By IPN Coordinator
August 7, 2025 persons observed the annual event in Des Moines of remembering the innocent lives lost in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. That week marked 80 years from the bombings. About forty gathered at the Japanese Bell on the Iowa state capitol grounds. Persons came together and led traditional parts of the program.
By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, August 2, 2025
Reprinted with permission; first published: https://worldbeyondwar.org/no-nuking-cities-did-not-save-lives/
It’s oddly encouraging that the New York Post had to bring up its kookiest rightwing propagandist on Friday to argue that nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved lives. It’s almost as if the New York Times’ kookiest rightwing propagandist’s claiming that killing Palestinians is not genocide had to be one-upped by the Post. It’s even more encouraging that the Post felt obliged to expand the usual definition of “lives” to include the lives of Japanese people, claiming that nuking people saved not only U.S. lives but also Japanese lives — an argument it would have been very hard to find even being attempted during the early decades of this myth.
By FCNL (Friends Committee on National Legislation) Reprinted with permission; First published for FCNL weekly newsletter, July 25, 2025
At least 21 children have reportedly died of malnutrition in recent days. Many more are at risk without urgent medical aid.
By Tafadzwa Chikawa; reprinted with permission; first published
for United Methodist Church, Church and Society
(Church and Society Note:
Church and Society welcomes guest writer Tafadzwa Chikawa, recent
graduate of Africa University in Mutare, Zimbabwe and Church and Society Intern
working from Zimbabwe. Tafadzwa has agreed to write a series of articles on
social justice concerns in Mutare, Zimbabwe.)
Growing up in Mutare, Zimbabwe, I came to understand poverty not as a distant concept but as an everyday struggle experienced by people I knew and served. As a youth leader in the United Methodist Church’s King David Circuit, I was raised in a community that emphasized faith in action. Through this foundation, I was shaped by our church’s consistent outreach work, particularly to Gwese Circuit, a rural United Methodist congregation in Mutare Rural District.
By Kathy Kelly
Reprinted with permission; first published for World BEYOND War, June 19, 2025; https://worldbeyondwar.org/thirsting-for-justice-under-empire/
“To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles, they
call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace.” – Tacitus,
recorded in Agricola, 98 AD
Here in NYC, while participating in a Veterans for Peace and Allies forty day “Fast for Gaza,” we’ve felt horror over reports of Gazans deliberately deprived, in a mass starvation campaign, of water. Even if they survive the attacks on food distribution sites and manage to obtain a box containing lentils and flour, how will they prepare food without water?
By Destiny Magnett
June 10, 2025
By David Swanson, reprinted with permission; first published
for World BEYOND War, May 22, 2025
By Hannah Breckbill
Reprinted with permission; first published Feb. 19, 2025 for Humble Hands Harvest. See Blog: www.humblehandsharvest.substack.com
For the past couple of weeks I’ve been spending my days with the same 6 fellow volunteers on a farm near Bethlehem in Palestine. Five of them are from Europe and in their 60s and 70s and the other is my age and from Australia. All of them are delightful and impressive and committed and kind. Two have lived in income-sharing intentional communities. Three are active on climate justice, participating in big direct actions in European capitols. One is a Christian theologian by training, another an electrical engineer, another an interior designer. Another spent a big portion of his life as a squatter. I am a farmer.
By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, April 11, 2025;
reprinted with permission
https://worldbeyondwar.org/vietnam-truth-and-reconciliation-50-years-later/
Approaching 50 years since the end of the American War, as the Vietnamese call it, and something over 70 years since the start of it, depending when you start the clock, truth and reconciliation remain incomplete. I don’t mean for the people of Vietnam, who seem, from what little I know, in general to have a better grasp of both truth and reconciliation than the U.S. government or corporate media. I also don’t mean truth and reconciliation between governments, which really don’t traffic in either. I mean truth and reconciliation within the United States.
By IPN Coordinator
What has become an annual observance, a Palm Sunday Procession and Service for Peace was held Sunday, April 13, at the New Beginnings Christian Church in Urbandale. Walkers gathered at 2:40 pm and were given palms if they had not already brought some, and signs were offered which read different Scriptures or spiritual sayings, related to Jesus coming in peace and teaching peace.
