Victory: House Overwhelmingly Supports Progressive Resolution on U.S. Military Involvement in Iraq

July 28, 2014
Victory: House Overwhelmingly Supports Progressive Resolution on U.S. Military Involvement in Iraq

BECKY BOND - These days, the House almost never passes good legislation. But thanks to the leadership of two unwavering progressive champions in Congress, Reps. Barbara Lee and Jim McGovern, the House got it right yesterday – and got it right in a big way.

Editorial Position of the New York Times: Thumbs Up for Gaza Slaughter

July 26, 2014

ABBA SOLOMON and NORMAN SOLOMON - Over the weekend, the New York Times sent out a clear signal: the mass slaughter of civilians is acceptable when the Israeli military is doing the killing. Under the headline “Israel’s War in Gaza,” the most powerful newspaper in the United States editorialized that such carnage is necessary....

In Gaza, U.S. Citizens are Paying Israel’s Tab

July 24, 2014

WIM LAVEN - A riveting letter is making its rounds from Dr. Mads Gilbert, a Norwegian doctor volunteering in Palestine. In it, Dr. Gilbert describes his first-hand account of Israel’s boots on the ground in Gaza - the sounds of F16s, drones and Apache helicopters, “So much made and paid in and by US,”...

Suppression of Dissent in World War I: A Reminder of Where Fascism Leads

July 22, 2014

AL CARROLL - It is the anniversary of the assassination that led to the start of World War I. Some articles will focus on the veterans, or on what some falsely claim was the first time the US was not isolationist. (That was never true. The US freely invaded Latin America many times before...

War Journalism Leads the Bleeding in Gaza

July 21, 2014
War Journalism Leads the Bleeding in Gaza

ERIN NIEMELA - As Israel’s boots hit the ground in Gaza, Operation War Journalism rages on. Both Arab and Israeli war journalists weaponize rhetoric: False dichotomies (do we bomb or do nothing?) and a pro-violence worldview, among other deadly bullets. War journalism sells violent conflict – “if it bleeds, it leads” – and we’re...

With Nuclear Weapons and Climate Change, Things Could Get Worse

July 18, 2014
With Nuclear Weapons and Climate Change, Things Could Get Worse

JOHN LORETZ - There’s more bad news from the climate scientists. Not about global warming, where the news is never good, but about the impact nuclear weapons would have on the atmosphere, our climate, and food production if even a very small number were used in a limited, regional conflict.

Ready to Die for Oil? – Twenty-First-Century Energy Wars

July 16, 2014
Ready to Die for Oil? – Twenty-First-Century Energy Wars

MICHAEL T. KLARE - In a fossil-fuel world, control over oil and gas reserves is an essential component of national power. “Oil fuels more than automobiles and airplanes,” Robert Ebel of the Center for Strategic and International Studies told a State Department audience in 2002. “Oil fuels military power, national treasuries, and...

Before the Next ISIS, We Need Nonviolent Counterterrorism Strategies

July 14, 2014
Before the Next ISIS, We Need Nonviolent Counterterrorism Strategies

ERIN NIEMELA - A relatively new group engaging in non-state political violence, ISIS, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, recently called for the creation of an Islamic state in Iraq and Syria and a continuation and strengthening of jihad during Ramadan, according to a video that emerged through social media. ISIS, born...

U.S. Mayors Call for Good Faith U.S. Participation in Nuclear Disarmament Forums

July 12, 2014

JACKIE CABASSO, Mayors for Peace contact - The U.S. Conference of Mayors (USCM), the non-partisan association of America’s big cities, on June 23, 2014 unanimously adopted a sweeping new resolution Calling for Constructive Good Faith U.S. Participation in International Nuclear Disarmament Forums at its 82nd annual meeting in Dallas, Texas. According to USCM President...

Rising People-Powered Movement Of Movements Is Transforming The World

July 10, 2014
Rising People-Powered Movement Of Movements Is Transforming The World

MARGARET FLOWERS - On a snowy weekend in January, activists for social, economic and environmental justice from across the United States gathered in a Chicago union hall to plan a Global Climate Convergence: ten days of action from Earth Day to May Day. Many of these activists had never focused on the climate crisis...

We Are Mistaken About Iraq

July 8, 2014
We Are Mistaken About Iraq

BERT SACKS - “Those Iraqis have been fighting each other for centuries,” a friend recently said to me. I have heard this mistaken view too often.

Iraq: It’s the Oil, Stupid!

July 6, 2014
Iraq: It’s the Oil, Stupid!

MICHAEL SCHWARTZ - Events in Iraq are headline news everywhere, and once again, there is no mention of the issue that underlies much of the violence: control of Iraqi oil. Instead, the media is flooded with debate about, horror over, and extensive analysis of a not-exactly-brand-new terrorist threat, the Islamic State of Iraq and...

