Chris Woods' excellent new book is called Sudden Justice: America's Secret Drone Wars. The title comes from a claim that then-President George W. Bush made for drone wars. The book actually tells a story of gradual injustice. The path from a U.S. government that condemned as criminal the type of murder that drones are used for to one that treats such killings as perfectly legal and routine has been a very gradual and completely extra-legal process.

Drone murders started in October 2001 and, typically enough, the first strike murdered the wrong people. The blame game involved a struggle for control among the Air Force, CENTCOM, and the CIA. The absurdity of the struggle might be brought out by modifying the "Imagine you're a deer" speech in the movie My Cousin Vinny: Imagine you're an Iraqi. You're walking along, you get thirsty, you stop for a drink of cool clear water... BAM! A fuckin missile rips you to shreds. Your brains are hanging on a tree in little bloody pieces! Now I ask ya. Would you give a fuck which agency the son of a bitch who shot you was working for?

“Sir, you are an idiot.”

Wow, an insult wrapped in such old-fashioned politeness. I let the words hover and reach, as I always do, for peace: that is to say, for clarity, connection, common humanity.

Last week I raised the idea of unarmed policing, as practiced in half a dozen countries around the world. I wasn’t calling for immediate gun surrender but, rather, the diversion of human energy away from short-sighted, violent responses to conflict situations — at pretty much every level of society, from interpersonal to geopolitical — and to the complex, courageous, creative task of building a culture of peace.

Being called an idiot for making such a plea is to be expected, of course — it happens all the time, and I relish it because it means my words have reached people on the other side of the great political divide. That’s what building peace is all about.

Fair Food‬ friends and allies gathered on Monday, April 20th at 11:30am to support the Ohio State Student/Farmworker Alliance and Coalition of Immokalee Workers' Boycott on Wendy's! The crowd wanted to show Wendy's that Ohio Fair Food will not stop till they sign the ‪#Fair Food Program‬.

BANGKOK, Thailand -- The U.S. did not meet Thai military officials in
Hawaii during March to plan their 2016 multinational military training
exercise and instead indefinitely postponed future contact, signaling
an ongoing rift between the two allies after Gen. Prayuth Chan-ocha
seized power in a coup last year.

"Decisions concerning the exercise will be made over the course of the
next months in consultations with Thailand, the co-host of the
exercise, and other participating countries," said a statement issued
by the U.S. Pacific Command (USPACOM) and the U.S. Embassy in Bangkok,
according to Stars and Stripes which is an authorized Department of
Defense news outlet.

"The United States has indefinitely postponed a planning meeting with
Thailand for next year's Cobra Gold exercise, a decision that comes
months after the U.S. scaled down its part in one of the world's
largest multinational military events," Stars and Stripes reported
from Tokyo on April 16.

Shortly after the U.S.-Thai meeting fell through, Gen. Prayuth

"It's bad enough to be creating more profit incentive for war," I told former head of Blackwater Erik Prince, "but you recycle part of the profits as bribes for more war in the form of so-called campaign contributions. You yourself have given hundreds of thousands of dollars to political parties and candidates. The three of you," I said, referring to Prince, another guest, and the host of a television show that had just finished filming and was taking questions from the audience, "you seem to agree that we need either mercenaries or a draft, ignoring the option of not having these wars, which kill so many people, make us less safe, drain the economy, destroy the natural environment, and erode our civil liberties, with no upside. But this systemic pressure has been created for more war. Will you, Erik Prince, commit to not spending war profits on elections?"