Author name: davidswanson

Remarks in New York City, May 21, 2023

About a year-and-a-half before I was born down in midtown, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave a speech up at Riverside Church called Beyond Vietnam. “A nation that continues year after year,” he said, “to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.” He was well aware that the military was not being used in defense, but the language of war acceptance was by that point well-established. read more

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, May 20, 2023

Remarks at Liberty State Park in New Jersey on May 20, 2023, with Veterans For Peace’s The Golden Rule and Pax Christi New Jersey.

A lot of things go wrong, but sometimes things go right.

The Statue of Liberty is an example of things going right. Not because there was ever a golden age of perfect kindness and intelligence that wasn’t chock full of bigotry and hypocrisy, but because such a statue with such words on it could not be created today. read more

Go to 1:07:44.

I discussed counting war dead with Ted Rall and Manila Chan on The Final Countdown on Sputnik.

Of course I can only touch on one aspect of recent history here.

I’m looking at the new report from Costs of War.

Five years ago, I think Nicolas Davies credibly and conservatively estimated 6 million people directly killed in U.S. wars since 2001 in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, Yemen, Libya, and Somalia.

What Costs of War has now done is to go with the highly dubious but corporate-respectable estimate of 900,000 directly killed in all of those wars, but leaving out Libya and Somalia. read more

Al Mytty in Illinois during webinar for which these remarks were prepared.

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, May 12, 2023

We very much need World BEYOND War educational and activist events and campaigns in Illinois (and every other location). We also need the people of Illinois (and every other location on Earth) as part of the global movement to end war.

I say that having been in Chicago many times and at least once to Carbondale. Interstate 64 which comes by my house also cuts through Illinois, read more

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, May 11, 2023

“Putting aside all the fancy words and academic doubletalk, the basic reason for having a military is to do two jobs — to kill people and to destroy.” — Thomas S. Power

The photo above was taken yesterday. The flowers are in bloom in the mountain pastures of Sinjajevina. And the U.S. military is on its way to trample them and practice destroying things. What did these beautiful sheep-herding families in this European mountain paradise do to read more

It’s been two years since I wrote on this topic. At that time, at least 36% of U.S. mass shooters had been trained by the U.S. military. Since then, a grand total of nobody at all has written on the topic.

I’m picking it up again, because people have started asking about it, prompted by a former Marine using apparently trained skills to murder a subway rider in New York, and shooters in Atlanta and Texas actually being identified as veterans in news reports — an extreme rarity.

However, read more

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, May 10, 2023

It’s so inspiring that the Canadian military asked the public what it could change to get people to be willing to join. The obvious U.S. answer of poverty and grotesque prices for education probably won’t work — or at least may not be sufficient in the near term. And people would probably read more

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, May 5, 2023

The Golden Rule is a beautiful boat. I’ve been on it in San Diego. It’s also an important boat. It set sail in 1958 to stop nuclear testing in the atmosphere, and inspired many peace makers and peace ships that followed. The restored Golden Rule is voyaging once more, sailed by Veterans For Peace, to show that a nuclear peace is possible, and that bravery and tenacity can overcome militarism.

I’m planning to greet the Golden Rule and read more

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, May 5, 2023

Remarks from May 4th webinar with Green Party Peace Action Committee; Peoples Network for Planet, Justice & Peace; Green Party of Ohio 

I’m going to be brief and generalize and give some tentative conclusions in order to fit into 10 minutes what I think happened in Vietnam and what I think are some of the key lessons for peacemaking now from peacemaking at the time of what the Vietnamese call the American War.

I think that the U.S. public has read more

By David Swanson, May 2, 2023

Can you test yourself with this quick quiz?

A picture can be worth a trillion words — or a couple of trillion dollars when it’s a picture of military spending.

We’ve just published a new collection of maps for Mapping Militarism 2023. As always, they are at worldbeyondwar.org/militarism-mapped and available read more

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, May 1, 2023

Much of the southern half of the world is a nuclear-free zone. But what if you live in the northern half and under a national government that adores militarism and couldn’t possibly care less what you think?

Well, you can make your town or county or city a nuclear-free zone.

Tom Charles of Veterans For Peace, Chapter #35, in Spokane, Washington reports:

“On Nov. 7, 2022, our City Council passed an Ordinance that made our city nuclear-free read more

Orbis Books has published a short book called Ukraine Diary by Henri J.M. Nouwen with an introduction by Borys Gudziak, a preface by Robert Ellsberg, and an afterword by Laurent Nouwen. The diary itself was written in the 1990s and deemed unworthy of publication. Now Ukraine is a hot news story. The preface, introduction, and afterword were written just recently and all in perfect harmony with the Western propaganda in which all that is wrong with the world emanates from Russia. The book read more

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, April 30, 2023

Tell me one good thing about Switzerland. Well, its flag is a plus.

No, the best thing about Switzerland is neutrality, or at least the idea of it.

The Washington Post (of course it’s the Washington Post) recently published an argument against the neutrality of Switzerland.

That neutrality has been rather blatantly phony since the mid-1990s. Switzerland is already on the map of NATO partners and U.S. weapons customers. Here’s how NATO explains read more

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, April 29, 2023

Imagine a world where a broad coalition of people and groups unites against militarism and oligarchy, and where there are as many successes as failures to discuss.

Or just look at Latin America.

In a recent book, and in numerous articles, I’ve argued for burying the Monroe Doctrine after 200 years, and for supporting those at work doing so.

Right now, in Washington DC, CODEPINK has organized a gathering read more

By OMN Insight, April 27, 2023

David Swanson discusses peace negotiations between the Ethiopian government and the Oromo Liberation Army.

See: https://worldbeyondwar.org/oromia