By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, July 22, 2023

Remarks in Scranton, Pennsylvania, July 22, 2023

There is something that we need to tell a great many of our friends and neighbors. It is that we have been misled. All is not as it seems.

Here we are outside what appears to be a factory where U.S. government dollars create jobs, boost the economy, and fund activities that support the important needs of the U.S. public and the people of the world. Not a bit of those appearances is real.

When government read more

By Telesur, July 13, 2023

World BEYOND War Executive Director David Swanson discusses NATO, Ukraine, and international relations on Telesur.

Democrats in the House of Representatives are threatening to derail the current military spending bill if it includes restrictions on abortion rights. Good for them. Glad to hear it.

But by doing this, they are demonstrating what we might have figured out ourselves all along. If they wanted to reduce military spending instead of jacking it up by additional mountains of cash each and every year, a group of them could threaten to vote No unless it was reduced. They never do that. They never even read more

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, July 12, 2023

There may be more U.S. tourists in Rome than Romans. It’s hard to get away from them — impossible if you are yourself one. But it’s a bit of a shame how they’ve taken over. Every square and street is wall-to-wall people. They’re not all American people. Some of them are Italian. Some of them are even Roman. But they all speak English. They all dress like Americans. Every bar and osteria caters to English-speaking tourists and their tastes. Via Veneto is a cartoon of itself, featuring read more

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, July 10, 2023

On Monday the New York Times argued in favor of continuing the war and supplying weapons for the war in Ukraine but not cluster bombs:

“However compelling it may be to use any available weapon to protect one’s homeland, nations in the rules-based international order have increasingly sought to draw a red line against use of weapons of mass destruction or weapons that pose a severe and lingering risk to noncombatants. Cluster munitions clearly read more

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, July 7, 2023

What most excites me about Julian Aguon’s book No Country for Eight-Spot Butterflies is that (1) there is very little indication in the cover, the blurbs, the preface, the table of contents, etc., that it opposes war, militarism, or empire, (2) but it does, and (3) people are reading it. I’m aware that only small numbers of people read any books, but this is a short little book, and it’s clearly aimed at people who care about art, read more

Some books shouldn’t have to exist, but you’re glad they do. This one describes a whole field of work — using art-creation to help kids in Arizona and Southern California deal with trauma created by anti-immigrant policies and attitudes — which shouldn’t have to exist, but you’re glad it does. The book is called Drawing Deportation: Art and Resistance Among Immigrant Children by Sylvia Rodriguez Vega. The author has worked with kids in school classes, read more