Inequality Is Not Inevitable

July 4, 2014
Inequality Is Not Inevitable

JOSEPH SITGLITZ - An insidious trend has developed over this past third of a century. A country that experienced shared growth after World War II began to tear apart, so much so that when the Great Recession hit in late 2007, one could no longer ignore the fissures that had come to define the...

Use Of Pilotless Drones For Assassinations Violates The Rule Of Law

July 2, 2014
Use Of Pilotless Drones For Assassinations Violates The Rule Of Law

ALICE SLATER - A secret US government legal memo, prepared for President Obama, was recently ordered to be released to the public by a Federal Court responding to a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union. The Administration’s legal reasoning clearly fails to justify the use of pilotless drones, controlled by a...

Peace Movements’ Common Vision: The Abolition of Militarism

June 30, 2014
Peace Movements’ Common Vision: The Abolition of Militarism

MAIREAD CORRIGAN MAGUIRE - We are all aware that this is the 100th anniversary of the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo which led to the start of the First World War in l9l4. What started here in Sarajevo was a century of two global wars, a Cold War, a century of immense, rapid...

Mayors Sign Climate Protection Agreement, Endorse Innovative Climate Solutions

June 29, 2014
Mayors Sign Climate Protection Agreement, Endorse Innovative Climate Solutions

ARI PHILLIPS - Confronting climate change was a major agenda item at last week’s U.S. Conference of Mayors meeting in Dallas, Texas, including climate protection awards, climate panels, and a discussion with U.S. EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy and U.S. DOE Secretary Ernest Moniz. Mayors signed the latest version of the Climate Protection Agreement —...

Everywhere is War

June 28, 2014

ANDY PIASCIK - Summer approaches and the stench of war is all around. Or, as the great Bob Marley put it, Everywhere is War. Start with the commemorations over a five-week span of Memorial Day, Flag Day and Independence Day, all presented varyingly as celebrations of our war dead, symbols of our greatness, the...

A Conservative Prescription for Avoiding the Coming Climate Crash

June 27, 2014
A Conservative Prescription for Avoiding the Coming Climate Crash

HENRY M. PAULSON JR. - There is a time for weighing evidence and a time for acting. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned throughout my work in finance, government and conservation, it is to act before problems become too big to manage. For too many years, we failed to rein in the excesses...

Memo to Potential Whistleblowers: If You See Something, Say Something

June 26, 2014
Memo to Potential Whistleblowers: If You See Something, Say Something

NORMAN SOLOMON - Blowing the whistle on wrongdoing creates a moral frequency that vast numbers of people are eager to hear. We don’t want our lives, communities, country and world continually damaged by the deadening silences of fear and conformity.

Green Illusions: Climate Change Makes More Demands Than We Thought

June 25, 2014
Green Illusions: Climate Change Makes More Demands Than We Thought

OZZIE ZEHNER - Every day, the news about climate change and the harms that are sure to accompany it gets worse and worse. To many environmentalists, the answer is simple: power shift. That is, shift from fossil fuels to clean, green, renewable, alternative energy. Well-meaning concerned citizens and activists have jumped on the bandwagon....

Unparalleled Failure

June 23, 2014
Unparalleled Failure

TOM ENGELHARDT - The United States has been at war—major boots-on-the-ground conflicts and minor interventions, firefights, airstrikes, drone assassination campaigns, occupations, special ops raids, proxy conflicts and covert actions—nearly nonstop since the Vietnam War began. That’s more than half a century of experience with war, American-style, and yet few in our world bother to...

The Democratic Push to Bomb Iraq Again

June 21, 2014
The Democratic Push to Bomb Iraq Again

DAVID SWANSON - People forget the extent to which Democrats, who controlled the U.S. Senate at the time, pushed for and supported the 2003 attack on Iraq. Remember them or not, theeeeeeeeeey're back!

Does War Have a Future?

June 20, 2014
Does War Have a Future?

LAWRENCE WITTNER - Countries are not only preparing for wars, but are fighting them―sometimes overtly (as in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan) and sometimes covertly (as in portions of Africa and the Middle East). Nevertheless, there are some reasons why war might actually be on the way out.

The Impossibility of Growth Demands a New Economic System

June 19, 2014
The Impossibility of Growth Demands a New Economic System

GEORGE MONBIOT - To succeed is to destroy ourselves. To fail is to destroy ourselves. That is the bind we have created. Ignore if you must climate change, biodiversity collapse, the depletion of water, soil, minerals, oil; even if all these issues were miraculously to vanish, the mathematics of compound growth make continuity impossible....

Dear America: It’s Over (Rulers of the World Era)

June 18, 2014
Dear America: It’s Over (Rulers of the World Era)

TOM H. HASTINGS - Reinvade, reoccupy, and redestroy Iraq. That's the solution to the inevitable civil war that happens when the US pulls out? Will we do it until either Iraq is remade in our image or until the US economy, political environment, and culture is also destroyed?

