By Steven Youngblood

Director, Center for Global Peace Journalism, Park University

Author, Professor Komagum

They serve their country while selflessly putting themselves in harm’s way.

No, they’re not first responders…

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There's a new Atrocity Prevention Board in town, and its chief tool for preventing atrocities will be . . . wait for it . . . atrocities! 

What a breakthrough! And this clown is forming a tentative life partnership with an unbelievably beautiful model from Libya.  The key word is "unbelievably." 

The Atrocity Prevention Board is rumored to…

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By Steven Youngblood



The publication of photos and videos of Gaddafi’s demise raise a number of peace-journalism related issues.



I asked my Park University students if they would print or post graphic photos or video of dead Gaddafi. Some said yes, some no. I asked them to be thoughtful and deliberate in their choice, regardless of whether they would publish the photos/video or not. I also asked the student-journalists to consider the consequences of their actions.…

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Barely six months into 2011 and I can hardly stand the excitement.  The Arab Spring; the crumbling of the peace process; elections across Africa followed by…well…. massacres across Africa then followed by unprecedented international interventions – not to mention the hunt down of the number one “Wanted” man in the world much to the dismay of warmongers who will now have to brand and market super monster 2.0 to keep their jobs in a multi billion dollar industry.

Some have quietly…

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On Wednesday in federal court, 10 members of the U.S. Congress sued President Obama in an attempt to end U.S. involvement in a war in Libya.



These are the plaintiffs: Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), Walter Jones (R-NC), Howard Coble (R-NC), John Duncan (R-TN), Roscoe Bartlett (R-MD), John Conyers (D-MI), Ron Paul (R-TX), Michael Capuano (D-MA), Tim Johnson (R-IL), and Dan Burton (R-IN).



According to a statement from Congressman Kucinich:



"The lawsuit calls for injunctive and… Continue

If the U.S. Constitution says one thing, a treaty ratified by the United States says another, a law passed by Congress yet another, and another law passed by Congress another thing still, while a signing statement radically changes that last law but itself differs with an executive order, all of which statements of law conflict with a number of memos drafted by the Office of Legal Council (some secret and some leaked), but a President has announced that the law is something completely different… Continue

President Obama on Monday said he would "never hesitate" to use the U.S. military "unilaterally" to defend "interests" and "values," including "maintaining the flow of commerce." Fear of exactly that led the founders of this republic to give Congress the exclusive power to declare war. James Madison did not believe any single individual could be trusted with such power:

"The strongest passions and most dangerous weaknesses of the human breast, ambition, avarice, vanity, the honorable…

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Congress held an emergency meeting to defund NPR, and then did nothing as the President spent vastly more money on bombing Libya.  President Obama didn't have to ask for the funding, because the Pentagon had enough lying around for just such an occasion.



A fundamental lie that keeps war going is the idea that we avoid war by preparing for it. "Speak softly and carry a big stick," said Theodore Roosevelt, who favored building a big military just in case, but of course not actually using… Continue

Wouldn't it be kind and generous of us to send the US or NATO or a UN-approved military into Libya to bloodlessly prevent the vicious slaughter of masses of people by a truly evil lunatic?

Would it?

In a study called "Why Civil Resistance Works," Maria Stephan and Erica Chenoweth examined major uses of violence and nonviolence against tyrannical governments around the world between 1900 and 2006. They found that violence succeeded 26 percent of the time. I think they were…

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