Author name: davidswanson

By Green GrassRoots Election Protection, May 21, 2024

Lots of people joined in and asked questions. Enjoy.

The recent NATO “Youth Summit,” even on double speed, is over an hour and a half on Youtube. I couldn’t watch it all, as it just made me feel old — so old that I can remember when people could feel shame about profiteering from mass killing or promoting world wars likely to end in nuclear apocalypse.

The summit’s “youth” participants appear to have met some requirement of being roughly younger than either Biden OR Trump — and there may have been as many as tens of them participating. read more

Eleanor Roosevelt descended from Mt. Sinai . . .

Let’s, for the moment, skip past the usual impossible task of explaining what it means that everything is a social construct to the guy who replies “Is this brick that I’m bashing my head with a social construct, you idio . . .” (exit stage right). Let’s go, instead to a particular example that’s been causing me trouble of late: human rights.

I recently told someone that the murder of Israelis by Hamas was immoral, read more

In the photo above, World BEYOND War Board Member and Treasurer John Reuwer, a physician, at right, supports downwinders impacted by nuclear weapons testing, demanding restitution from the U.S. government that has experimented on and lied to people for decades. John commented:

“I often think the two reasons most otherwise good people support war is they don’t count all the costs, and they don’t know the alternatives to protecting freedom and self determination. Here are indigenous read more

I’m old enough to remember a video of a New York Times reporter who let slip that she’d been instructed never to say the president of the United States had lied, even if he (George W. Bush) was just blatantly lying. Not that she objected to the policy. It made perfect sense to her. Now I can’t find that video because the internet is so weighted down with accounts of Trump and Biden lying.

But I was quite pleasantly surprised when the only local daily here in Charlottesville, the read more

Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty declares that NATO members will assist another member if attacked by “taking action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force.” But the UN Charter does not say anywhere that warmaking is authorized for whoever jumps in on the appropriate side.

The North Atlantic Treaty’s authors may have been aware that they were on dubious legal ground because they went on twice to claim otherwise, first adding the words “Any such armed attack and all read more

I fervently hope, dear reader, that you do not agree that every person in Israel deserves to die. But I know some of you do, and I hope to suggest a better way of looking at it. I know that you’re even more unlikely to agree with me that nobody ever anywhere “deserves to die.” But the closer you can get to agreeing with that, the better!

Have you heard people calling the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israel a “success,” despite the perfectly predictable results piling up in mass graves? You read more

This year, 2024, World BEYOND War and WILPF Cameroon celebrate 10 years of building peace through nonviolent means. To mark this anniversary, this webinar was organised to share experiences of 10 years of anti-war activism and peacebuilding.