Nuclear Weaponry

“Deterrence”

Pakistan and India obtained nuclear weapons in 1998 and went to war in 1999. The United States and Russia have fought numerous wars against other nations, and in Ukraine against each other (albeit with mainly Ukrainian troops on one side), and often threatened to use nuclear weapons. Russia has threatened to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine. The United States read more

By David Swanson, February 10, 2025

Remarks following airing of President John Kennedy’s speech at American University.

It’s an honor to be asked to speak following a great speech, probably the greatest speech ever by a U.S. president while they were the U.S. president. Many U.S. presidents, possibly all of them, made speeches against war prior to becoming president. Some issued hypocritical warnings included in bad speeches on their last day in office. Some spoke and even worked for read more

The documentary film The Bibi Files, begins with and is named for and for a long time focuses on leaked videos from the prosecution of Netanyahu for corruption. Through much of the film my thoughts were of Al Capone — of getting a killer on tax fraud. Do I really want to watch footage of an obnoxious sociopath when that’s the majority of U.S. news every day, and do I really want this other killer to go down for having read more

A remarkable film called Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat is up for a possible Oscar for best documentary this year. I’ve seen none of the other four nominees, but have intentionally avoided seeing one of them, which appears from the advertisements to be a disgusting piece of propaganda in support of war in Ukraine. In contrast, Soundtrack is an exposure of the evil at the core of read more

Head of NATO Tells European Union to Move Money from Healthcare and Retirement to War:

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, January 30, 2025

Remarks at the Sixth International Conference for World Balance in Havana, Cuba, Jan. 30, 2025

Video here.

Before I start I want to express sympathy for the people who have died in a plane crash in Washington, and I want to condemn Trump’s disgusting proposal to kidnap people and lock them up in Guantanamo.

I’m very happy to be in Cuba. I feel closer to Cuba than I do to people in the United States with red hats reading MAGA. Cuba is, read more

What’s wrong with military bases and what can be done about them?

The Earth is coated in military bases, spreading like a pandemic, foriegn ones, domestic ones, famous ones, secret ones,  part of a growing and disastrous global increase in spending on wars and preparations for wars that makes wars more, not less, likely. And prime targets in wars are bases and anything near them.

Bases are many of the worst environmental disaster sites, polluting air, soil, and water, and generating horrific read more

A reconstruction of Anne Frank’s hiding place is touring the world and the pages of the New York Times. Feelings of self-righteousness and support for military spending and NATO cheerleading are forecast to reach record temperatures.

Great peace-loving American Dick Cheney’s and brave progressive heroine Liz Cheney’s 2015 book, Exceptional: Why the World Needs a Powerful America, is one of countless accounts of U.S. superiority that finds the historical and moral greatness read more

An imperial presidency, a cult of idiocracy, and a team of hateful oligarchs is the problem.

A salute is just a symbol.

If you do a web search for images of “Bellamy salute” you find countless black-and-white photographs of U.S. children and adults with their right arms raised stiffly out in front of them in what will strike most people as a Nazi salute. From the early 1890s through 1942 the United States used the Bellamy salute to accompany the words written by Francis Bellamy and known as read more

By David Swanson, Progressive Hub, January 21, 2025

I hope everyone in the world reads the new book Another World Is Possible: Lessons for America from Around the Globe by Natasha Hakimi Zapata. I think the lessons could be for anywhere on Earth. They are stories of what is possible for the United States (or in some cases a single state thereof) or most anywhere else. But they are also stories of what is already real in certain parts of the world.

To some limited and shrinking extent, states within read more

You would never know it from U.S. corporate media, but there is an interesting poll on one of the things Kamala Harris could have done to win the 2024 presidential election. The poll has dramatic, news-worthy findings. It was done by a polling company very frequently reported on by corporate media (YouGov). It’s about the single biggest corporate news story of 2024 and about people (Donald Trump and Kamala Harris) featured read more

Like the Republican Party whose senators will make Pete Hegseth the next U.S. Secretary of War, Hegseth is a bad joke. The Democratic minority in the horribly unrepresentative Senate is a joke you might hear at an amateur mic night.

Hegseth is a guy who has reportedly shouted “Kill all Muslims.” Nobody asked him if he had done that or if he agreed with it — not even when he claimed to have been labeled an extremist purely for having a Christian tattoo. He’s a guy who has read more

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