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David Swanson is the author of "When the World Outlawed War," "War Is A Lie" and "Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union." He blogs at http://davidswanson.org and http://warisacrime.org and works for the online activist organization http://rootsaction.org
Sunday, January 29, 2017(2 comments)
War and Peace in Trump Time: A World Beyond Arlington
And here comes Trump saying he'll torture, saying he'll steal oil, saying he'll kill families, and stepping right into more power than any human has ever held before, as ill prepared to handle it as perhaps any human to ever have reached the age of 70.
Friday, January 27, 2017(25 comments)
Does Rachel Maddow Want Russia Bombed?
Here's why I ask. Maddow devotes many minutes on MSNBC stirring up hatred of Russia in order to establish that there is a vague possibility that President Donald Trump might be corrupted by a foreign government.
But that's already established beyond any doubt.
Tuesday, January 24, 2017(24 comments)
The War Horror Has Begun
Here we are on Day 5 of the Donald Trump presidency, and he's got "special" forces of the U.S. military in two-thirds of the world's nations. He's engaged in serious occupation and/or bombing campaigns in Iraq, Libya, Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen. He just sent malicious robot airplanes armed with missiles to blow to pieces a bunch of vaguely-identified but never indicted "criminals" in Yemen.
Tuesday, January 24, 2017 Talk Nation Radio: Sarah Van Gelder on The Revolution Where You Live
As co-founder of Yes! Magazine, Sarah van Gelder leads the framing and development of each issue of Yes! and writes a column introducing each issue. Sarah blogs at Yes! and Huffington Post, writes articles and does interviews for Yes! Magazine, and speaks on leading-edge innovations that show that another world is not only possible, it is being created. Her new book is called The Revolution Where You Live.
Tuesday, January 24, 2017(1 comments)
Be Glad the White House Comment Line Is Closed
The White House comment phone line directs people to kindly go away and think about what losers they are. Oops, sorry, I mean it directs people not to leave any comments. Instead it says to use a White House web form or to send a message through a White House Facebook account (which has no messaging capability). I'm not inclined to use the web form, because I doubt anyone reads it and I'd rather not be added to an email list.
Monday, January 23, 2017(1 comments)
The So-Called Intelligence So-Called Community's Dumb Isolated View of the Future
Thank you to Tom Engelhardt for pointing out that the people who couldn't predict the end of the Soviet Union, the crimes of 9-11, the decency of numerous whistleblowers, the election of Donald Trump, the likelihood that utilities in Vermont would point out that they had not been hacked by Russians, or -- I'm willing to bet -- the timing of rush hour in Northern Virginia, have just predicted the shape of the future of all.
Sunday, January 22, 2017(7 comments)
Why Impeach Donald Trump
What are the grounds for impeachment?
They will likely be piling up rapidly. President Trump did use Day 1 to advise the CIA that the United States should have stolen all of Iraq's oil. But here is a place to start. We already have a president who is violating two clauses in the U.S. Constitution, one forbidding any gifts or benefits from foreign governments, the other forbidding the same from the U.S. or states.
Tuesday, January 17, 2017 Talk Nation Radio: Antonia Juhasz on Tillerson, Trump, and Oil
Antonia Juhasz is an energy analyst, author, and investigative reporter. She recently wrote a profile of Donald Trump's nominee for Secretary of State Rex Tillerson for In These Times magazine. We discuss Tillerson and the oil spill he floated in on.
Thursday, January 12, 2017(1 comments)
Imagine the Confirmation Hearing for Secretary of Peace
The idea has been floated and endlessly reintroduced in legislation since the founding of the United States of creating a Department of Peace. These efforts even resulted in 1986 in the creation of the USI"P" -- the U.S. Institute of "Peace" which this week held events with Lindsey Graham, Tom Cotton, Madeleine Albright, Chuck Hagel, William Perry, Stephen Hadley, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Susan Rice, John Kerry, and Michael Flynn,
Monday, January 9, 2017 Talk Nation Radio: Millions Lose Their Minds Over Russia
This week on Talk Nation Radio: millions of Americans lose their everloving minds over unproven accusations against Russia, the ACLU and CAIR publish claim that war on Iraq has been to protect the U.S. Bill of Rights, and a torture report gets buried.
Sunday, January 8, 2017(16 comments)
Allegations Against Russia Less Credible Every Day
The U.S. government has now generated numerous news stories and released multiple "reports" aimed at persuading us that Vladimir Putin is to blame for Donald Trump becoming president. U.S. media has dutifully informed us that the case has been made. What has been made is the case for writing your own news coverage.
Friday, January 6, 2017(1 comments)
Why Release the Torture Report Now
Some people in the United States would maintain that environmental and climate policy should be based on facts. Some other people (there is very little overlap between the two groups) would tell you that U.S. policy toward Russia should be based on proven facts. Yet, here we are readily accepting that U.S. torture policy will be based on burying the facts.
