Author: David Swanson

By Sky News Australia, August 9, 2021

I read Daniel Sherrell’s Warmth: Coming of Age at the End of Our World sitting on the edge of what was left of the Shenandoah River after a summer of very little rain. Six inches is enough to canoe in but it’s less than that in many places. Fish are few and far between, yet humans are out there in canoes, dragging them over rocks, casting their lines, luring the last fish to their doom. I know the fish murders are not the problem, not read more

Mushroom cloud of unspeakable destruction rises over Hiroshima following the first wartime dropping of an atomic bomb on August 6, 1945 (US government photo)

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, August 5, 2021

In 2015, Alice Sabatini was an 18-year-old contestant in the Miss Italia contest in Italy. She was asked what epoch of the past she would have liked to live in. She replied: WWII. Her explanation was that her text books go on and on about it, so she’d like to actually see it, and she wouldn’t read more

Talk World Radio is recorded as audio and video on Riverside.fm. Here is this week’s video and all the videos on Youtube.

This week on Talk World Radio: Peace in the Streets. Our guest Robert Gray is Co-Founder of Uhuru, an organization based where I am, in Charlottesville, Virginia. Gray is a visionary, businessman, brand strategist, and social entrepreneur with a passion for education reform and economic empowerment. He’s done a wide range of organizing work, and in 2019 received read more

A U.S. soldier stands guard in March of 2003 next to an oil well at the Rumayla oil fields set ablaze by retreating Iraqi troops. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, July 29, 2021

William Astore’s latest article on TomDispatch proposes to “Reinvent the U.S. Military for Real National Defense.” The specific proposals are all to the good: stop adding to the nuclear weapons pile, shrink the Army read more

Talk World Radio is recorded as audio and video on Riverside.fm. Here is this week’s video and all the videos on Youtube.

This week on Talk World Radio: Remembering the Alamo, or — better yet — forgetting it. Our guest Bryan Burrough is a special correspondent for Vanity Fair and the author of seven books, including the New York Times #1 best-selling Barbarians at the Gate (with John Helyar) and Public Enemies. He is co-author of a terrific new book called Forget the Alamo.

Total read more

That the United States has always been so deeply afflicted with structural and cultural racism that it sometimes goes unnoticed and needs to be addressed is hardly disputable. Who is anybody kidding? Have you seen U.S. history? Have you seen the United States?

That we should care what the head of the Pentagon says about it in dumb little sound bytes is considered hardly disputable in U.S. society, but I think it should be disputed. The U.S. military is a massive machine for bombing mostly dark-skinned read more

This video clip starts out with the great Andy Worthington on GITMO, but due to a bad connection jumps quickly to me on the F-35. The RT host repeatedly tries to tell me that the U.S. military needs to spend money on weapons to defend the United States. I suggest scaling back U.S. militarism, and she pushes the “common sense” need for a strong U.S. military “defense.”

Youtube warns viewers that RT is funded by the Russian government. But the Russian government hires U.S. read more

Senators Murphy, Lee, and Sanders have introduced legislation to address Congressional and Presidential war powers. (See bill text, press release, one pager, video of press conference, op-ed, and Politico article).

In recent months, we’ve seen efforts to repeal some but not other AUMFs (Authorizations for the Use of Military Force), plus talk of creating a new AUMF (why?!). And for years we’ve watched people like Senator Kaine talk about reclaiming Congressional war powers while pushing read more