By David Swanson

In planning a conference that is coming up in Toronto, I’ve been seeking out stories of peace and justice in Toronto and Canada. Wow are there a lot of them, as well as plenty of war and injustice as well. One of my favorites has got to be the story of Rubin “Hurricane” Carter. Terry “Typhoon” Swinton, who got his name from Carter, sent me a copy of the book he co-authored with Sam Chaiton in 1991, read more

At the big “Treason Summit” “Russopocalypse” “Catastrovent” on Monday, journalist Sam Husseini tried to ask a question about banning nuclear weapons, and was physically hauled out of the room by officials from the “Land of Press Freedom,” Finland. Meanwhile, an Associated Press reporter was permitted to ask a perfectly respectable question pushing a blatant lie that risks nuclear war. Yay for press freedom!

The AP reporter claimed that “every read more

The unproven allegation that the Russian government helped us find out how the DNC was screwing Bernie Sanders with his pants on is not actually a moral, legal, or practical reason to launch a spree of mass-killing of innocents, which is what every war since WWII has been.

The terrorist acts of 9/11/2001 were crimes to be prosecuted, but not a moral, legal, or practical reason to launch a spree of mass-killing of innocents, even if dark-skinned Muslim innocents were chosen over any of the “white” read more

I’ll be speaking in Santa Cruz, California, one month before Armistice Day 100, on October 12 and 13, 2018. The Friday evening event is from 7 to 9 p.m. and will include music and book signing. The Saturday event is from 10 a.m. to noon and will include lunch.

The location for both events is the Resource Center for Nonviolence at 612 Ocean Street, Santa Cruz, Calif. Map.

For more information, email RedRockRico at gmail.com.

I’ll discuss my books, read more

Paul Bloom’s book Against Empathy was bound to be either advocacy for cruelty and sadism, or a horribly misguided attempt to improve the world, or false advertising (it would turn out he’s only against the most narrowly or bizarrely defined concept of empathy), or genuinely interesting. It turns out to be a combination of the last two, plus a third part made up of numerous lengthy but tangentially related topics — some of them also interesting.

The book’s subtitle is “The read more

The eternal question of U.S. politics rears its ugly ass again: “Why in the hell does anyone ever listen to Alan Dershowitz?”

No court can overturn a Congressional impeachment and conviction. Will somebody at Fox and CNN page the nearest genocidal torture-defending lawyer, who is either Alan Dershowitz or someone joining him on a search for the real O.J. Simpson killer at a five-star restaurant for lunch today, and get Dershowitz a copy of the United States Constitution?

The Constitution read more

C.J. Hinke has produced probably the best collection I’ve read of writings by and about conscientious objectors and war refusers behind bars. It’s called Free Radicals: War Resisters in Prison.

The book is a bit of a time capsule, somewhat along the lines of Daniel Ellsberg’s recent book revealing the substance of the other half of the Pentagon Papers decades later. In fact, Hinke actually found this manuscript, which he had begun in 1966 and lost a couple of years later in the read more