David Swanson is a longtime peace and justice activist and author of War Is a Lie and Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union.
UN Development Goals Could Be Met With a Few Percent of Military Spending
Here's a useful new report from the International Peace Bureau. Globally, the report finds, spending on war preparations is higher than ever as an absolute amount and as a percentage of public spending (if not as a percentage of GDP). This spending is led and dominated by the United States, ...
We're approaching three years since Howard Zinn left us, and to my ear his voice sounds louder all the time. I expect that effect to continue for decades and centuries to come, because Zinn spoke to enduring needs. He taught lessons that must be relearned over and over, as the ...
December 1st Is Military Abolition Day
I've been fond of December 1st ever since I was born on it. I later found out that it had been on a December 1st that Rosa Parks had sat down and refused to stand up or move to the back of that racist bus in Montgomery. Later still I ...
Amy Goodman and Denis Moynihan Explain the Past Four Years
Amy Goodman and Denis Moynihan are touring the country with a new book that everyone should have and read. "The Silenced Majority: Stories of Uprisings, Occupations, Resistance, and Hope" is a history of the Obama Years in the form of a thematically organized collection of columns -- columns that grew ...
Drone War Protesters Arrested in NY State
Once again nonviolent protesters of U.S. drone wars have been arrested at the gates of Hancock Air Field in New York State. Thursday morning, 19 people blocked the three gates to the base for a period of hours beginning at 8 a.m. Eventually, the front gate was opened after 11 ...
U.S. and U.K. War Veterans Against Drones
"What, quite unmanned in folly?" --Lady MacBeth This past Thursday was a beautiful day for a protest, both in London, England, and in San Diego, California. Fortunately for those of us who still care about peace and justice in the world -- even to the point of opposing cold-blooded murder ...
The Military Spending Cut Scare
The fearmongering is on. Here's a typical article, this one from the only daily newspaper in my hometown: "Defense spending could face large loss from federal cuts "By: NATE DELESLINE III | ndelesline@dailyprogress.com | 978-7243 "Published: September 17, 2012"Charlottesville Daily Progress "Charlottesville and Albemarle County could see a potential loss ...
The Environmental Antiwar Movement
Events in South Korea are putting U.S. and international environmental groups into coalition with antiwar groups, and in rare opposition to one of the most environmentally destructive forces on earth: the military industrial complex. Normally, this doesn't happen. Typically, civil liberties groups oppose the detention and torture and assassination that ...
NBC's Celebrity Warriors: "They barely survived the first week!"
If you sat through the two-hour debut of NBC's "Stars Earn Stripes" on Monday, you heard the promotion for next week's show: "They barely survived the first week!" And you thought to yourself: "Uh, no, that was me." What intolerable filth! In this "reality" show, "celebrities" we've mostly never heard ...
One of the most inspiring events thus far at the Veterans For Peace National Convention underway in Miami was a presentation on Thursday by several veterans who have refused to participate in war. Typically, they have done this at the risk of significant time in prison, or worse. In most ...
Guess What % of Americans Know Military Spending Is Increasing
And keep guessing some more, because pollsters are unlikely to ask that question. A year and a half ago, a poll found that Americans drastically underestimate how high U.S. military spending is. This fits with consistent polling showing slim majority support for cutting military spending, but strong support for major ...
Remarks delivered at Peacestock 2012 I want to thank Bill Habedank for inviting me here and everyone who's been involved in setting up this wonderful event, which ought to be replicated all over this country. Almost our entire population claims to favor peace. At least three quarters of us favor ...
Dennis Trainor, Jr., has produced a full-length movie of the Occupy movement, and he's done a hell of a great job. The Occupy movement was created, as are all movements in the United States, in large part by the corporate media. They didn't understand it. They didn't want it. They ...
Chris Hedge's and Joe Sacco's new book, "Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt," is a treasure. Hedges wrote the plain text. Sacco produced the text-heavy cartoon sections and other illustrations, which even I -- not a big fan of cartoon books -- found to enrich this book enormously. Hedges and ...
Can We Get Along Without Authorities?
Some years ago, I watched a screening of a film about Daniel Ellsberg and the release of the Pentagon Papers. The film was shown in the U.S. Capitol, and Ellsberg was present, along with others, to discuss the movie and take questions afterwards. I've just read Chris Hayes' new book ...
Why Even Failed Activism Succeeds
I enjoy reading histories of past activism, including memoirs by long-time activists, such as Lawrence Wittner's new book, Working for Peace and Justice. Almost every such account includes belated discoveries of the extent to which a government has been spying on and infiltrating activist groups. And almost every such account ...
Ending the Mindset That Gets Us into War
MAY 20, 2012, MILITARIZED CHICAGO -- Next month in Baltimore they're going to celebrate the War of 1812. That's what we do with wars. We say they're the last resort. We say they're hell. We say they're for the purpose of eliminating themselves: we fight wars for peace. Although we ...
