Author: David Swanson

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, February 19, 2022

There are a number of things that have to be said first. They have to be said because virtually no U.S. television viewer knows or is likely ever to know them. They have to be said because if I’m going to suggest any flaws in the actions of the Russian government, I have to establish at least the possibility of doubt that I’m bought and owned by NATO or the Pentagon. Here are those things:

Ukraine has in common with Yemen, Iran, Taiwan, Korea, read more

AUDIO:

Talk World Radio is recorded as audio and video on Riverside.fm. Here is this week’s video and all the videos on Youtube.

VIDEO:

This week on Talk World Radio we’re talking about Smedley Butler with the author of a terrific new biography called Gangsters of Capitalism: Smedley Butler, the Marines, and the Making and Breaking of America’s Empire. The author, Jonathan Katz, based here in Charlottesville, Virginia, as most of the coolest people are, received the James read more

When I suggest not stealing billions of dollars from Afghanistan, and thereby not causing mass starvation and death, otherwise intelligent and informed people tell me that human rights demands that theft. Starving people to death is a means of protecting their “human rights,” in fact. How else can you (or the U.S. government) stop Taliban executions?

When I respond that you (the U.S. government) could ban capital punishment, stop arming and funding the world’s top executioners read more

I’ve read a number of introduction to philosophy, or ethics for the ordinary person books. The latest, and it’s as good as any of them, is How to Be Perfect: The Correct Answer to Every Moral Question by Michael Schur. The title is tongue-in-cheek. The book is not significantly different from the stuff I read years ago when I did a master’s degree in philosophy, except that it strives to avoid unnecessarily specialized vocabulary and inserts silly asides for laughs.

I wouldn’t be surprised read more

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, February 7, 2022

I’ve added a book to my growing list of key war abolition reading, which is at the bottom of this article. I’ve put the book Boys Will Be Boys at the very bottom of the list, not because it is the least important, but because it is the earliest, having been published a decade before any of the others. It is also probably the book that — perhaps along with many other influences — has had the biggest impact thus far, on the agenda read more

Video from the White House on Saturday:

"We need a Department of Defense Against the Warmongers" said David Swanson of @WorldBeyondWar, because defense contractors & imperial politicians will lie us into one for 💰💰💰 pic.twitter.com/95EMNlTRkh

— ANSWER Coalition (@answercoalition) February 5, 2022

Video from webinar on Saturday here.

The people inside the White House sometimes believe they can sell us what we don’t want to buy. They’ve got a recipe for mixing read more

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, February 4, 2022

Smedley Butler is generally left out of U.S. history. If you bring up a guy who prevented a Wall Street coup against FDR, you do real damage to the tale of peaceful respect for government from the beginning of time up through January 6, 2021. If you mention the scandal that erupted when he recounted how Mussolini had run over a little girl with his car, it’s hard to leave out the U.S. government’s friendly relations with Mussolini.

Interestingly, read more

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, February 2, 2022

In 1929, Russia and China proposed to go to war. Governments around the world pointed out that they’d just signed and ratified the Kellogg-Briand Pact banning all war. Russia withdrew. Peace was made.

In 2022, the United States and Russia proposed to go to war. Governments around the world lined up behind the claim that one side or the other was innocent and purely defensive, because everybody knows that defensive wars are totally fine — it read more

Here’s the video:

Speakers include:

Katrina vanden Heuvel, editorial director of The Nation magazine, columnist for the Washington Post.

Ann Wright, retired U.S. Army colonel, retired diplomat, author, activist.

Vladimir Kozin, member of Russian Academy of Military Sciences, speaking from Moscow.

Norman Solomon, co-founder and national director of RootsAction.org, author, activist.

Moderator: David Swanson, campaign coordinator of RootsAction.org, executive director of World BEYOND War.

Everyone read more