Can We Learn Anything From Russian-Canadian Pacifists?

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Tolstoy said the Doukhobors belonged to the 25th century. He was talking about a group of people who have traditions of refusing to take part in war, refusing to eat or harm animals or put animals to work, engaging in communal sharing of resources and communal approaches to work, gender equality, and letting deeds speak in place of words — not to mention using nudity as a form of nonviolent protest.

You can see how such people might have run into trouble in a Russian empire or the read more

Tomgram: Robert Lipsyte, The Glory of the Greatest Shines On

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

Heroes? When I was a kid, among my heroes — and I was joined in this by so many Americans — was Jackie Robinson. Yes, he was the first Black ballplayer to break into the segregated major leagues. But the main thing for me was that he was the stellar second baseman for the Brooklyn Dodgers and I was a mad Dodgers fan. My dad grew up in Brooklyn, so no surprise there.

But read more

Talk World Radio: Ken Mayers on Nuclear Posture Review

AUDIO:

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

VIDEO:

This week on Talk World Radio we’re discussing nuclear weapons and war with Ken Mayers from Veterans For Peace, which has — in anticipation of the Biden administration’s nuclear posture review — released its own nuclear posture review. See https://veteransforpeace.org

About Ken Mayers: read more

Tomgram: Andrea Mazzarino, Secure What? Against Whom?

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

It was more than 20 years ago, but I still remember the shock I felt when the word “homeland” first entered our culture in a big way. That was soon after the 9/11 attacks and, in the end, it would be attached to what became known as the Department of Homeland Security. For me — and I read more

To Send Weapons and Troops to Ukraine You’d Have to Be a Stupid Son of a Biden

Have yall learned absolutely nothing?

The U.S. government’s internal memos said that the only way to get Iraq to use its weapons if it even had any would be to attack it. The U.S. government’s public statements were that Iraq certainly had weapons and therefore must be attacked. The U.S. government itself had every single one of the weapons in question, and knew Iraq used to have some of them because the U.S. had provided them.

This was not a question of faulty information. This was not a question read more

Tomgram: Andrew Bacevich, Why Washington Can’t Learn

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

Who even remembers when President Bush — no, not George W. but his father! — exclaimed, “By God, we’ve kicked the Vietnam Syndrome!” That was in the wake of Operation Desert Storm (aka the First Gulf War of 1991) and it was indeed true that the U.S. military had kicked Iraqi autocrat Saddam Hussein’s troops out of Kuwait with remarkable ease. And yes, visually, read more