David Swanson, Alice Slater, and Bruce Gagnon discuss obstacles to nuclear abolition and the U.S.-Russia relationship.

Dear “Washington Football Team,”

This isn’t free unsolicited advice on your new name, because (1) you’ve pretended to ask everyone for input, and (2) if you name your team the Washington Warriors next year, as I’m guessing you would have done by now if not for some legal dispute, I’ll be happy to sell you the URL washingtonwarriorssuck.com for a donation of .00001% of the U.S. military budget to the people of Yemen.

So, here’s my non-free and fully solicited read more

The U.S. House of Misrepresentatives on Tuesday voted 324 to 93 (with 13 not voting) to defeat a proposal to move a mere 10% of military spending to human, environmental, and health needs. The 324 people who voted the wrong way on this really should never show their faces in public again. Our society ought to shame them so deeply that they pick up and move to a country with read more

By unanimous vote, the City Council of Charlottesville, Va., on Monday evening voted to ban militarized policing. Specifically, the City Council resolved that “the Charlottesville Police Department shall not acquire weaponry from the United States armed forces,” and “shall not receive military-style or ‘warrior’ training by the United States armed forces, a foreign military or police, or any private company.”

The wording of the resolution came directly from read more

The City Council of Charlottesville, Va., is very much to be applauded for bringing to a vote this evening, and encouraged to vote yes and pass, a resolution banning military training and weaponry for the Charlottesville Police Department.

It’s not too late to sign the petition to encourage this, or to contact the City Council.

Here’s the packet for tonight’s meeting. You can read more

Remarks at Peacestock 2020

Imagine you’re stranded on a barren rock in the middle of the ocean, nothing in sight but the endless sea. And you’ve got a basket of apples, nothing else. It’s a huge basket, a thousand apples. There are various things you could do.

You could allow yourself a few apples a day and try to make them last. You could work on creating a patch of soil where apple seeds could be planted. You could work on starting a fire in order to have some cooked apples for a change. read more

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, July 16, 2020

Nicholson Baker’s new book, Baseless: My Search for Secrets in the Ruins of the Freedom of Information Act, is staggeringly good. If I point out any minor complaints with it, while ignoring, for example, the entirety of Trump’s latest press conference, this is because flaws stand out in a masterpiece while making up the uniform entirety of a Trumpandemic Talk.

Baker begins as if he has an unanswered and possibly unanswerable question: Did the read more

“Good Morning! Would you mind staying a safe distance away?”

“Hi! Nice mask! Could you please wear it on your face instead of your chin?”

Helping people reduce the risk of spreading a deadly disease requires being willing to offend them.

And as they long for a return to normalcy, you should be preparing to be a lot more offensive.

“That sounds delicious. Does it have any dead animals in it?”

“How’s it going? Could you please not carry a gun around here?”

These are comments of the same read more