Let's Try Democracy

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, November 5, 2022

After the U.S. has spent months privately telling Ukraine not to negotiate peace and publicly telling Ukraine to help itself to an all-you-can-eat weapons buffet with breaks to pose for heroic portraits, and not long at all after telling Congress Members to beat themselves with whips for suggesting negotiating peace, the White House has privately asked Ukraine to pretend to be open to peace negotiations because it looks bad to have Russia willing read more

At the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis it was generally permissible in the United States to say you supported negotiations for peace and disarmament — I mean without declaring your hatred for China or liberals or black people. Had it not been so, we might not be here to talk about it.

But it was not so at the time of World War I. At that time, you could get locked in prison for peace talk. Had there been nuclear weapons at the time, we might not be here to talk about it.

It’s useful, read more

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, November 1, 2022

What a fog fact is, is a fog fact, i.e. a fact that’s not seriously disputed but also not widely known by people who would find it incredibly important. It’s incredibly important to be aware that there are well-established facts out there that one doesn’t know about but would care passionately about if one managed to get at them through the fog of sports, weather, and every idiotic utterance of Herschel Walker or Joe Biden.

The fact that read more

I applaud the invitation to peace negotiations sent to the Presidents of Ukraine and Russia by U.S. Congressman Paul Gosar. I’d like to see the same from every other Congress Member and from the U.S. Department of State.

I suffer no illusion that any member of Congress places peace above party, that the party of the U.S. president is not the single biggest factor in Congressional rhetoric on war, or that Congressman Gosar is an admirable politician who has not supported read more

As in most wars, both sides of the one in Ukraine have predicted total victory month after month — with no evidence that either side has ever been remotely right about that.

The U.S. is establishing a seemingly permanent infrastructure for a forever war, the two most likely eventual endings of which are nuclear apocalypse or negotiated peace.

Is it really going to be unacceptable to have a preference for peace? Must it be forbidden read more

When an election has been very close, many factors can be pointed to as each having been enough to make the difference. One of those in 2016 was very suggestive and very much ignored by, as far as I know, every single major media outlet except this one. I mean the phenomenon of military families voting against Hillary Clinton, believing her more likely than Donald Trump to get their loved ones killed. It seems this factor decided the election.

We’re often told that the U.S. public loves war read more

By Jack Shalom, October 22, 2022

As wars rage all around us, one war, WW II, still stands as the exemplar for the Good War. But is that a useful or accurate designation? And if not, why does that view still have such an outsized influence in the national discourse? I spoke with David Swanson who has written a book called Leaving World War II Behind which challenges the notion of WWII as the Good War.

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