Author: David Swanson

I confess that the idea of fighting for “the soul of the Democratic Party” has always sounded as sensible to my ear as fighting for the soul of a cow plop, and plans to improve the world through the Democratic Party about as strategic as a preemptive compromise. The following statement from the Democratic Party has given me second thoughts:

“We declare again that all governments instituted among men derive their just powers from the consent of the governed; that any government not based upon read more

September 28, 2018, marks 100 years since the stupidest parade I’ve ever heard of. And this is a world awash in stupid. Donald Trump wanted to hold an insane weapons parade in Washington this November. That was dumb. But so was, on a far lesser scale, the move by various peace groups to de-prioritize going ahead with a massive celebration of having helped get the parade cancelled. I suppose the thinking is that we have got just too many victories for peace to be bothered with inspiring people read more

Hawes Spencer is a journalist who has reported for the New York Times, NPR, the Hook, and other publications. He has taught journalism at Virginia Commonwealth University and James Madison University. For over two decades, Hawes Spencer edited two weekly newspapers in Charlottesville, Virginia, both of which he co-founded: C-ville Weekly and The Hook. As the editor of the Hook, his staff delivered 149 awards from the Virginia Press Association during read more

In a recent interview on National Pentagon Radio, Neil deGrasse Tyson discussed the interactions between (1) the U.S. military and (2) astrophysics. The former is an enterprise that I consider evil and Tyson seems to consider mildly worthy of discomfort but the necessary producer of the research for which he lives. The latter is a field of human endeavor that Tyson read more

Do we need new laws or adherence to the old ones?

Yes.

Both.

The United States has an ancient Constitution. It doesn’t ban slavery as punishment. It doesn’t ban bribery as campaign funding. It doesn’t protect the natural world. It doesn’t guarantee basic human rights to food, shelter, education, healthcare. Its system of “representative” government doesn’t fairly represent. New laws are needed.

On the other hand, the United States has numerous laws on the books that just aren’t enforced. read more

The Richmond (Va.) Times Dispatch recently published an editorial, republished by other papers with the headline: “Remembering why we still fight in Afghanistan.” It’s a rather striking piece of writing, because it does not even attempt to offer a single reason why anyone would “fight” in Afghanistan. The read more

When I discovered that militarism is one of the top destroyers of the natural environment, I piled that onto my case against war. I did the same when I found out war wasted more money than anything else, was a major promoter of bigotry and racism, was the primary justification for government secrecy and the erosion of civil liberties, was the top barrier to the rule of law and global cooperation, militarized local police, etc., etc. When I came to see how counterproductive war was, increasing read more

It’s popular to refer to the political line of a major corporate party in the United States as something like “the resistance” when the other of the two parties is on the throne of what both parties have, over many decades, actively converted into an unconstitutional position of something wildly beyond old-fashioned royal powers. Around 2004 the Democratic Party line was to pretend to oppose wars. Around 2018 it wasn’t. So the “resistance” of that party’s followers included war opposition read more

Mary Jo McConahay’s The Tango War is an engaging, extensive, well-researched, well-written account of a topic that still manages to offend me. World War II is sacred history in the United States, the ultimate clash of pure good and evil, the fundamental origin myth of the military industrial complex. It is the top subject of books, films, and shows. Finding a novel angle on World War II that has not yet been exhaustively covered is, at this point, a significant feat. Finding a whole read more

Last weekend I was on Iranian TV being asked about the meeting in Tehran at which the presidents of Iran and Russia had refused to agree with the President of Turkey to stop bombing people in Syria. I said Iran and Russia were wrong.

I also said that nobody involved, least of all the United States, was right.

Not only would the United States and the world be infinitely better off if in response to 9/11 the U.S. government had done nothing at all, as Jon Schwartz tweets each year, but Syria would read more