Author name: davidswanson

By David Swanson, Progressive Hub, April 15, 2026

Nell Bernstein’s new book is called In Our Future We Are Free: The Dismantling of the Youth Prison. It tells us that in the United States in 2000 the number of young people held inside locked buildings was 108,800 and in 2022 it was 27,600. At least two-thirds of youth prisons and jails have been shut down. This is an enormous, dramatic, positive development in an era when most people imagine that the closest thing to good news out read more

Les Leopold’s new book is called The Billionaire$ Have Two Parties: We Need One of Our Own. The point I like best in it is the following. Not only are the duopolistic parties of Republicans and Democrats both generally serving moneyed interests and not ordinary people or the planet, but also they have joined together in the pursuit of maximum gerrymandering — and that could create a way out from under their disastrous domination.

One key impediment to running a third-party candidate read more

Do you like audio books? I do. What about peace, do you like that? I’m referring to peace here as the absence of war. I’m not intending to challenge everyone’s favorite aphorism that — chant it with me — “Peace Is More Than the Absence of War.” I’m just referring to that thing, whatever it is that includes the absence of war plus some other stuff.

If you search for “Peace” on mega-audio-book-supplier Audible (or at least if I do — read more

“Who knows better about surprise than Japan? Why didn’t you tell me about Pearl Harbor?” —Donald Trump

The propaganda flows like the oil leaking from the battleship in Pearl Harbor. This ship, The Arizona, one of two still leaking oil in Pearl Harbor, is left there as war propaganda, as proof that the world’s top weapons dealer, top base builder, top military spender, and top warmaker is an innocent victim. And the oil is allowed to go on leaking for the same reason. It’s read more

As Ms. Takaichi, the Prime Minister of Japan, meets with the U.S. President on this anniversary of the attack on Iraq with the attack on Iran underway, she should agree to nothing that violates

1. The peace Constitution of Japan, imposed on Japan by the United States.

Article 9 of Japan’s constitution states:

“Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes. (2) To accomplish the aim of read more

According to U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio the U.S. attacked Iran because Israel was going to attack Iran, likely producing Iranian attacks on U.S. bases. This comment suggested that Israel began a U.S. war, but also that U.S. bases began the war. Neither thing is as unusual as perhaps imagined.

The United States has loaded up with bases the area that Iran has the ability to hit with missiles. Not only does the presence of a U.S. base tend to make wars more likely, but the U.S. claim that read more

By David Swanson, Progressive Hub, March 9, 2026

For many years, Senator Charles Schumer demanded tougher and tougher sanctions on the people of Iran, as he shamelessly documents on his own website. He insisted on a Cuba-like blockade, punishing and deterring any company or nation from providing life-support to Iran. He predicted, ludicrously but proudly, that such punishing sanctions might lead to an overthrow of the Iranian government.

Like all Congressional supporters and opponents of the Obama-era read more

The latest location where Trump has given the orders to murder people is Iran.

Remember a couple of months back when establishment U.S. lawyers and human rights groups were admitting that Trump’s attacks on boats in the Caribbean and Pacific were nothing other than murder?

Murder doesn’t cease being murder because it’s further away or grander or provokes a more dramatic response or targets victims who speak a different language.

By all means hunt in the Epstein files for evidence of Trump raping read more

By World BEYOND War, IPB, ICAP, February 26, 2026

In English:

 In Spanish:

There are many lists of nuclear close calls. We have a new one to add.

On Monday I visited a site in Caracas, Venezuela, where, very early in the morning on January 3, two powerful missiles slammed into the top of a hill, several feet apart, both beneath a tall telecommunications tower. The tower is largely gone. Debris flew for great distances — many times the distance of 270 meters to a nuclear reactor (white in the background in the photo above) and nuclear storage facility. The Earth shook. read more

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, February 22, 2026

I’m on the third day of a peace delegation from the U.S. and other countries to Venezuela. I posted about the second day here and first day here.

Now day 3:

Above is a photo of me with two boys in a neighborhood of Caracas that was attacked by the U.S. military on January 3rd. At left is Antoniel, at right Fabricio. They have stories to tell.

READ THE REST HERE.