Pentagon Preparing for Mass Civil Breakdown

June 17, 2014
Pentagon Preparing for Mass Civil Breakdown

DR. NAFEEZ AHMED - A US Department of Defense (DoD) research programme is funding universities to model the dynamics, risks and tipping points for large-scale civil unrest across the world, under the supervision of various US military agencies. The multi-million dollar programme is designed to develop immediate and long-term "warfighter-relevant insights" for senior officials...

“Army of One” Breeds Terrorists

June 16, 2014
“Army of One” Breeds Terrorists

ROBERT C. kOEHLER - “The definition and practice of war and the definition and practice of mass murder,” I wrote last year, “have eerie congruencies. We divide and slice the human race; some people become the enemy, not in a personal but merely an abstract sense — ‘them’ — and we lavish a staggering...

No, EPA’s New Regulations Are Not Going To Make The Poor Poorer

June 14, 2014
No, EPA’s New Regulations Are Not Going To Make The Poor Poorer

JEFF SPROSS - “The notion that we’re going to have poor people suffering because this measure is pushing up their electric bill is just nonsense. There’s literally nothing to support that.” That’s Dean Baker, a prominent Washington, D.C. economist and the co-founder of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, reacting to the argument...

An Inconvenient Truth: U.S. Proposed Emission Cuts Too Little Too Late

June 12, 2014
An Inconvenient Truth: U.S. Proposed Emission Cuts Too Little Too Late

KEVIN ANDERSON - While the science and math around 2°C provides an unequivocal basis for radical reductions in emissions from wealthier nations, the politics continues to deliver grand but ultimately ineffectual gestures. Politically Obama’s proposal is certainly courageous and one for which he deserves credit. But scientifically, the 30% target and the collective acquiescence...

An Assault in Obama’s Escalating War on Journalism

June 11, 2014
An Assault in Obama’s Escalating War on Journalism

NORMAN SOLOMON - The Freedom of the Press Foundation calls the government’s effort to force Risen to reveal a source “one of the most significant press freedom cases in decades.”

GMO Ban Passes in Jackson & Josephine Counties

June 10, 2014

NORTHWEST CENTER FOR ALTERNATIVES TO PESTICIDES - Voters in Jackson and Josephine Counties of Oregon took a huge step three weeks ago when they voted to ban cultivation of genetically modified crops in their counties. They overcame out-of-state spending led by Monsanto and Syngenta that amounted to about $1 million (or almost $10 for...

Global Climate Change and Nuclear Abolition: One Urgent Issue

June 9, 2014
Global Climate Change and Nuclear Abolition: One Urgent Issue

WINSLOW MYERS - The two-in-one of climate change and nuclear abolition is not something to be addressed after supposedly more immediate brush-fires are extinguished; by viewing it instead as a single challenge, an opportunity for cooperative prevention based in planetary self-interest, success will become a model for resolving more local conflicts without violence.

President of Prestigious Colleges Explains Why Divestment Makes Urgent Sense

June 8, 2014
President of Prestigious Colleges Explains Why Divestment Makes Urgent Sense

JAMES LAWRENCE POWELL - Humans have already emitted enough CO2 to ensure that global warming will not end in the lifetime of any person reading this essay. As the years and decades go by and its effects become ever more dire, global warming will grow into a perennial campus issue. It is not going...

Nonviolent Resistance Continues on Jeju, the Peace Island in Korea

June 7, 2014
Nonviolent Resistance Continues on Jeju, the Peace Island in Korea

KATHY KELLY - Jeju Island, South Korea – For the past two weeks , I’ve been in the Republic of Korea (ROK), as a guest of peace activists living in Gangjeong Village on ROK’s Jeju Island. Gangjeong is one of the ROK’s smallest villages, yet activists here, in their...

The Climate Is Invading the Earth!

June 5, 2014
The Climate Is Invading the Earth!

DAVID SWANSON - If an alien invader with a face were attacking the earth, the difficulties that governments have getting populations to support wars on other humans would be multiplied a thousand fold. The most common response to officials calling some petty foreign despot "a new Hitler" would shift from "yeah, right" to...

The Practical Choice: An Economy That’s Working for a Few or Many

June 4, 2014
The Practical Choice: An Economy That’s Working for a Few or Many

ROBERT REICH - For years Americans have assumed that our hard-charging capitalism is better than the soft-hearted version found in Canada and Europe. American capitalism might be a bit crueler but it generates faster growth and higher living standards overall. Canada’s and Europe’s “welfare-state socialism” is doomed.

How is the Use of Fossil Fuel Like Slavery?

June 1, 2014
How is the Use of Fossil Fuel Like Slavery?