Wednesday, January 4, 2017(1 comments)
Yes, Positivity, Pangloss, Partisanship, Propaganda, and Populism
Eight years ago Yes! Magazine published a political platform of progressive policies, along with polling showing strong majority support for each proposal. Now, eight years later, we can show almost total failure to advance any of the proposals, most of which were focused on the U.S. federal government.
Monday, January 2, 2017(4 comments)
Fantasies About Russia Could Doom Opposition to Trump
To many Democrats for whom killing a million people in Iraq just didn't rise to the level of an impeachable offense, and who considered Obama's bombing of eight nations and the creation of the drone murder program to be praiseworthy, Trump will be impeachable on Day 1.
Friday, December 30, 2016(4 comments)
ACLU & CAIR Use Gold Star Father to Claim War on Iraq Was for Bill of Rights
Are you old enough to remember when liberal groups openly admitted that the war on Iraq was illegal and fraudulent, based on oil and profit and sadism?
Well, can you recall when the proponents of the war claimed it was a defense against nonexistent ties to terrorists and nonexistent weapons?
Even if you've wiped those memories, let me assure you, NOBODY ever claimed that attacking and destroying Iraq was necessary to ...
Wednesday, December 28, 2016 To Weapons Dealers, Laws Are Decorative Holiday Ornaments
You might be forgiven for imagining that laws are serious things. When you violate them, you can be locked in a cage for decades. That's not true for big-time weapons dealers like the U.S. government.
Tuesday, December 27, 2016(1 comments)
Resolved: To Find Peace Advocates in Every Nation
From all around the globe, nearly 50,000 people have signed this statement:
I understand that wars and militarism make us less safe rather than protect us, that they kill, injure and traumatize adults, children and infants, severely damage the natural environment, erode civil liberties, and drain our economies, siphoning resources from life-affirming activities. I commit to engage in and support nonviolent efforts to end...
Thursday, December 22, 2016(3 comments)
Yes, Dubya, Now I Miss You
When George W. Bush made the case for attacking and destroying the nation of Iraq, he made claims that, if true, would have justified nothing. And he proposed as evidence for those claims fraudulent, implausible, and even ridiculous pieces of information. But he was expected to produce evidence. There was no assumption that he should simply be taken on faith.
Sunday, December 18, 2016 Monday Morning Bernie Backing
It's worth thinking for a moment what could have been done differently.
Sunday, December 18, 2016 What Racist Registries Look Like
A new large photo book has just been published called Un-American: The Incarceration of Japanese Americans During World War II.
Friday, December 9, 2016 Military Recruiting in the United States, and Planning its Decline and Fall
Most people in the United States are far from aware of the full extent of military marketing, advertising, and recruitment efforts. We run into movies and comic books and video games and toys and school worksheets and science fairs and television shows and websites all the time that have been funded by and created in collaboration with the U.S. military.
Friday, December 9, 2016(1 comments)
Black and Foreign Lives Matter: Ending Gun Violence Requires Ending War
Happy Human Rights Day, and what ever happened to the right to life?
We need to stop imagining that when wars come home to the land of their creators that the suffering created is something separate from war. And we need to stop imagining that racist cruelty at home doesn't fuel the distant wars.
Tuesday, December 6, 2016 Talk Nation Radio: Chip Gibbons on Anti-Russia Committee and Censoring Criticism of Israel
Chip Gibbons is the Policy and Legislative Counsel for the Bill of Rights Defense Committee. He is also a writer whose work has been featured in Jacobin, Truthout, and Counterpunch. We discuss U.S. Congressional efforts to censor criticism of the Israeli government, and to create a new McCarthyite Anti-Russia Committee.
Monday, December 5, 2016(2 comments)
New Rogue Anti-Russia Committee Created in "Intelligence" Act
I don't know why we didn't pick playing with live electrical wires and call that "intelligence" instead of the stuff we do. I think I'll stick with calling what the U.S. government does "counter-intelligence." So, here's the latest from the counter-intelligence community.
Sunday, December 4, 2016 Give Wes Bellamy a Break
Charlottesville City Council Member Wes Bellamy is being widely denounced for tweets he tweeted years ago. I think he should be given a break.
Wednesday, November 30, 2016(4 comments)
75 Years of Pearl Harbor Lies
Pearl Harbor Day today is like Columbus Day 50 years ago. That is to say: most people still believe the hype. The myths are still maintained in their blissful unquestioned state. "New Pearl Harbors" are longed for by war makers, claimed, and exploited. Yet the original Pearl Harbor remains the most popular U.S. argument for all things military, including the long-delayed remilitarization of Japan.
