Author name: davidswanson

Monday night (video here), three of five City Council Members in Charlottesville, Virginia, voted No on a resolution (in agenda packet here) in support of a ceasefire in Gaza.

Council Members Michael Payne and Natalie Oschrin put the resolution on the agenda and spoke well in support of it.

But Council Members Lloyd Snook, Brian Pinkston, and Juandiego Wade voted No.

Snook claimed to have no competence in foreign policy, spreading what is a pernicious idea in a supposedly self-governing land, namely read more

Should we be more or less worried that the corporate media cannot see that, that it seems to have deluded itself, rather than its consumers?

It’s been a long and ciruitous search to find the handful of words that can end all warfare on Earth.

Living in the United States I was long tripped up by the “Excuse me, but WHAT ABOUT HITLER?” question.

I tried pointing out that the U.S. and British governments refused to rescue Nazis’ victims because they simply didn’t want them as immigrants, that the war could have been avoided, that Nazism could have been avoided, that the U.S. didn’t need to develop and promote the dangerous bunk read more

Some acts of truth-telling about war and peace are easy, and some involve extreme risk. Some are simple, and some require great strategic planning. Some involve facts, some analysis, and some storytelling.

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, March 6, 2024

At World BEYOND War and other groups that I work for and work with we often flood elected officials with emails or phone calls — or bodies in their offices — with very urgent and specific demands to stop killing particular populations. At the same time, at the height of crises and otherwise, we find it valuable to press in a different direction. We don’t want one nation saved and some other nation bombed. We don’t want the read more

By World BEYOND War, March 4, 2024

We don’t need a “Rules-Based Order.” We need a U.S. government that obeys laws.

The Problem

The Vetoes

Since 1972, the U.S. government has been far and away the leading user of the veto in the UN Security Council, often blocking the will of every or nearly every other national government on Earth. It has vetoed U.N. condemnation of South African apartheid, Israel’s wars and occupations, chemical and biological weapons, nuclear weapons proliferation and first use and use against non-nuclear nations, U.S. wars in Nicaragua and Grenada and Panama, the read more

There’s a guide at wordsaboutwar.org to some of the standard war language used for big bucks by professional propagandists and for free by almost everyone else who has normalized it and not given it another thought. Manufacturing tools for mass murder is called “the defense industry,” those murdered are called “collateral damage,” the purpose is labeled “the national interest,” etc.

The trouble with talking like the Pentagon or CNN is not just that it helps to — in the words of read more