Best of TomDispatch: Ann Jones, War Wounds

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America’s Father’s Day was first celebrated on June 19, 1910, in Washington State. That was only a few years before Ann Jones’s father went to war. His was the Great War which turned out — with its trenches of frozen mud, rats and lice, poison gas, and machine-gun death — to be not so great. It was supposed to be the War to End all Wars, but all it did was bequeath read more

Russia’s Justifications for Its War in Ukraine Don’t Hold Up

The Russian government’s justifications for its war in Ukraine―the largest, most destructive military operation in Europe since World War II―are not persuasive.

Although, in defending the Russian invasion, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s primary emphasis has been on the threat of Ukraine joining NATO, that action, had it occurred, would have been perfectly legitimate under international law.  The UN Charter, which is an instrument of international law, does not read more

Tomgram: Chomsky and Barsamian, In Ukraine, Diplomacy Has Been Ruled Out

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

Can you even remember when it began? Doesn’t it seem like forever? And the timing — if forever can even be said to have timing — has been little short of miraculous (if, by miraculous, you mean catastrophic beyond measure). No, I’m not talking about the January 6th attack on the Capitol and everything that led up to and followed it, including the ongoing televised hearings. read more

McNamara’s Son on Some of His Father’s Lies About Vietnam


(a current image of the house that the McNamara’s lived in in Washington DC)

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, June 15, 2022

Pretty much anything that complicates the story of a person is a good corrective to the tendency to simplify and caricature. So, one has to welcome Craig McNamara’s book, Because Our Fathers Lied: A Memoir of Truth and Family, from Vietnam to Today. Craig’s father, Robert McNamara was Secretary of War (“Defense”) for much of the war on Vietnam. He’d read more

Police Are a Lie

I wrote a book years ago called War Is A Lie, arguing that everything we’re told that supports war-making is untrue.

The parallels between the police-prosecution-prison system and the war system are extensive. I don’t mean the direct connections, the flow of weapons, the flow of veterans. I mean the similarities: the intentional failure to use superior alternatives, the ideology of violence used to justify horrible ideas, and the expense and corruption.

It’s not a mystery that diplomacy and read more

Talk World Radio: Aisha Jumaan on Yemen

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:

Aisha Jumaan is the Founder and President of the Yemen Relief and Reconstruction Foundation. Jumaan has over 30 years of experience in public health, including in viral vaccine preventable diseases, cancer research, maternal & child health and nutrition, and women in development. She worked read more

The U.S. Government Locked Up This Californian Family, Then Insisted They Join the Military

The U.S. government took a family away from its house, jobs, schools, and friends, locked up all of its members, and then began ordering the male family members of the proper age to join the U.S. military and head straight off to war.

This wasn’t last month. This was in 1941. And it wasn’t at random. The family was of Japanese ancestry, and the incarceration was accompanied by the accusation of being subhuman creatures but also of being disloyal traitors. None of that makes it acceptable read more

Tomgram: Robert Lipsyte, Take My Gun, Please

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The introduction you’re reading right now is already out of date or we wouldn’t be in the United States of 2022. I mean, we live in a country where, for years now, there have been more guns than people. According to the latest figures (for 2018!), almost read more

Tomgram: Rebecca Gordon, Where the Boys Aren’t

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

Sixty years later, I would still like a do-over. Yes, I went to a school where, to fiddle with the title of Rebecca Gordon’s article, the boys were (and only them). I’m talking about Yale College in the 1960s when it was all-male and the hunting (or do I mean haunting?) grounds for read more