Armistice Day, The Chicago Lawyer Who Banned War, and Why Wars Keep Happening

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, November 12, 2023

Remarks in Chicago on November 12, 2023

In the movie Good Morning, Vietnam the mean, ignorant superior officer tells the Robin Williams character:

“I got people stuck in places they haven’t even considered how to get out of yet. You don’t think I can come up with something good? Can you envision some fairly unattractive alternatives?”

And Robin Williams, without missing a beat, says “Not without slides.”

So, I’m going to read more

A Restoration of Armistice Day, and a History of the Only Two World Wars We Can Survive

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, November 11, 2023

Remarks in Cedar Rapids on November 11, 2023

Henry Nicholas John Gunther was born in Baltimore, Maryland, to parents who had immigrated from Germany. In September 1917 he was drafted to help kill Germans. The world’s first modern war propaganda campaign was underway. It was a hard sales pitch for war, including if you said the wrong thing you’d go to prison. Henry wrote home from Europe to describe how horrible the war was and to encourage read more

A Global Monroe Doctrine Needs a Global Armistice

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, November 11, 2023

Remarks at Veterans For Peace event in Iowa City, Iowa, November 11, 2023

On December 2nd the Monroe Doctrine will turn 200. That is, it will be 200 years from the day President James Monroe made a speech from which years later politicians and pundits excerpted some paragraphs and labeled them the Monroe Doctrine. If the purpose was to allow a privileged clique the power to lawlessly create policy and elevate it above all actual laws, it worked. read more

The World Needs an Armistice Day

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, November 11, 2023

Remarks on November 11, 2023, at Veterans For Peace event in Iowa City, Iowa

Ukraine needs an armistice.

Palestine needs an armistice.

Nagorno-Karabakh needs an armistice.

Syria, Sudan, Nigeria, and so many countries need an armistice.

The U.S. public and its mass shooters need an armistice.

And by armistice I do not mean a pause to re-load. I mean an end to the idiotic madness of mass-murder that risks nuclear apocalypse, an end in order to read more

Making Peace and Unmaking Prejudice

Remarks at Muslim Community of the Quad Cities in Bettendorf, Iowa, November 10, 2023

In the popular Western imagination war resembles a sport with what President Joe Biden calls “teams” with differently colored uniforms on an identifiable and uninhabited “battlefield” where mostly soldiers die. That almost no war has resembled this since World War One does not stop the endless outcries, during each and every war:

“This is not a war! It’s an occupation!”

“This is no war! Stop calling read more

War Abolition and the Ukraine Problem

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, November 9, 2023

Remarks at The Columbus Free Press Annual Awards Dinner, November 9, 2023

The typical response in the United States to the gradual buildup to a war, or even the launching of a war, or even the launching of a war that is reported in U.S. corporate media, is absolutely nothing different: work, school, shopping, sports, movies, etc.

Among those who have some response, it’s typically based on their understanding of the particular war, shaped largely read more

The Monroe Doctrine and the Roots of U.S. Hegemony

By David Swanson, November 6, 2023

Remarks at Cambridge, Mass., November 6, 2023

If we think of the U.S. arming of genocidal colonial violence in Israel as an anachronistic throwback, we’re not wrong, but there’s something we’re missing. If we want to understand why a bill to fund four wars at once is likely to find less, rather than more, opposition in the U.S. Congress, there’s something we should understand about the past, about how we got here.

If we want to know how war read more

Tomgram: Liz Theoharis, A Cycle of Escalating Violence

This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To receive TomDispatch in your inbox three times a week, click here.

It couldn’t have been less complicated. As a start, the Israelis experienced a crime of the first order at the hands of Hamas militants who broke through their border fortifications and killed not just soldiers but civilians of every sort (including children), while taking other civilians (including children) hostage. That certainly is the definition of war crimes.

The response read more

WORT 89.9FM — A Conversation with David Swanson on Peace

By WORT Community Radio in Madison, Wisconsin, November 3, 2023

During this time of global unrest, violence, and clashing opinions, we spend an hour with peace activist David Swanson. He joins Esty Dinur to discuss a path to peace in Palestine-Israel and Ukraine, the impact of the military–industrial complex, and why the suggestion of peace seems to outrage many.

They also speak about Esty’s recent read more