Author: David Swanson

Back in the 1890s those who believed conquering a continent was killing enough (without taking over Hawaii, the Philippines, Cuba, Puerto Rico, etc.) included Speaker of the House Thomas Reed. He clipped an article out of a newspaper about a lynching in South Carolina. He clipped a headline about “Another Outrage in Cuba.” He pasted the two together (fake news!) and gave them to a Congressman from South Carolina who was pushing for a war on Cuba. The Congressman eagerly read the article, then read more

The fact that 3,100 Google employees signed a letter opposing Google doing work for the U.S. military is wonderful for what it reveals.

It does not reveal that a major company exists that has not long been a contractor for the U.S. military. Google, whether its employees know it or not, has — like every other major U.S. company, as far as I know — long been a contractor for the U.S. military.

It does not reveal that any significant number of people exist who can name every current U.S. war or read more

We’re hearing a lot about U.S. veterans being deported, just as we hear about healthcare and retirement and homelessness and countless other topics as impacting veterans in particular. The implication, and often the explicit assertion, is that we should especially care about injustice when it hurts veterans, because they’ve especially earned the right to be treated decently, by participating in the greatest mass-murdering crime sprees of recent decades — the wars that most of us (and may read more

Excepted from Curing Exceptionalism: What’s wrong with how we think about the United States? What can we do about it? (April, 2018).

Try this experiment: Imagine that space aliens really come to earth and really have, as I think is very unlikely, developed the ability to travel to earth while simultaneously remaining so primitive as to violently attack the places they visit. In contrast to the space aliens, could you identify as an earthling to such an extent as to diminish your other senses of identity? “Earthlings — F— Yeah!” “We’re Number 1!” “Greatest Earthlings on Earth!” And can you hold that thought, read more

The U.S. Senate voted down, 55 to 44, a bill co-sponsored by Bernie Sanders that would have ended U.S. involvement in the Saudi Arabia-led war against Yemen. However, veteran anti-war activist David Swanson saw the action as a sign of progress, given that the Senate has never conducted such a vote based on the War Powers Act. Swanson, publisher of the influential web site WarIsACrime.org and director of World Beyond War, has found that Americans “around the country think that read more

It’s hard not to focus on the fact that Trump has picked the 100th anniversary of the first Armistice Day celebration for his weaponry parade (more on that below). But there was another parade a month and a half before the armistice that cries out for comparison because of its remarkable stupidity. I’m thinking of the Liberty Loan Parade in Philadelphia:

This was a parade to squeeze more money out of people to pay for war, to celebrate patrioti-nationali-militarism, and to reject fake news. read more

Tuesday’s debate and vote in the U.S. Senate on whether to end (technically whether or not to vote on whether to end) U.S. participation in the war on Yemen can certainly be presented as a step forward. While 55 U.S. Senators voted to keep the war rolling along, 44 voted read more

On March 1, 2018, I was very privileged to take part in a discussion of issues of racism, freedom of speech, patriotism, and war at Saint Mary’s Hall, a private high school in San Antonio “Military City USA” Texas.

I was one of five speakers who had been invited to speak about issues we had raised related to take-a-knee protests. The videos are all here, including video of all the read more