"We Did Not Choose This War" and Other Hypocrisies
By Leah Bolger and David Swanson "We did not choose this war. This war came to us on 9/11. We don't go looking for a fight. But when we see our homeland violated, when we see our fellow citizens killed, then we understand what we have to do." These are ...
Sibel Edmonds' new book, "Classified Woman," is like an FBI file on the FBI, only without the incompetence. The experiences she recounts resemble K.'s trip to the castle, as told by Franz Kafka, only without the pleasantness and humanity. I've read a million reviews of nonfiction books about our government ...
What a Real Peace Candidate Looks Like
I recently wrote about a conversation I'd had with a fairly typical Democratic candidate for Congress (O.K. perhaps he was below average) -- a former military officer who claims to be for peace, but whose every solution involves war. I asked him to make commitments on what sort of things ...
Veteran Disrupts CNN's War Mongering
Scott Camil, a veteran of the second-longest U.S. war in history, that on Vietnam, radically changed a discussion of the longest war in U.S. history, that on Afghanistan, on CNN on Sunday. CNN's Don Lemon tried repeatedly to explain troops posing with body parts as an inscrutable result of war, ...
Is Peace Getting in the Way of Our War Plans?
What a bizarre circumstance this is. The irrational Iranians are behaving too reasonably. The unmovable Iranians seem to be compromising too readily. This past weekend, the United States and other major nations finally spoke with Iran. In 10 hours of talks (or 5 with translations), minus a lunch break, Iran ...
As We Ruin Our Kids' Planet, They Take Us to Court
Here in the land of the free lunch and the home of the instant gratification, most people make a huge deal out of children's rights or fetuses' rights, or occasionally both. Which is extremely bizarre -- crazier perhaps than bombing houses in Afghanistan to protect the rights of the women ...
The Statues in Our Public Spaces Lie
There are lies of omission as well as commission, and the statues in Charlottesville, Va. -- typical of other towns -- do both. We have statues of Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, a generic Confederate soldier, George Rogers Clark, Lewis and Clark (with Sacagawea kneeling like their dog), and on ...
Robots Kill, But the Blood Is on Our Hands
In her spare time, between nonstop peace activism and leading international exchanges, Medea Benjamin has somehow managed to write the best book yet on the most inhuman form of war yet. The book is called "Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control." The foreword by Barbara Ehrenreich and a form to ...
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May 20th, 2013
CIA: An Idea Whose Time Has Gone
There's a contradiction built into every campaign promise about transparent government beyond the failure to keep the promises. Our government is, in significant portion, made ...
May 13th, 2013
Why We Allow the Destruction of Our Planet
It's not enough to point out that our political system is completely corrupted by money, including money from coal and oil and nukes and gas. ...
May 8th, 2013
Most of the world's governments no longer use the death penalty. Among wealthy nations there is one exception remaining. The United States is among the ...
May 5th, 2013
Some Don't Pay Their War Taxes
This past Saturday morning felt like mid-winter in Asheville, North Carolina, but was actually some weeks past tax day, and dozens of people were gathered ...
April 29th, 2013
The Revolution That's Not Being Televised
Hundreds gathered in Dallas to reject the Bush Lie Bury, and three went to jail. I flew from Dallas to Syracuse, where hundreds protested Obama's ...
April 23rd, 2013
Dallas Morning News Claims Bush Never Lied
George W. Bush should be given an indictment, not a library. An online email action is letting the Department of Justice know the facts about ...
April 18th, 2013
Vile, Filthy, Bloody, Dirty Wars
Jeremy Scahill, author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army, has a new book that should be required reading for Congress ...
February 9th, 2011
Nonviolent Activism Is Middle Eastern
Muslims can look back to the classic nonviolent struggle against British empire waged by the Pashtuns from 1930-1934 in what is now Pakistan and Afghanistan. ...
May 19th, 2011
'Support Killing People or Lose Your Job'
"Ban the bombers are afraid of a fight "Peace hurts business and that ain't right "How do I know? I read it in the Daily ...
June 24th, 2011
Fifty years ago, freedom riders traveled by bus into the U.S. South. Now American freedom riders are joining their allies from around the world on ...
September 2nd, 2011
No, not 29 million job offers. I'm no better at applying for jobs than you are, and my town offers nothing but dead-end McJobs or ...
July 1st, 2011
How We Really Get Rid of Clarence Thomas
Am I the only one who noticed that ex-Nixon lawyer John Dean's article "John Dean Knows How to Get Rid of Clarence Thomas" concludes thus: ...
May 2nd, 2011
The plane I was on landed in Washington, D.C., Sunday night, and the pilot came on the intercom to tell everyone to celebrate: our government ...
May 13th, 2013
Why We Allow the Destruction of Our Planet
It's not enough to point out that our political system is completely corrupted by money, including money from coal and oil and nukes and gas. ...
'Dirty Wars' by Jeremy Scahill
Why have you started a comedy festival in northern Michigan in the middle of winter?
Because if you were here in the dead of winter in the middle of nowhere (which is actually somewhere to us), you'd need a few laughs too ... Continue Reading
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Michael Moore on the Rachel Maddow Show, 2/27/12
