A blog about a criminal enterprise
By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, November 12, 2023
Remarks in Chicago on November 12, 2023
In the movie Good Morning, Vietnam the mean, ignorant superior officer tells the Robin Williams character:
“I got people stuck in places they haven’t even considered how to get out of yet. You don’t think I can come up with something good? Can you envision some fairly unattractive alternatives?”
And Robin Williams, without missing a beat, says “Not without slides.”
So, I’m going to
By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, November 11, 2023
Remarks in Cedar Rapids on November 11, 2023
Henry Nicholas John Gunther was born in Baltimore, Maryland, to parents who had immigrated from Germany. In September 1917 he was drafted to help kill Germans. The world’s first modern war propaganda campaign was underway. It was a hard sales pitch for war, including if you said the wrong thing you’d go to prison. Henry wrote home from Europe to describe how horrible the war was and to encourage
By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, November 11, 2023
Remarks at Veterans For Peace event in Iowa City, Iowa, November 11, 2023
On December 2nd the Monroe Doctrine will turn 200. That is, it will be 200 years from the day President James Monroe made a speech from which years later politicians and pundits excerpted some paragraphs and labeled them the Monroe Doctrine. If the purpose was to allow a privileged clique the power to lawlessly create policy and elevate it above all actual laws, it worked.
By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, November 11, 2023
Remarks on November 11, 2023, at Veterans For Peace event in Iowa City, Iowa
Ukraine needs an armistice.
Palestine needs an armistice.
Nagorno-Karabakh needs an armistice.
Syria, Sudan, Nigeria, and so many countries need an armistice.
The U.S. public and its mass shooters need an armistice.
And by armistice I do not mean a pause to re-load. I mean an end to the idiotic madness of mass-murder that risks nuclear apocalypse, an end in order to
Remarks at Muslim Community of the Quad Cities in Bettendorf, Iowa, November 10, 2023
In the popular Western imagination war resembles a sport with what President Joe Biden calls “teams” with differently colored uniforms on an identifiable and uninhabited “battlefield” where mostly soldiers die. That almost no war has resembled this since World War One does not stop the endless outcries, during each and every war:
“This is not a war! It’s an occupation!”
“This is no war! Stop calling
By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, November 9, 2023
Remarks at The Columbus Free Press Annual Awards Dinner, November 9, 2023
The typical response in the United States to the gradual buildup to a war, or even the launching of a war, or even the launching of a war that is reported in U.S. corporate media, is absolutely nothing different: work, school, shopping, sports, movies, etc.
Among those who have some response, it’s typically based on their understanding of the particular war, shaped largely
This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To receive TomDispatch in your inbox three times a week, click here.
Yes, it was little short of pathetic. Remember the “big, fat, beautiful wall” that, from the first moment of his 2015-2016 election campaign, Donald Trump swore he’d build to keep
By David Swanson, November 6, 2023
Remarks at Cambridge, Mass., November 6, 2023
If we think of the U.S. arming of genocidal colonial violence in Israel as an anachronistic throwback, we’re not wrong, but there’s something we’re missing. If we want to understand why a bill to fund four wars at once is likely to find less, rather than more, opposition in the U.S. Congress, there’s something we should understand about the past, about how we got here.
If we want to know how war
This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To receive TomDispatch in your inbox three times a week, click here.
It couldn’t have been less complicated. As a start, the Israelis experienced a crime of the first order at the hands of Hamas militants who broke through their border fortifications and killed not just soldiers but civilians of every sort (including children), while taking other civilians (including children) hostage. That certainly is the definition of war crimes.
The response
By WORT Community Radio in Madison, Wisconsin, November 3, 2023
During this time of global unrest, violence, and clashing opinions, we spend an hour with peace activist David Swanson. He joins Esty Dinur to discuss a path to peace in Palestine-Israel and Ukraine, the impact of the military–industrial complex, and why the suggestion of peace seems to outrage many.
They also speak about Esty’s recent