Author name: davidswanson

How can media outlets be taken seriously — and I do not mean this rhetorically — when they shout that two hostages have been freed while adding in the fine print that several dozen mere Palestinians have been killed in the process, when they propose that a city of starving refugees be bombed in a manner that “protects civilians,” when they equate fueling wars with “aid”?

One part of the answer is that they feature raging debates between wildly opposed positions. Surely only open and read more

In this video, David Swanson discusses with Michigan Peace Council how to build a local peace group.

Michigan Peace Council is here: https://michiganpeacecouncil.org

On February 3, WBW Advisory Board Member Maria Santelli and I led workshops at Southpaw Cafe in Blacksburg, Virginia, for students at Virginia Tech. Maria’s workshops were on knowing your rights when thinking about joining the military, and on “How do I feel about war” — the latter including a popular exercise in which participants step forward or back in response to questions about the morality of killing. My workshop was on “Talking read more

For a couple of decades now, the very worst people in Washington, D.C., have pushed hard for a war on Iran. Some high points have come in 2007, 2015, 2017, and 2024. Each time it has been absolutely critical to attack Iran at once. There could be no delay. Dominoes would fall. Terrorism would prevail. Credibility would be sqandered. And yet, each time, the threatened war has not been launched, and the world has gone on just the same.

We’ve seen a wide variety of excuses deployed over these years read more

I didn’t actually think the author of The Shock Doctrine could write a less than wonderful book but I really wasn’t interested in a book about people confusing her (Naomi Klein) with Naomi Wolf, or any other Naomi for that matter. Then I read Dave Zirin’s review of Doppelganger and realized that of course it was about something more than twins, body doubles, and avatars — and literary references thereto.

Doppelganger is actually about, among other things, the situation read more

Remarks on January 28, 2024, in Oakland, California.

Photos and videos here.

War is a top cause in the world of death, of injury, of destruction, of trauma, and of course far and away the leading cause of homelessness. And if you start looking at the long-term damage — the people who die a year later, the people who grow up believing in violent vengeance, the water and soil that have been poisoned forever, the economies that are not restored — then war is many times worse than an honest survey read more