Let's Try Democracy

Mexico once had a problem with a local provincial government promoting illegal immigration from the United States into Mexico in order to engage in the illegal slavery of illegally trafficked people. The locality involved was called Texas. For years, Mexico let Texas get away with its lawlessness and immorality, including not paying taxes, and including killing Mexican soldiers. Then it sent an army to lay down the law. Texans warned each other that soldiers were coming “to give liberty read more

Biden, Boris commit to new “Atlantic Charter”; Israel strikes Gaza again despite ceasefire; Certain Trump-era asylum restrictions rescinded.

In this episode of By Any Means Necessary, host Sean Blackmon is joined by David Swanson, activist, journalist, radio host, Executive Director of World Beyond War and author of “Leaving World War II Behind,” to discuss his recent article, “Beware Atlantic Charters,” efforts by corporate media to perpetuate divisions between Russia read more

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, June 17, 2021

With the U.S. House voting and the U.S. Senate promising to vote on repealing an AUMF (Authorization for the Use of Military Force) from 2002 (essentially a sort of weasely pseudo-permission for President George W. Bush to decide on his own whether to attack and destroy Iraq in violation of the UN Charter and Kellogg-Briand Pact, among other laws), we could end up saying good-bye to a shameful piece of legislation. And without a replacement AUMF read more

The last time the U.S. President and UK Prime Minister announced an “Atlantic Charter” it happened in secret, without public involvement, without Congress or Parliament. It laid out plans for shaping the world upon the conclusion of a war that the U.S. President, but not the U.S. Congress and not the U.S. public, was committed to taking part in. It decreed that certain nations would need to be disarmed, and others not. Yet it put forward various pretenses of goodness and fairness that read more

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, June 10, 2021

The similarities between the movement to abolish war and the movement to abolish police and prisons jump out at me anew when reading Mariame Kaba’s We Do This ‘Til We Free Us, which is about police and prison abolition. The book has a foreword by Naomi Murakawa that includes this:

“Police push millions of people into the criminal punishment system, where anti-Black death-dealing rises through each circle of hell. Black people comprise 13 read more