Author: David Swanson

Some cities and towns have a venue where activists organizing for peace and justice can, on short notice, and at little or no expense, hold an event with one or more speakers or performers. Some have nothing of the sort, but many have a church basement or an old warehouse. Some of these spaces have microphones and sound systems. Very few have food.

Washington D.C. is, for obvious reasons, one of the most important places in the United States and world in which to build activist movements, and yet read more

Remarks at Center on Conscience and War event on March 29, 2025.

I’ve admired and collaborated with the Center on Conscience and War for many years and worked with many of its board members and Counseling Director Bill Galvin and former Executive Director Maria Santelli. Maria was for about 10 years on the Advisory Board of World BEYOND War, where I’m the executive director. We’ve benefitted greatly from her advising. So I’m happy to be asked to speak about the Center on Conscience and read more

By Canadian Foreign Policy Institute, March 29, 2025

Despite all main political parties advocating for doubling Canadian military spending, militarists are in crisis over Donald Trump’s threats and opposition to the Canadian forces subservience to the U.S. military. Executive Director of World BEYOND War, David Swanson, joined Talking Foreign Policy to discuss Canada’s ties to the US war machine, how NATO won’t defend Canada and alternatives to militarism.

Ralph welcomes journalist Chris Hedges to talk about his new book “A Genocide Foretold: Reporting on Survival and Resistance in Occupied Palestine.” Then, Ralph speaks to David Swanson of World BEYOND War about what his organization is doing to resist this country’s casual acceptance of being constantly at war. Finally, Ralph checks in with our resident constitutional scholar Bruce Fein.

According to pretty much every media outlet and peace group, and the United Nations, and Wikipedia, the war on Yemen just turned 10. Happy Birthday!

Not so fast! Ten years ago was 2015. It was in 2009 that the U.S. military began regularly sending missiles into human beings in Yemen, with the peak in that practice coming in 2012. We learned about this from people in Yemen, not from our “representative” and “democratic” government in the United States. But that doesn’t make it less real.

This read more

On Tuesday the director of U.S. so-called “national intelligence” Tulsi Gabbard listed the dangers threatening us. No climate collapse. No ecosystem destruction. No nuclear war. No disease pandemics. No poverty. No fascistic tendencies. No AI, even though the billionaire in chief says there’s a 20% chance robots will kill us all within 10 years. No gun industry. No kakistocracy. read more

I want to recommend three new books about abolishing police and prisons. And I want to recommend multi-issue abolitionism beyond those two institutions.

What else would I abolish? Well, a list might start with war, fossil fuels, militaries, prisons, nuclear energy, police, nuclear weaponry, campaign bribery, health insurance companies, the death penalty, the livestock industry, Wall Street, borders, poverty, the NSA, the CIA, the United States Senate, Fox News, MSNBC, the Star Spangled Banner, read more

AUDIO:

Talk World Radio is recorded on Zoom.

Here is this week’s video and all the videos on Youtube.

“This is blatantly illegal and dangerous beyond belief. Our national security is in the hands of complete amateurs. What other highly sensitive national security conversations are happening over group chat? Any other random people accidentally added to those, too?” — Senator Elizabeth Warren

read more

David Hartsough, whom we have just lost to cancer at the age of 84, was a giant in the world of recent and not so recent peace activism and not just peace activism. While nobody focused more on highlighting and promoting the work of others, and on organizing and funding and supporting the work of others, David Hartsough’s own story is one of the most remarkable to be found in the genre of lives lived to their fullest for the good of all.

Parts of David Hartsough’s story are told in his 2014 read more