Author: David Swanson

Talk World Radio is recorded as audio and video on Riverside.fm. Here is this week’s video and all the videos on Youtube. We’re using only the guest video and not the host this week, because Riverside is getting them out of synch when combining.

This week on Talk World Radio, the U.S. colony of Guam. Our guest, Chris Gelardi is a New York City-based journalist. His work appears in The Nation, The Intercept, and The Appeal, among other publications. His recent article read more

The most well-known problem with lesser-evil, two-party, winner-take-all elections, at least in a system of legalized bribery and corporate-state media, is the absence of virtually any really good candidates. Naturally this results in (or is at least one major cause of) the tendency of many to not vote at all — with the United States claiming a lower voter turnout than many other countries it loves to look down on.

But the most serious problem is the tendency of those voters who do vote to nonetheless read more

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, November 16, 2021

I want to recommend a new film and a new book. The film is called The Boys Who Said NO! There’s more courage and moral integrity in this documentary than in any fictional blockbuster. With the wars now underway and threatened being as unjust as those 50 years ago (and with women now being added to U.S. draft registration) we need more saying No! We also need to recognize, as read more

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, November 12, 2021

I’m old enough to remember when you couldn’t do a speaking event related to war and peace without being asked numerous reasonable and not so reasonable questions about 9/11 (each accompanied by a stack of DVDs and flyers presented to you as a revelation from on high). There was a long period when you could count on the inevitable question about “peak oil.” I’ve been around enough to know that you can’t talk to peace-oriented people read more

NPR posted a story called “Feel like you don’t fit in either political party? Here’s why.” Of course I knew why. Neither party supports anything remotely close to my views on government budgets, climate, environment, taxation, militarism, healthcare, retirement, housing, education, transportation, or any other significant policy area.

But NPR’s story was about a Pew poll that asked 16 questions read more

By David Swanson, Labour Hub, November 9, 2021

I’m not sure what we should have expected from a 26th UN climate meeting after 25 previous meetings had generated the opposite of the purportedly intended result. What we got was a festival of greenwashing that included in the meetings more fossil fuel lobbyists than the delegates from any one actual government, read more

Talk World Radio is recorded as audio and video on Riverside.fm (except when it doesn’t work, and then Zoom is used). Here is this week’s video and all the videos on Youtube.

This week on Talk World Radio, we’re going to hold a bit of a respectful and civil debate. I’m going to take the position that we should be focused on preventing wars and defunding militaries even at the expense of working to reform wars. My guest, Leonard Rubenstein’s position includes support read more

By Rotary Club of Fort Collins, November 4, 2021

David Swanson spoke on November 3, 2021, with the Rotary Club of Fort Collins. The views he expressed were his, obviously, and not those of the Rotary Club of Fort Collins. But they could be yours. That’s up to you.

Image from Mapping Militarism.

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, November 2, 2021

U.S. presidential election campaigns have been known to focus on the slogan “It’s the economy, stupid.”

Efforts to explain the behavior of the U.S. government ought to put a little more focus on a different slogan, found in the headline above.

Andrew Cockburn’s fantastic new book, The Spoils of War: Power, Profit, and the American War Machine, builds a case that U.S. foreign policy read more