Crimes Are Crimes
On Voting for Bad Democrats: the Perriello Predicament
By David Swanson
What if you told your local congress critter you’d oppose them if they funded more war, and they funded more war, but their opponent is even worse and a Republican?
Tom Perriello, first-term Democratic congress member from Virginia’s Fifth district, is widely expected to lose his reelection bid, in part because he voted for a healthcare bill. Right wingers in the district hated the bill for doing anything at all. Others of us who want to eliminate the health insurance
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Fearing the Masses
There’s a new sentiment in the air, if the people who ask questions at my speaking events are any guide. I love these events, even though I am probably better at staying home and writing. I argue with people more than encouraging them, I’m afraid. Not most people. Just certain types of questioners.
It used to be 9-11 theorists. Then it was doomsayers wallowing in their post-Obama hope overdose. Now it’s people who are afraid of majority rule and want to avoid it. At a recent book-tour
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Clogging and Facilitating
Remarks at George Mason University, Fall for the Book, September 23, 2010. (Video available 9-24-2010 at http://warisacrime.org)
Thank you for being here and skipping the Pledge to America event in Sterling.
I’m going to try to be brief because I tend to be very long-winded answering questions, so I’ve learned to leave time for that. It may sound, as I speak, like I’m giving an overview of a lot of topics, so please keep in mind any that you want to ask questions about or raise
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Leftists call Virginia Democrat Rahm Emanuel’s ‘robot’
By: Barbara Hollingsworth, San Francisco Examiner
Hard to believe, but Congressman Tom Perriello, D-Va. – who told startled Tea Partiers earlier this year that “If you don’t tie our hands, we will keep stealing.” – has also managed to infuriate left-wing activists in his Charlottesville district by pretending to be more conservative than he really is.
The freshman Democrat won his seat in 2008, defeating incumbent Republican Virgil Goode by just two tenths of a percent
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Only in America Can Blair Go Out in Public
By David Swanson
When U.S. media pundits claim that every other nation on earth honestly believed the absurd lies George W. Bush told about Iraqi weapons and ties to terrorism, the grain of truth is that one leader of one foreign nation went along with the lies: British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Bush gave Blair a medal of freedom as a reward. I picture millions of Iraqi refugees without proper food or medicine in Jordan and Syria strong in spirit and grateful for their fate thanks to Blair’s
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Is Anyone Dead on Your Highway?
By David Swanson
It’s over a decade since I last heard Ralph Nader speak in Charlottesville, Va., and I was curious to see what kind of crowd would greet him Monday evening. The answer was one of the biggest rooms on campus packed, and mostly with students, enthusiastic students who gave standing ovations, and laughed and responded throughout a 90-minute speech.
There are not many — if any — other speakers who can get young people in the United States to turn out for a political
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Wall Street's Mercenaries Ride Donkeys
Robert Scheer’s new book “The Great American Stickup: How Reagan Republicans and Clinton Democrats Enriched Wall Street While Mugging Main Street,” is not yet another account of how we got robbed or “why the economy imploded for dummies.” If you’re like me, you just didn’t need another lesson in how swapped collateralized debt obligation derivative tranches didn’t really make the pie higher. Scheer’s book is something else: a straightforward
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Let's Fact Check the AP's Fact Checking on Obama's Speech
By David Swanson
FACT CHECK: Is Iraq combat really over for US?
By CALVIN WOODWARD and ROBERT BURNS (AP)
WASHINGTON — Despite President Barack Obama’s declaration Tuesday of an end to the combat mission in Iraq, combat almost certainly lies ahead. And in asserting the U.S. has met its responsibilities in Iraq, the president opened the door wide to a debate about the meaning of success in the muddle that most — but not all — American troops are leaving behind. A look at
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More War Lies
By David Swanson
Lies aren’t used just to start wars, but also to escalate them, continue them, and even reduce or end them. And we got a pile of war lies from the president Tuesday evening.
Obama claimed the war on Iraq was initially a war to disarm a state. Really? And then “terrorist” Iraqis attacked our troops in their country. Yet if they had done that in our country, I suspect they would still be the terrorists. And then it became a civil war which we were innocently
Comparing Democratic and Republican Blood
By David Swanson
This coming March 19th we’ll have two occasions to mark. One will be the start of the ninth year of occupying Iraq. And, if my math is correct, within a few days of that anniversary we’ll reach the point at which the Democratic House of Representatives and Senate have funded more days of occupying Iraq than those chambers did when they had a Republican majority. In funding days of occupying Afghanistan, the Democrats already have a big lead in the Senate but trail
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F— the Filibuster
Here's something I wrote in December 2008, with an update below:
2009: Year of the Filibuster
By David Swanson
Trying to squeeze any sort of peace on earth out of our government in Washington has been a steep uphill climb for years. For the most part we no longer have representatives in Congress, because of the corruption of money, the weakness of the media, and the strength of parties. There are not 535 opinions on Capitol Hill on truly important matters, but 2. Our supposed representatives work for their party leaders,
Peace Movement Pushes for End to War on Iraq
By David Swanson
As news stories are leading those still aware of the war on Iraq to believe it’s over, it was encouraging to see Busboys and Poets restaurant in Washington, D.C., packed Sunday evening for a four-hour forum on actions needed to actually end that war, make reparations, and deter future wars of aggression. The event was advertised with the following description:
“Is the U.S. military really leaving Iraq or just rebranding? What is the toll of seven years of occupation
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Withdraw the Last Combat Politicians from Washington
By David Swanson
Pretending to end a war and occupation, while stationing 50,000 soldiers, 18,000 mercenaries, and 84,000 support contractors in massive and permanent military bases in Iraq is a far cry from what candidate Barack Obama described as ending “the mind-set that got us into war in the first place.” It fits better with Nobel Peace laureate Obama’s description of war as “not only necessary but morally justified.”
Over the past 20 years, the United States
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HOTSEAT- Swanson's song: Give peace a chance
By LISA PROVENCE, The Hook
It’s not too hard to pick out David Swanson’s house. That would be the one with the “Wage Peace” and “End the War Now” signs in the front yard.
On his website, there’s a picture of U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, and in the background there’s Swanson, holding a small pink sign that reads, “Torture is Illegal.”
Other places you might have run into David Swanson: Protesting former President George Bush at Monticello.
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Green Zone Gets It Right
By David Swanson
I expected to be disappointed by “Green Zone”. I mean the movie, not the chunk of Baghdad we’ve spent seven years and trillions of dollars killing over a million people to steal for an “embassy” containing 21 buildings on 104 acres. I’d been told that this movie was Matt Damon actually following the guidance of his teacher Howard Zinn. I’d been told this was a movie to expose the war lies. I remained dubious.
And then I finally got a chance
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