Author name: davidswanson

The End of Everything: How Wars Descend into Annihilation by Victor Davis Hanson seems to be the creation of a member of the MICIMATT in good standing, an advocate for heightened hostilities, an accuser of Obama for “appeasing Iran,” and the actual author of a 2020 book called The Case for Trump. The 2024 preface to The End of Everything makes clear that the author is a believer in Israeli propaganda, and a supporter of the U.S. and NATO and an enemy of their read more

There’s a book called “Open Borders” on the shelves of mainstream corporate bookstores. This is very good news, but it may be because the book is a comic book (fun!) and/or because the book is about economics, very scientistic, and “Libertarian” (none of that caring about people crap!).

Abolition movements will require all types when the institution that needs abolishing is massive and entrenched. World BEYOND War is putting together a read more

Restoring the original and non-Orwellian name to the U.S. Department of War ought to have a positive impact on people’s speech and understanding.

Yes, of course, Trump did it in order to celebrate the sadistic malevolence associated with the word “war.” He did it while pursuing horrific wars in Palestine and Ukraine, threatening (and beginning) wars on Venezuela and Iran, and moving massive resources from human and environmental needs into war preparations in the U.S. and its read more

A fit of honesty by a liar driven by sincere malevolent support for a long-euphemistically disguised project (Trump restoring the name “Department of War”) should not be occasion to marvel at agreement with Trumpolini. Nor should it be occasion to assume he’s blurting out the truth because he’s dying. Rather, we ought to take this opportunity to propose brutally honest names for the whole government.

If Defense becomes War, then . . .

• Congress becomes Royal Court.
• House of Representatives becomes House of Misrepresentatives.
• Senate becomes Chamber of Antiquities for the Protection of Oligarchy.
• White House becomes Nuclear-Armed Throne.
• State becomes Lawfare.
• Health and Human Services becomes Lifespan Reduction.
• Interior becomes Extractivism.
• Housing and Urban Development becomes Rent’s Too Damn Low.
• Homeland Security becomes Fatherland Purity.
• Education becomes Revelation.
• Energy becomes Nukes, Gas, Coal, and Profits.
• Transportation becomes You Left Your House It’s Your Problem.
• Labor becomes CEOs
• Commerce becomes Piracy.
• Agriculture becomes What Doesn’t Kill You Buy More Of.
• Treasury becomes Lockheed Savings and Checking.
• Justice becomes Loyalty Enforcement.

And

• Veterans Affairs becomes You Fall for the Propaganda, You Deal with the Moral Injury, Suckers.

I’m perfectly serious, and would read more

I recently published an article called “The Case Against a Military Intervention to Stop the Gaza Genocide,” not because I like either of the two choices on the usual, supposedly exhaustive list of options (lie back and take it, or kill-kill-kill) but because I think there is another way — or thousands of varieties of another way. That is, the options for nonviolent, strategic, read more

The Democratic National Committee, the people who run the least popular political party in recorded U.S. polling, do not get the respect they deserve — especially when they take a bold, principled stand for a genocide, as they did on Tuesday, voting down a resolution for an arms embargo on Israel.

For one thing, a full 8 percent of Democrats in the United States support the war on Gaza, and I have yet to read a single piece of commentary addressing the remarkable job that the DNC is doing read more

By Paul Haeder, August 23, 2025

Audio here.

Accompanying post here.

This is a wide-ranging discussion of matters of peace and war.

Have you read “The Case for Military Intervention to Stop the Gaza Genocide“? I don’t mind promoting it to you, since I agree with most of it (and also consider most of it to do absolutely nothing to advance any case for military intervention to stop the Gaza genocide).

The enormous problem we face is not the people who care enough and are desperate enough to make this misguided proposal. The enormous problem is the usual one: corrupt, evil, malfunctioning, and sadistic governments abetted read more

I was happy to discuss Ukraine for an hour with Santita Jackson:

I hate to say I told you so. It’s obnoxious really. But sometimes it is an important point. In this case the point is this: the people who are always right about wars were right about the war in Ukraine, whereas the “experts” who are always on television and in government were, as usual, wrong.

Which of the following statements about the war with Russia comes closest to your personal views?

• Ukraine should continue fighting until it wins the war
• Ukraine should seek to negotiate an ending to the war as soon as possible

—

Gallup asked read more

Did you know that the murders and rapes and free-for-all violent chaos in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina didn’t actually happen, and that the consistent pattern during major disasters is for people to go out of their way to help each other, for the news media to falsely report murder and mayhem, and for authorities who imagine most people are like themselves to send in armed troops to create a second disaster?

Did you know that the Lord of the Flies is a story made up by a disturbed read more

It’s oddly encouraging that the New York Post had to bring up its kookiest rightwing propagandist on Friday to argue that nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved lives. It’s almost as read more

Your average person, school teacher, or Wikipedia editor will tell you that we’ve long known what killed the dinosaurs millions of years before humans came around: an asteroid smashing into what is now Mexico.

The reality is that many geologists and other scientists have seriously doubted that explanation since it was first proposed in 1980, and an intense debate has raged ever since, with many arguing that such an impact, or even a large number of such impacts, probably played at most a bit read more