
I was on RT, Russia’s 24/7 English-language news channel, today to talk about the news that the US has stepped up its covert war in Yemen in recent weeks with increased strikes by fighter jets and armed drones. Click here to watch the video.

I was on RT, Russia’s 24/7 English-language news channel, today to talk about the news that the US has stepped up its covert war in Yemen in recent weeks with increased strikes by fighter jets and armed drones. Click here to watch the video.
March 25, 2011
Waging Nonviolence, Common Dreams, The Indypendent
One of the arguments that is being forwarded by proponents of military intervention in Libya is that Qaddafi is literally crazy and therefore cannot be reasoned with or expected to step down without force.
In an article for Tikkun, entitled “Libya: Acid Test for Nonviolence?,” Metta Center for Nonviolence president Michael Nagler, who I deeply respect and have personally learned a great deal from, makes an argument for war along these lines:
We in the nonviolence field will recognize this as a “madman with a sword” analogy. Gandhi said flatly that if a madman is raging through a village with a sword (read: assault rifle — or Glock Automatic) he who “dispatches the lunatic” will have done the community (and even the poor lunatic) a favor. Here are Gandhi’s exact words, from The Hindu, 1926:
Taking life may be a duty…. Suppose a man runs amok and goes furiously about, sword in hand, and killing anyone that comes in his way, and no one dares capture him alive. Anyone who dispatches this lunatic will earn the gratitude of the community and be regarded as a benevolent man.
Later in the piece, he goes on to say essentially that in this “acid test” for nonviolence, nonviolence has come up short.
Our options are very thin because we have not explored more creative options than brute force, which always operates after conflict has already flared. Military intervention is now the least bad solution from the point of view of nonviolence, but it is bad. What else is left to us?
To be honest, I was very disappointed to read this. Military intervention can by definition never be a solution from the point of view of nonviolence. Killing people is not nonviolent.
It has truly been amazing that so many progressives, even in the nonviolence world, have given up on nonviolence so quickly, especially on the heels of the incredible victories for nonviolent action in Tunisia and Egypt. Can anyone argue that Libyans or the international community really exhausted every nonviolent alternative in the last few weeks?
“People try nonviolence for a week,” as Theodore Roszak says, “and when it ‘doesn’t work’ they go back to violence, which hasn’t worked for centuries.”

I was on Russia Today (RT), Russia’s 24/7 English-language news channel, to discuss ex-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s role in the Iraq war and the use of torture on the day that his new memoir Known and Unknown was released. Click here to watch the video.
On January 7, I spoke at this great event at All Souls Unitarian Church in New York with Kathy Kelly and Mike Ferner about our trip to Afghanistan in December.
Here is a link to an hour-long radio interview I did on The New Movement with Roy Beckham on WAZU 90.7FM in Peoria, IL, on January 12.
And the local CBS affiliate in Peoria, WMBD, also did a short segment on the evening news about my trip on January 16. While the piece was well done overall, they did attribute a couple positive lines to me about the US military helping rebuild the country and restructure the Afghan government that I clearly did not say, which is really sloppy, unethical journalism. Hope you enjoy.
June 5, 2010
CelebityDialogue: Which news publications do you write for?
Eric: I’ve written for The Guardian, Mother Jones, The Nation, Huffington Post and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, among others.
CelebityDialogue: What is your beat?
Eric: I don’t have one beat in any traditional sense. My interests are quite varied. I generally critique US foreign policy, our outrageous military budget, the privatization of war, including the use of mercenaries, and the growing use of robotics, both on the ground and in the air, in modern warfare. I also regularly write about nonviolent movements around the world for Waging Nonviolence, a blog that I helped start last year.
CelebityDialogue: What would you say to the critics who may view your writing as mostly anti-government?
Eric: I would say that would be an inaccurate way of characterizing my work. I’m not against all government. I’m against government that is destructive, dysfunctional and unresponsive to the will of the people, and that’s unfortunately where we’re at in the United States. On issue after issue the policies of the US government are in direct opposition to the demands of social and economic justice. To take just one example, we spend upwards of a trillion dollars every year on the Pentagon and war while tens of millions of Americans live in poverty and have no access to health care. That is immoral and unacceptable.
CelebityDialogue: Have you ever been labeled “unpatriotic”?
Eric: I’m sure many people have thought I’m unpatriotic. And truth be told, that doesn’t really bother me. While some on the Left like to make the case that dissent or peace is patriotic, that argument has never really moved me. Appeals to patriotism I’ve found are generally made to stifle free thought and to get people to conform to the status quo.
I don’t think anyone should put the interests of their country above those of any other. Instead, we need to realize that all borders are artificial lines and that we are all part of the same human family. If we saw the average Pakistani as no different and of no less value than our brother or sister, we would never be able to bomb them. Patriotism, like nationalism, is a bankrupt concept that has led to untold suffering and death.
August 14, 2009
The Guardian, Huffington Post, Yahoo! News, Common Dreams, ZNet

