Author name: davidswanson

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, April 23, 2023

What’s something that nobody can give you unless you want it?

An enemy.

This ought to be obviously true in both the personal sense and the international sense.

In your personal life, you acquire enemies by seeking them out and choosing to have them. And if, through no fault of your own, someone is cruel to you, the option remains of not behaving cruelly in return. The option remains of not even thinking anything cruelly in return. That option might read more

https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_3iZZgo6SQKmufXL1D0tFmg#/registration

MAY 4^th Webinar 

Vietnam to Ukraine: Lessons for the US Peace Movement 

Remembering Kent State and Jackson State! 

 

Margaret Kimberley, Black Agenda Report

David Swanson, World BEYOND War

And Haig Hovaness, GPAX’s Tribute to Daniel Ellsberg. 

Cosponsors:

Green Party Peace Action Committee (GPAX) 

Peoples Network for Planet, Justice & Peace 

Green Party of Ohio 

MAY 4^th Webinar is at 8 pm ET

Register in advance:

read more

Warheads to Windmills! https://actionnetwork.org/events/warheads-to-windmills-webinar?source=direct_link&referrer=group-world-beyond-war

Warheads to Windmills webinar

Start: Sunday, May 07, 2023• 4:00 PM • Eastern Daylight Time (US & Canada) (GMT-04:00)

End: Sunday, May 07, 2023• 5:30 PM • Eastern Daylight Time (US & Canada) (GMT-04:00)

A link to attend this virtual event will be emailed upon RSVP

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, April 21, 2023

Some countries have a Catholic Church holiday every day of the year. The United States has a war holiday every day of the year. Some of them, such as so-called Veterans Day, began as peace holidays that — like Mother’s Day or Martin Luther King Jr. Day — were carefully stripped of any peace content, and were instead turned toward the glorification of war and war read more

I’ll be speaking at this upcoming event that’s meant for anyone in Illinois.

Join the Illinois for a World BEYOND War chapter for a statewide online meeting on Thursday, May 11 at 7:00pm Central, featuring WBW’s Co-Founder & Executive Director David Swanson!

The meeting will kick off with opening remarks by David Swanson, who will discuss the work of WBW globally, from the U.S. to Montenegro, Canada to Ukraine to Latin America, and more, and how WBW chapters can take action.

Then read more

Good interview. No, I’m not actually in Toronto.

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

The New York Times routinely tells bigger lies than the clumsy nonsense it published about weapons in Iraq. Here’s an example. This package of lies is called “Liberals Have a Blind Spot on Defense” but mentions nothing related to defense. It simply pretends that militarism is defensive by applying that word and by lying that “we face simultaneous and growing military threats from Russia and China.” Seriously? Where?

The U.S. military budget read more

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

The Collapse of the War System: Developments in the Philosophy of Peace in the Twentieth Century by John Jacob English, published in 2007, describes the collapse, or the beginning of the collapse, in Western culture, of the inevitability of war. In other words: the popularization of the idea that war might be ended. Unfortunately, we cannot yet recount the collapse of the practice of war, with war spending, weapons dealing, conflict between read more

Twitter, Inc. (NYSE: TWTR) today announced that April Fool’s Day is not in compliance with Basic Community Standards, and that a zero tolerance policy is in place. In a statement, the company said “Of all the evils in the world, none is graver or more damaging than satire. This malevolent practice offends, embarrasses, and blatantly discriminates against millions of people who don’t know what it is. A holiday that labels a large percentage of a country ‘Fools’ should read more

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, March 31, 2023

We should all applaud the Vatican, after almost six centuries, repudiating the Doctrine of Discovery.

Exactly two centuries ago, the Doctrine of Discovery was put into U.S. law in the same year in which the Monroe Doctrine was created.

The Doctrine of Discovery is, in short, the idea that a European nation can claim any land not yet claimed by other European nations, regardless of what people already live there. It was put into U.S. law in 1823, read more

Over at the New York Times, David Brooks is paid more per line than you’ll probably see all year to proclaim the dire need for a restoration of patriotism:

“Because you’re online so much you probably saw the Wall Street Journal/NORC poll that came out this week. It found that the share of Americans who say patriotism is very important to them has dropped to 38 percent from 70 percent since 1998. The share who say religion is very important has dropped to 39 percent from 62 percent. read more

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

The flyer described the author like this: “Ex-Marine Charles Douglas Lummis has written extensively on the topic of US foreign relations, and is a vocal critic of US foreign policy. His works include Radical Democracy, and A New Look at the Chrysanthemum and the Sword. Susan Sontag has called Lummis ‘one of the most thoughtful, honorable, and relevant intellectuals writing about democratic practice anywhere in the world.’ Karel van Wolferen read more

National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said this week, when asked about UK shipments of Depleted Uranium weapons to Ukraine: “If Russia is deeply concerned about the welfare of their tanks and tank soldiers, the safest thing for them to do is move them across the border, get them out of Ukraine.”

Meanwhile, Pentagon spokesperson Garron Garn said Depleted Uranium read more