ROBERT C. KOEHLER - The money system we live under, as Charles Eisenstein points out in his book Sacred Economics, is backed by growth: the necessity for more money. It’s called profit. We understand wealth, then, to be not a state of spiritual balance with ourselves and our environment, but as something that endlessly...

The Art of Satyagraha (Gandhian Nonviolence)

May 30, 2014
The Art of Satyagraha (Gandhian Nonviolence)

David Swanson - Michael Nagler has just published The Nonviolence Handbook: A Guide for Practical Action, a quick book to read and a long one to digest, a book that's rich in a way that people of a very different inclination bizarrely imagine Sun Tzu's to be. That is, rather than a collection...

Your Doctors Are Worried About Nukes

May 28, 2014
Your Doctors Are Worried About Nukes

LAWRENCE WITTNER - Your doctors are worried about your health―in fact, about your very survival. No, they’re not necessarily your own personal physicians, but, rather, medical doctors around the world, represented by groups like International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW). As you might recall, that organization, composed of many thousands...

On Memorial Day Let’s Remember That War is Hell

May 26, 2014
On Memorial Day Let’s Remember That War is Hell

JOHN LAFORGE - Benjamin Franklin said there never was a good war or a bad peace, but you’d never know it from Memorial Day in the United States.

Why I Don’t Want to See the Drone Memo

May 25, 2014
Why I Don’t Want to See the Drone Memo

DAVID SWANSON - A president is not legally allowed to invent criteria for killing people. Never mind that he doesn't meet his own criteria. We should not be so indecent or so lawless as to engage in such a conversation. We should not want to see the blood-soaked memo.

Time to Wake Up – Replace Violence with Nonviolence

May 24, 2014
Time to Wake Up – Replace Violence with Nonviolence

MICHAEL N. NAGLER - Maybe a kind of awakening is beginning. Former New York Mayor Bloomberg is setting up a $50 million fund to counteract some of the political muscle of the NRA, which is an interesting first step. But most politicians, when in office, are apparently unprepared to listen to this...

Delegation to Korea, Vietnam Reveals Need to End All War

May 23, 2014
Delegation to Korea, Vietnam Reveals Need to End All War

DAVID HARTSOUGH - I recently returned from three weeks in Korea and Vietnam, countries which have in the past and are still suffering from the ravages of war.

Georgia School Shooting: Bookkeeper Uses Nonviolence to Protect Everyone

May 22, 2014

MATT SMITH - As the kids trooped back into the suburban Atlanta elementary school that was stormed by a gunman on Tuesday, August 20, 2013, everyone was talking about Antoinette Tuff. The bookkeeper, an eight-year veteran of the DeKalb County school district, talked suspect Michael Brandon Hill into surrendering after a brief standoff with...

What To Tell People When They Say We Should Use the Military

May 20, 2014
What To Tell People When They Say We Should Use the Military

LAWRENCE S. WITTNER - Is overwhelming national military power a reliable source of influence in world affairs? If so, the United States should certainly have plenty of influence today. For decades, it has been the world’s Number 1 military spender. And it continues in this role.

Olympic Capitalism: Bread and Circuses Without the Bread

May 18, 2014
Olympic Capitalism: Bread and Circuses Without the Bread

DAVID SWANSON - The author of Brazil's Dance With the Devil, Dave Zirin, must love sports, as I do, as billions of us do, or he wouldn't keep writing about where sports have gone wrong. But, wow, have they gone wrong!

Gay Pride Group Honors Manning; Ousts Pro-Corporate and Pro-Military Leaders

May 16, 2014

"JOEY" - The message below was sent by Joey, a member of the San Francisco Pride Board. Please circulate and go on-line to add your comments and support on the sites listed. This victory comes as a result of months of insurrection in support of Manning inside the SF Pride movement, resulting in the...

Who Says Disaster is Inevitable?

May 14, 2014
Who Says Disaster is Inevitable?

K.C. GOLDEN - Having aligned myself against a battalion of seemingly irresistible forces over the years, I've become a student of "inevitability." How do environmentally destructive choices become inevitable? Near as I can tell, it starts when the people who will benefit from these choices simply begin to assert their inevitability. We're especially receptive...

Veterans’ Violence Is An Uncounted Cost of War

May 13, 2014
Veterans’ Violence Is An Uncounted Cost of War

PRITAM K. ROHILA, PhD. - Unprovoked shootings at Fort Hood by army personnel in 2009, and 2014, require serious discussion. The truth is that young men and women who are trained to kill and destroy the "enemy" sometimes turn against their own colleagues, members of their families and community, and even themselves!

Georgia OKs “Guns Everywhere” Bill

May 12, 2014
Georgia OKs “Guns Everywhere” Bill

SCOTT NEUMAN - Georgians will now be able to carry firearms in such places as schools, bars, churches and government buildings under a sweeping new law signed by the governor on Wednesday.