Author: David Swanson

Take a gander, if you can stomach it, at buildbackbetter.gov.

Now, be honest, if this were the work of a Republican would you be ready to protest?

Not only did you not vote for anything new, as the vast majority of the nominees and the policy proposals are long-established moss-gathering Washingtonians, but the new additions here and there are the worst of the bunch.

Biden, who had no foreign policy platform on his campaign website, and no foreign policy task force, has suddenly, post-election, prioritized read more

This week on Talk Nation Radio: Michèle Flournoy and other disastrous cabinet prospects. Our guests are Medea Benjamin and Marcy Winograd.

Medea Benjamin is co-founder of the women-led peace group CODEPINK and the co-founder of the human rights group Global Exchange. She has been an advocate for social justice for more than 40 years. She has been described as “one of America’s most committed — and most effective — fighters for human rights” by New York Newsday, read more

A report by David Swanson for RootsAction.org

November 24, 2020

In 2020 Congressional elections, 78 percent of Democratic candidates’ campaign websites informed the visitor of some sort of policy platform. These varied in length and depth, but many contained substantive proposals on dozens of issues. However, only 29 percent included foreign policy as one of the topics discussed. While militarism alone takes up over read more

This week on Talk Nation Radio: Martial Mining, or Militarism and Extraction. Our guest is Daniel Selwyn, a researcher and educator with the London Mining Network, an alliance of 21 organisations working to expose human rights abuses and environmental crimes committed by mining companies based in London, and campaigning for social justice and the ecological integrity of the planet. Daniel Selwyn recently authored a report called Martial Mining: Resisting Extractivism and War Together.

See:

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Antony Blinken is not the Secretary of State the United States or the world needs, and the U.S. Senate should reject his nomination. Here are 10 reasons:

1. A president elect who has been part of every disastrous war for decades should not be nominating for Secretary of State a key advisor who helped him get numerous critical decisions wrong. Biden was the committee chair who guided the Iraq war authorization through the Senate with Blinken’s help. Blinken helped Biden into catastrophe after read more

Trump changed many things.

U.S. media outlets will now point out when a president is lying. If that policy holds consistently, we’ll never have a war again.

Congress will now vote to end a war (Yemen) and a president will veto it. If Congress can repeat that on a monthly basis, and the president not veto, we’ll end a lot of wars.

Top military officials will openly laugh about tricking a president into believing he’d withdrawn more troops than he really had from a war (Syria). If presidents read more

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, November 20, 2020

Thus far, people in 187 countries have signed this pledge:

“I understand that wars and militarism make us less safe rather than protect us, that they kill, injure and traumatize adults, children and infants, severely damage the natural environment, erode civil liberties, and drain our economies, siphoning resources from life-affirming activities. I commit to engage in and support nonviolent efforts to end all war and preparations for war and to create a sustainable and just peace.”

You can sign it too, at https://worldbeyondwar.org/sign

People who sign it have the option of checking various boxes to indicate how they’d most like to get involved in working for peace.

The result is not, as critics will be quick to point out, immediate peace. The result is a huge number of people, organized by location and interest area, working to end war. The result is chapters of read more

Pictured: Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of the Emirate of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the United Arab Emirates Armed Forces (MbZ) and some guy.

The New York Times seems to publish a book-length love letter to MbZ about every six read more

This week on Talk Nation Radio: the decision to rule the world. Stephen Wertheim is a historian of U.S. foreign policy. He is Deputy Director of Research and Policy at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. He is also a research scholar at the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia University. His terrific new book is called Tomorrow the World: The Birth of U.S. Global Supremacy.

Total run time: 29:00
Host: David Swanson.
Producer: David Swanson.
Music read more