Let's Try Democracy

I think millions of people who identify as Democrats mean well. I think a number of Congressional progressive Democrats generally do their best in the system they’re working in. I think identifying as a Republican is even more inexcusably immoral than ever. I also think the central excuses used by the leadership of the Democratic Party for its failure over the past year to do most of what it campaigned on in 2020 are as believable as the existence of Iraq’s WMDs or Trump’s pee read more

By Crosstalk, January 14, 2022

Over the past two and half years Russia and NATO have agreed on very little, if anything. However, both agreed to meet for a high-level meeting and they did in Brussels. Both sides made their case. Nothing was really resolved. Lots of words. What happens next may be actions. CrossTalking with Brad Blankenship, Scott Ritter, and David Swanson.

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By Sputnik, January 13, 2022

John and Michelle catch up with David Swanson, executive director of World BEYOND War, to talk about the latest developments with NATO and conflict zones around the world. John points out that the direct link between EU membership and increased well-being for the population is questionable. Hungary joined the EU, and that isn’t what happened.

LISTEN HERE.

By David Swanson

Someone asked me the other day for advice on collecting the best essays of the past 20 years. I recommended the new collection of Glen Ford’s called The Black Agenda. I recommend it to everyone — including people who are not black. I’m not black.

Glen Ford was my friend and an ally in the struggles for peace and justice. He was a leader and a brilliant and an always reliable speaker, writer, and organizer on anti-racism, anti-oligarchy, anti-poverty, and anti-war read more

By Veterans For Peace, January 12, 2022

We continue to discuss the importance of the effort of Veterans For Peace to develop a legitimate Nuclear Posture Review with a distinguished panel including

• David Swanson, Executive Director of World BEYOND War and VFP Advisory Board Member;
• Alice Slater, World BEYOND War Board Member and Veterans For Peace Nuclear Abolition Working Group Member;
• Rachel Clark, Veterans For Peace Nuclear Abolition Working Group Member

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Go to 13:55 in the following video:

By David Swanson

The full extent of Russia’s lunacy is hidden from us by a considerate Western press careful of our delicate sensibilities. The demands that Russia made back in December read more

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, January 10, 2022

You’d hardly guess it from all the silent acceptance of war as a legal enterprise and all the chatter about ways to supposedly keep war legal through the reform of particular atrocities, but there are international treaties that make wars and even the threat of war illegal, national constitutions that make wars and various activities that facilitate wars illegal, and laws that make killing illegal with no exceptions for the use of missiles read more

There are plenty of good occasions to pretend not to know something: an embarrassing secret of a friend, a plan for a surprise party, the punchline of a child’s joke.

There are plenty of good excuses to actually not know something: it would take decades of study, it’s of no interest or value, it would cost so much money to research it that you could have saved millions of lives instead.

There are, I think, fewer good justifications for pretending to yourself (not just to others) not read more