Author: David Swanson

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BD5uMFbxDkQ&feature=youtu.be

Colman McCarthy is a former Washington Post columnist, from 1969 to 1997, and the director of The Center for Teaching Peace in Washington DC. He teaches courses on nonviolence at Georgetown Law, Georgetown undergraduate, American University, the University of Maryland and Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School. He’s a pacifist, a vegetarian, and the author of several books including I’d Rather Teach Peace.

Total run time: 29:00
Host: David Swanson.
Producer: David Swanson.
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Having spent years going to events organized by peace groups, at which people tell each other they should stop “preaching to the choir,” I’ve started doing another kind of event. I debate war supporters in front of mixed crowds that include lots of war supporters, as well as people who haven’t really formed an opinion yet on the question of whether war is ever justifiable.

The first one of these I did was in Vermont. It was to be a debate with a just-war-theory professor. I sent him my read more

World Beyond War joins with Just World Educational in promoting Earth Day events for on or about April 22, 2018, that will challenge the greatest destroyer of the earth: the war industry.

World Beyond War’s Coordinating Committee member Gar Smith has edited the anthology, The War and Environment Reader, which makes an excellent guide to this issue.

Here are some preliminary ideas from Just World Educational:

• Work with you or others you might suggest to organize one or more dedicated “War Hurts Earth” events in your community.
• Plan good outreach to local media so that the fact and content of these events get well covered—and also, contribute Opinion pieces or Letters to the Editor around these issues to local or national media.
• Create and make freely available a basic fact-sheet providing data on issues like the contribution the Pentagon makes to carbon emissions, the number of acres deforested during the US-Vietnam War, etc.
• Create and make freely available a series of graphic images (such as the above one), that people can use in their publicity.
• Work with Just World Books to make discounted copies of The War and Environment Reader or other print resources available for sale at your events.
• Help out with networking in communities nationwide, to maximize engagement with your local initiatives.

Hashtag: #WarHurtsEarth.

Here are some resources from World Beyond War:

Work with or form read more

The new poor people’s campaign should get every ounce of support we can find and generate. I say that without the qualifications and caveats I would usually include, because the Poor People’s Campaign is doing something that may not be strictly unprecedented in U.S. history but is certainly extremely rare in recent decades. It’s pursuing a worthy noble goal, that of ending poverty, while making ending war a central part of its vision, and doing so voluntarily.

Of course this makes read more

Jackson Lears is the Board of Governors Professor of History at Rutgers University. Lears is the editor of the journal Raritan: A Quarterly Review. His books include: Something for Nothing: Luck in America and Fables of Abundance: A Cultural History of Advertising in America. He recently wrote an article called “What We Don’t Talk about When We Talk about Russian Hacking” for the London Review of Books.

Total run time: 29:00
Host: David Swanson.
Producer: David Swanson.
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A No Foreign Bases conference was held in Baltimore, Maryland, U.S., on January 12-14, 2018. Here is a tiny fraction of the highlights:

Full videos here.

David Swanson on Monroe Doctrine:

David Swanson in Baltimore:

LEARN MORE AND GET INVOLVED.

UKRAINE:

CHARLOTTESVILLE:

Letter from Charlottesville to Ukraine

By David Swanson

Nazi rallies in the news in recent years have most prominently been held here in Charlottesville, Virginia, USA, and in Ukraine. I want to send thoughts of solidarity to those in Ukraine resisting fascism. And I want to let you know that some of us are urging our government in Washington, D.C., to stop supporting fascism both in the United States and in Ukraine. In addition, we are pointing to the examples being set read more

It was convenient for the teaching moment that James Risen just recounted the New York Times’ refusal back in 2004 to report on George W. Bush’s (secret and criminal) warrantless spying prior to Bush’s “re-election” for fear of costing Bush votes, at the same time that a harmoniously bipartisan Congress was just now voting to empower Donald Trump to (openly and legally) spy on everybody without any warrants.

How did a crime become a policy? Nobody, not even the “Constitutional read more

Remarks at No Foreign Bases Conference, Baltimore, MD, January 13, 2018

I get to introduce three terrific speakers to you on the topic of Latin America and the Caribbean, but first I’m allowed to say what I’m thinking for five minutes, so I’ll do that. I’m thinking that the first European bases on this coast were foreign bases, that they moved west, and that the practice has never paused. I live almost next door to the former home of James Monroe whose Monroe Doctrine, as evolved and abused read more