Author: David Swanson

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, December 19, 2024

In thousands of movies and tv shows, a future is imagined in which full-grown adult humans with less self-control than toddlers both get into fist fights at the drop of a hat and possess the technology to obliterate entire cities or planets at the touch of a button. The fantasy of living in outerspace certainly does not help us preserve the one place we know how to live. But the most damaging fantasy here is that of maintaining widespread acceptance read more

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By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, December 13, 2024
Remarks at December 13 Online U.S.-Iran Town Hall

I was asked to talk about Gaza and Syria, and so I shall, but I also want to talk about de-normalizing murder. There have been human societies in which murder was unthinkable, where the most typical Hollywood movie — marketed to U.S. children — has been seen as horrific and traumatizing. Normalizing murder is an option, not required by genes or economics or physics. I want us to take responsibility read more

AUDIO:

Talk World Radio is recorded on Zoom.

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

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, December 4, 2024

Whether you object to genocide or internalize every scrap of Israeli propaganda, there isn’t any way in ordinary English to dispute that each shipment of weapons from the United States to Israel, whether given or sold, violates numerous U.S. laws, including the Foreign Assistance Act, the Arms Export Control Act, the Conventional Arms Transfer read more

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, December 3, 2024

A New York Times article from November 26, 2024, kept showing up on my computer screen, and I kept avoiding it in disgust. Finally, I gave in and read it. It began like this:

“Hummingbirds zooming around the garden from flower to flower and sipping nectar probably don’t appear at first glance to be models for instruments of war.”

Probably? Probably? Beautiful things of wonder that appear out of nowhere and can vanish again at any read more

AUDIO:

Talk World Radio is recorded on Zoom.

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

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, December 2, 2024

As a resident of the most flamboyantly hypocritical and war-crazed nation on Earth, the United States of Armaments, I find it weirdly encouraging when one of the U.S. military’s many vassals and sidekicks goes above and beyond, trying out new forms of abuse that I haven’t encountered here.  Of course, I find such actions awful and often horrific — particularly if we’re talking about new forms of surveillance and torture read more

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, December 2, 2024

Thousands of civic-minded people have been voluntarily helping out the not-yet-extant pseudo-government agency named after the ruler of not-yet-sunk Venice: the DOGE.

On a convenient webpage they are signing a petition and sending tweets to billionaire efficiency-creator Elon Musk. The petition reads:

To: Elon Musk at the Department of Government Efficiency

Here’s how to improve government efficiency and cut spending: Audit the Pentagon, stop read more

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, November 25, 2024

Netanyahu-free zones (ICC members) in blue. Source.

The International Criminal Court has taken an enormously important small step toward respectability and real internationalism by issuing arrest warrants for the very first time for war allies of the United States and Western militaries.

It took many, many inexcusable months for the prosecutor of the ICC to request the arrest warrants, and six more months for the court to issue them. The delays read more