Wednesday, November 23, 2016 Solving Abusive International Relationships
There's a chapter in a new book by Dorothie and Martin Hellman called A New Map for Relationships that outlines seven international relationships between the United States and others in which many people in the United States have not understood their government's abusive behavior. This chapter alone is worth the price of the book.
Monday, November 21, 2016 Dear Mr. Trump, About Your 29 Ideas
Regarding your 29 proposals, here's a bit more than just the ranking you asked for. I'll start with the best:
Monday, November 21, 2016(1 comments)
James Mattis Is a Secretary of Offense
Donald Trump says he wants to stop overthrowing governments and turn toward peace. But not only does he also say he wants to increase the military spending that produces more wars, but he's considering for Secretary of so-called Defense someone whose entire outlook is offensive in every sense of the word.
Monday, November 21, 2016 Talk Nation Radio: Greg Palast on Stripping 7 Million Voters from Rolls, Swinging Election
Greg Palast is an investigative reporter, whose news-breaking stories appear on BBC Television and in The Guardian and Rolling Stone Magazine. Palast has released a new movie: The Best Democracy Money Can Buy: A Tale of Billionaires and Ballot Bandits, based on his books. Palast says that the recent U.S. election was in fact rigged. We discuss how.
Friday, November 18, 2016 Born on Home Plate
Remember the satirical "Billionaires for Bush" protesters? Around this time in 2008 I asked them to become Oligarchs for Obama, and they refused. But I predict Tycoons for Trump will be born this month. Inequality, like war and climate destruction, has its face now.
Thursday, November 17, 2016(1 comments)
Another $11.6 Billion for Obama/Trump Wars? Hell No!
President Obama waited until after the election last week to propose an unpopular idea. He asked Congress for $11.6 billion extra -- outside the huge existing military budget -- for wars. Here's his letter including all the gory details. Please read it yourself when you begin to hope that I'm making up some of what follows.
Thursday, November 17, 2016(3 comments)
Michael Flynn Should Remember Truths He Blurted Out Last Year
Michael Flynn, expected to advise Donald Trump on counterproductive killing operations misleading labeled "national security," is generally depicted as a lawless torturer and assassin. But, whether for partisan reasons or otherwise, he's a lawless torturer and assassin who has blurted out some truths he shouldn't be allowed to forget.
Wednesday, November 16, 2016(3 comments)
The Skeletons in Keith Ellison's Display Case
Congressman Keith Ellison, candidate of progressive Democrats and many regressive Democrats for chair of the Democratic National Committee, eagerly urged the illegal and disastrous violent overthrow of the government of Libya in 2011, which he celebrated as a success despite what it meant for the rule of law, despite all the death and suffering, despite the predictable instability and weapons proliferation to follow.
Tuesday, November 15, 2016(3 comments)
Talk Nation Radio: Jonathan Simon on How Machines May Have Counted Our Votes Wrong
Jonathan Simon is author of CODE RED: Computerized Election Theft and The New American Century. He serves as Executive Director of Election Defense Alliance, a nonprofit organization founded in 2006 to restore observable vote counting and electoral integrity as the basis of American democracy.
Saturday, November 12, 2016(3 comments)
Un-Trump the World
A couple of dozen young people marched back and forth through downtown Charlottesville, Virginia, Saturday evening shouting "Love Not Hate!" and "No Human Being Is Illegal!" and "Black Lives Matter!" and similar anti-Trump inspired slogans.
Friday, November 11, 2016(5 comments)
A Good Time to Review Bush's War Crimes
I'll be speaking at the upcoming Iraq Tribunal about war lies of 2002-2003 vintage. I'm nostalgic for the days when presidents had to lie to Congress and the public and obtain some modicum of support before bombing a foreign country.
Thursday, November 10, 2016(1 comments)
Hurricane Donald and the Storms of Changing Climate
John Feffer argued on Wednesday that Demagogue Donald, whose very existence will lead me to pretend I'm not from the U.S. the next time I'm in Europe, is part of a wider trend that's already hit Europe hard.
Wednesday, November 9, 2016(1 comments)
Now We Can Finally Get to Work
Dear Democrats,
Are you finding yourselves suddenly a bit doubtful of the wisdom of drone wars? Presidential wars without Congress? Massive investment in new, smaller, "more usable" nuclear weapons?
Tuesday, November 8, 2016 Talk Nation Radio: Sonia Kennebeck on the Drone as National Bird
Sonia Kennebeck is director and producwer of National Bird, an amazing new documentary about drones. Kennebeck is an independent documentary filmmaker and investigative journalist with more than 15 years of directing and producing experience.
Monday, November 7, 2016(2 comments)
Post-Election To-Do List
1. Stop the efforts to ram through the Trans-Pacific Partnership during the lame duck.
2. Stop the efforts to ram through a supplemental war spending bill for assorted future wars during the lame duck.
3. Stop the efforts to repeal the right to sue Saudi Arabia and other nations for their wars and lesser acts of terrorism during the lame duck
Friday, November 4, 2016(3 comments)
What Could Unite a Larger Peace Movement? Oh, This!
