supported one or more coup attempts. Let’s count each country just once. And let’s go back only to the year 2000. Here’s a list of countries and the dates of attempted or successful overthrows. An asterick indicates success:

Yugoslavia 1999-2000 *
Ecuador 2000 *
Afghanistan 2001 *
Venezuela 2002 * and 2018, 2019, 2020
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For years I’ve appreciated the Global Peace Index (GPI), and interviewed the people who make it, but quibbled with exactly what it does. read more

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

In my home in the early 1950s, we lived Life to the fullest (with the Saturday Evening Post and Look thrown in for good measure). In fact, from those largely print media years — we got our first black-and-white TV in 1953 — I can still remember a Life cover photo showing the pained face of an American soldier caught up in the Korean War. 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.

How far are we? Who really knows? Let’s just say that we’re somewhere significantly down the road to extremity, all-American style. With a hung (and wrung-out) Congress and a lame (and aged) president, our tripartite government is looking ever less “tri” and ever more “part.” And it increasingly read more

In 2015, Alice Sabatini was an 18-year-old contestant in the Miss Italia contest in Italy. She was asked what epoch of the past she would have liked to live in. She replied: World War II. Her explanation was that her text books go on and on about it, so she’d like to actually see it, and she wouldn’t have to fight in it, because only men did that. This led to a great deal of mockery. Did she want to be bombed or starved or sent to a concentration camp? What was she, stupid? Somebody photoshopped read more

For many years, substantial military operations have been conducted by mercenaries, ranging from professional soldiers hired to fight wars for European potentates in the 14^th century to the combat forces of Blackwater, a private company employed by the U.S. government to undertake violent activities in the “War on Terror” of the early 21^st century.

Today, the Wagner Group, a shadowy Russian read more

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

Yes, Afghanistan went down the drain and Washington’s global war on terror ended (more or less) in disaster 20 years after it began. But the urge to militarize the planet? Not a chance in an American 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.

VIDEO:

This week on Talk World Radio we’re speaking with two people who will be leading a training session on Nonviolent Communication Skills at the July 8-10 online NoWar2022 conference. That can be found at https://WorldBEYONDWar.org read more

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

Extreme Life Or World War III (IV and V), Climate-Style By Tom Engelhardt

In recent weeks, a newly emboldened right-wing Supreme Court struck down a more than century-old New York law restricting the carrying of concealed weapons and a nearly 50-year-old precedent read more