Author name: davidswanson

The growing genre of war abolition books out-number, out-think, and — for anyone who reads them — probably out-persuade the bizarre recent genre of war-is-good-for-you books, which I take to include Christopher Coker’s Why War, Margaret MacMillan’s War: read more

Featuring:

• David Swanson, Executive Director of World BEYOND War, Campaign Coordinator for RootsAction. His books include “War Is A Lie.” Awarded 2018 Peace Prize by the U.S. Peace Memorial Foundation.
• Emma Claire Foley, RootsAction nuclear weapons policy expert, writer, and filmmaker. Her commentaries have been featured in Newsweek, NBC, the Guardian and other international news outlets.
• David Vine, Writer and political anthropologist. Author of the books “The

The U.S. Secretary of State has taken a break from demanding more weapons shipments to fuel the genocide in Palestine, to announce that he has “recognized” a genocide in Sudan.

Blinken says he has based his determination on the horrific killing of civilians in Sudan, without citing any evidence of intent to commit genocide. It is the voluminous evidence of that intent that distinguishes the genocide in Gaza from most wars, virtually every one of which in recent decades has amounted to a mass read more

Citizen George is a film that tells the story of the life, thus far, of George Lakey. A good and lengthy review is here. An 8-minute preview video is here.

George Lakey is an inspiration, mentor, leader, and pioneer for myself and for many of us who want to abolish war and violence, and who want to train the world in nonviolent activism as an alternative to war and as an alternative to acceptance of injustice.

The best way to begin learning from George Lakey is probably to read his books, and after read more

According to a headline in The Hill newspaper, which takes a position typical of U.S. corporate media, “New Year’s attacks fuel fears of extremism in military.”

In other words, an institution openly dedicated to mass killing and destruction may have fallen victim to infiltration by “extremists.” As if there could be something more extreme than a military.

The reason for this approach is that two U.S. military veterans attempted mass murders that made the news on the same day — and their read more

When Donald Trump again warms the throne in Washington on Martin Luther King Day, each of the three evils that King worked to abolish will get a major boost: racism, extreme materialism, and militarism.

Racism

While Trumplickers post-election propose recruiting abroad certain highly educated potential immigrants (and defunding and further destroying U.S. education — including by writing racism — not to mention critical thinking — out of history books while shaping them in a fundamentally racist read more

In thousands of movies and tv shows, a future is imagined in which full-grown adult humans with less self-control than toddlers both get into fist fights at the drop of a hat and possess the technology to obliterate entire cities or planets at the touch of a button. The fantasy of living in outerspace certainly does not help us preserve the one place we know how to live. But the most damaging fantasy here is that of maintaining widespread acceptance of violence and continuing to exist into an read more