In a time of division and disagreement, when people who all agree on something important sometimes spend more time bickering with each other than working on their collective cause, is it possible to craft an agenda that brings them together and adds to their numbers?
It turns out, somewhat to my surprise, the answer is yes.
Friday, November 4, 2016(2 comments)
How Drone Pilots Talk
For the past eight years millions of people have expended billions of words speculating about exactly how the United States kills people with missiles from drones (and missiles from other sources, such as manned aircraft, targeting people identified with drones). There is good reason to believe that for each such attack there exists a video and audio record of what the drone pilots saw and what they and their colleagues said.
Thursday, November 3, 2016(2 comments)
But How Do You Use Nonviolence Against a Nuke?
Some of the most misguided questions ever conceived by the human brain take the form of "But how do you use nonviolence against . . ?"
For example, fill in the blank with ISIS. How do you use nonviolence against ISIS?
Now you're supposed to picture yourself with a knife at your throat trying to resist it nonviolently. Then you're supposed to burst into a fit of laughter.
But how would you resist that knife violently?
Wednesday, November 2, 2016 Of Veterans and Black Mirror Roaches
If you're a fan of the Netflix show Black Mirror, go watch the episode called "Men Against Fire" before reading this. It's the one about war.
Wednesday, November 2, 2016(1 comments)
When Charlottesville Was Nuked
Thirty-seven years ago, the United States Congress commissioned and published a work of fiction, an account of what life in Charlottesville, Virginia, might be like during a nuclear war. It's contained in a longer report called The Effects of Nuclear War which came out in May of 1979.
Tuesday, November 1, 2016 Talk Nation Radio: James Marc Leas on Canceling the F-35
James Marc Leas is a founding member of the Stop the F-35 Coalition in Burlington Vermont. He has published some two dozen articles on the F-35 and F-35 basing. To highlight the F-35 issue statewide, he ran for the office of Vermont Adjutant General, the leader of the Vermont National Guard, in 2013, which is elected by the legislature.
Monday, October 31, 2016(5 comments)
What Keeps the F-35 Alive
Imagine if a local business in your town invented a brand new tool that was intended to have an almost magical effect thousands of miles away. However, where the tool was kept and used locally became an area unsafe for children. Children who got near this tool tended to have increased blood pressure and increased stress hormones, lower reading skills, poorer memories, impaired auditory and speech perception...
Sunday, October 30, 2016 All Governments Lie, The Movie
Picture, if you will, video footage of vintage (early 2016) Donald Trump buffoonery with the CEO of CBS Leslie Moonves commenting on major media's choice to give Trump vastly more air time than other candidates: "It may not be good for America, but it's damn good for CBS."
Thursday, October 27, 2016 Public vs. Media on War
A new poll from an unlikely source suggests that the U.S. public and the U.S. media have very little in common when it comes to matters of war and peace.
Thursday, October 27, 2016(14 comments)
Michael Moore Owes Me $4.99
Michael Moore has made some terrific movies in the past, and Where to Invade Next may be the best of them, but I expected Trumpland to be (1) about Trump, (2) funny, (3) honest, (4) at least relatively free of jokes glorifying mass murder. I was wrong on all counts and would like my $4.99 back, Michael.
Wednesday, October 26, 2016 The U.S. National Bird Is Now a Drone
Officially, of course, the national bird of the United States is that half-a-peace-sign that Philadelphia sports fans like to hold up at opposing teams. But unofficially, the film National Bird has it right: the national bird is a killer drone.
Tuesday, October 25, 2016(6 comments)
Slavery Was Abolished
I recently debated a pro-war professor on the topic "Is war ever necessary?" (video). I argued for abolishing war. And because people like to see successes before doing something, no matter how indisputably possible that thing is, I gave examples of other institutions that have been abolished in the past. One might include such practices as human sacrifice, polygamy, cannibalism, trial by ordeal, blood feuds, dueling, or ...
Tuesday, October 25, 2016 Talk Nation Radio: Timeka Drew on Protecting Voter Rights
Timeka Drew is National Director of the Liberty Tree Foundation, a position she has served in since February of 2016. Previously she served as Liberty Tree's Communications Director and worked as lead organizer of the Global Climate Convergence. Timeka came to the Liberty Tree community via her work with the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign (PPEHRC) and local democracy, food sovereignty, and anti-racist organizing.
Monday, October 24, 2016(1 comments)
David Swanson: "We need to unite globally around opposition to the entire institution of war"
In your website worldbeyondwar.org/ you say: "We strive to replace a culture of war with one of peace, in which nonviolent means of conflict resolution take the place of bloodshed". So which role and value can nonviolence have in building such a culture?
