Let's Try Democracy

My eight-year-old son and I just read a shortened version of The Odyssey. Traditionally it’s thought of as the story of a hero making his way past various monsters. Yet it’s really quite blatantly the story of a monster making his way past various heroes.

Odysseus had, of course, prior to this story, abandoned his family to go fight and kill a bunch of people he didn’t know alongside a bunch of other people he didn’t know because a bunch of yet other people had competed read more

Where do all the Lockheed Martin executives vacation?

At the Last Resort!

Joe Biden and Israel are planning to attack Iran as a Last Resort.

Weapons dealers love nothing better than last resorts. Invading Ukraine was a last resort according to Russia. Shipping endless weapons into Ukraine is a last resort according to the U.S.

Win-win! Just pay no attention to the relentless and deliberate escalation of the past decades. Erase how the Baltics kicked out the Soviets 30 years go. Dude, they’re read more

The Jan. 6 hearings are clearly running over a month. Let’s call it a month. There are many countries in which the U.S. has organized, facilitated, or supported one or more coup attempts. Let’s count each country just once. And let’s go back only to the year 2000. Here’s a list of countries and the dates of attempted or successful overthrows. An asterick indicates success:

Yugoslavia 1999-2000 *
Ecuador 2000 *
Afghanistan 2001 *
Venezuela 2002 * and 2018, read more

For years I’ve appreciated the Global Peace Index (GPI), and interviewed the people who make it, but quibbled with exactly what it does. read more

In 2015, Alice Sabatini was an 18-year-old contestant in the Miss Italia contest in Italy. She was asked what epoch of the past she would have liked to live in. She replied: World War II. Her explanation was that her text books go on and on about it, so she’d like to actually see it, and she wouldn’t have to fight in it, because only men did that. This led to a great deal of mockery. Did she want to be bombed or starved or sent to a concentration camp? What was she, stupid? Somebody photoshopped read more

By David Swanson

If Democrats threw out the filibuster today and rapidly passed legislation over the next 8 months as if they gave a damn — as if they were, oh, I don’t know, the Supreme Court — and if they put just what they’re increasing the military budget by into their Build Back Better bill, if they put through with majority votes just those items they were elected on that are favored by significant majorities in the country, they’d have done enough by 6 months read more

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, June 29, 2022

I took part in this annual event in Yorkshire, England, eight years ago and recommend it to every community on Earth with a U.S. military base in it.

Use the date when the United States is celebrating “independence” to demand a little of it.

Did you see this headline? “Three in four Australians believe US ties increase chance of war involvement in Asia, poll shows.”

read more

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, June 29, 2022

It’s impossible for either side to see, but Russia and NATO depend on each other.

Whichever side you’re on, you

• agree with weapons-maker propaganda that the available actions in the world are (1) war, and (2) doing nothing;
• you ignore the historical record of nonviolent action succeeding more often than war;
• and you imagine militarism to be required completely independently from considering what the results will be.

It’s possible for some people to glimpse the stupidity and counterproductive nature of war as long as they look at old wars, and don’t apply any lessons learned to current wars. An author in Germany of a book about the stupidity of World War I is right now busy telling read more