Daniel Fitzsimons
It would be nice to celebrate the recent withdrawal of the remaining British troops from Iraq as the end of the UK’s direct involvement in the military occupation there. But such festivities would unfortunately be premature.
The killing last Sunday in Baghdad’s Green Zone of two armed contractors working for the London-based mercenary firm ArmorGroup by another British contractor from the company, serves as a grim reminder that Brits are still deeply involved in the prosecution of the war.
In fact, with no countries officially left in the so-called “coalition of the willing”, contractors are now playing a more important role than ever, as the Obama administration begins to slowly scale back the war in Iraq.
In June, a Pentagon report revealed that there are still 132,610 contractors in Iraq — effectively doubling the size of the occupation — and that the use of armed “private security contractors” in the country actually increased by 23% during the second quarter of 2009.
The US Defense Department doesn’t break down its data by nationality, but the report does specify that there are 60,244 “third country nationals”, or contractors that are neither American nor Iraqi, on the payroll in Iraq. Therefore, the number of British citizens that are part of this shadow army is likely in the thousands.
Sunday’s shooting should also dispel the myth, if anyone still believes it, that incidents like this are somehow avoidable. Unlike its competitors Dyncorp, Triple Canopy and Blackwater, whose outrageous scandals continue to mount, ArmorGroup has with few exceptions managed to steer clear of negative press.
Moreover, the company has been an outspoken advocate for more rigorous vetting of armed contractors and for greater outside regulation of the industry as a whole. Back in 2005, for example, an ArmorGroup spokesman said: “We are demanding regulation. It is extraordinary that … any Joe Public can get a Kalashnikov and work with a security company abroad. This is an issue of accountability.”
But when ArmorGroup hired Daniel Fitzsimons, who shot his two co-workers during a scuffle after a late night of drinking, the obvious warning signs were not heeded.
In 2007, Fitzsimons was fired and fined $3,000 for “extreme negligence” by Aegis, another British mercenary firm in Iraq, headed by the notorious Tim Spicer, after only a few months on the job. Colleagues said that he had a history of violent conduct and had “been a loose cannon for years”.
Not surprisingly, Fitzsimons was also apparently traumatized by his experiences in war. On his Facebook and MySpace profiles he wrote about the challenges of the “war inside your head” and his constant use of alcohol and drugs to numb the pain.
“When I come home from each rotation I give my liver, kidneys and brain cells a good hiding to teach them a lesson, and to help me achieve this I get as wasted as possible at every opportunity,” he wrote. “Remember reality is a condition caused by lack of drugs.”
ArmorGroup apparently did not pick up on these red flags, however, perhaps because such personal problems are likely par for the course when you enter the world of mercenaries. “Violent conduct” isn’t a worrisome trait, but in the end what these security contractors are trained to do.
Hence, just as the “laws of war” have not stopped soldiers from torturing and committing war crimes, no amount of internal vetting or government regulation of the mercenary industry — even with the best of intentions — will be able to stop such tragedies from happening again.