Author: David Swanson

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, March 7, 2024

It’s been a long and ciruitous search to find the handful of words that can end all warfare on Earth.

Living in the United States I was long tripped up by the “Excuse me, but WHAT ABOUT HITLER?” question.

I tried pointing out that the U.S. and British governments refused to rescue Nazis’ victims because they simply didn’t want them as immigrants, that the war could have been avoided, that Nazism could have been avoided, that the U.S. didn’t read more

Some acts of truth-telling about war and peace are easy, and some involve extreme risk. Some are simple, and some require great strategic planning. Some involve facts, some analysis, and some storytelling.

Yes, storytelling. I don’t believe war could go on existing long if major communications systems told large numbers of people the detailed sympathetic stories of war victims on all sides of all wars, similar to the way U.S. corporate media outlets “humanize” Ukrainian or Israeli war victims read more

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, March 6, 2024

At World BEYOND War and other groups that I work for and work with we often flood elected officials with emails or phone calls — or bodies in their offices — with very urgent and specific demands to stop killing particular populations. At the same time, at the height of crises and otherwise, we find it valuable to press in a different direction. We don’t want one nation saved and some other nation bombed. We don’t want the read more

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By World BEYOND War, March 4, 2024

We don’t need a “Rules-Based Order.” We need a U.S. government that obeys laws.

The Problem

The Vetoes

Since 1972, the U.S. government has been far and away the leading user of the veto in the UN Security Council, often blocking the will of every or nearly every other national government on Earth. It has vetoed U.N. condemnation of South African apartheid, Israel’s wars and occupations, chemical and biological weapons, nuclear weapons proliferation and first use and use against non-nuclear nations, U.S. wars in Nicaragua and Grenada and Panama, the read more

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

There’s a guide at wordsaboutwar.org to some of the standard war language used for big bucks by professional propagandists and for free by almost everyone else who has normalized it and not given it another thought. Manufacturing tools for mass murder is called “the defense industry,” those murdered are called “collateral damage,” the purpose is labeled “the national interest,” etc.

The trouble with talking like the Pentagon or CNN read more

AUDIO:

Talk World Radio is recorded on Zoom.

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By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, February 23, 2024

We asked people to sign this petition and add comments. Here are some of the comments they added:

Stop the weapons shipments, and replace them with diplomacy and a new focus on the human and environmental crises that these wars defund, distract from, and exacerbate.

The arms trade is negative value production that adversely impacts on international currencies as well as life, living standards, and the natural world.

“Mankind must put an end to read more

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, February 21, 2024

The father of modern warmaking Henry Kissinger died, and every major media outlet made a lot of noise — millions of articles on the internet. Fair enough. What would contemporary coup-making or genocide be without his seminal work?

But when the father of peace studies Johan Galtung died, not a single corporate media outlet said a single word. Not even an obituary. Not even a paragraph. And even decent people said and knew nothing. And even read more

AUDIO:

Talk World Radio is recorded on Zoom.

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