Search Results for: open borders

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, October 3, 2026

Remarks in Baltimore on October 3, 2026, at event with War Is Still A Lie

Thank you to Ronda Cooperstein and the local chapter of World BEYOND War for setting this event up.

I recently read a big stack of books on the decline and elimination of dueling. There were thousands of factors, many of them beyond anyone’s easy control, but key among them was cultural change, was bringing people to find greater humiliation in dueling than in not dueling, read more

When important, serious, respectable people wouldn’t even mention that AIDS was killing on a major scale, their silence meant that not enough would be done to stop it.

I bring this up because Trump wants Congress to put 77.66% of federal discretionary spending into wars, and the vast majority, if not every single member, of Congress has not even once said so. Likewise virtually every media read more

When Iran moved toward a decent democratic government, the UK, U.S., and oil barons destroyed it and put in place a horrendously brutal dictatorship. When Iranians overthrew that dictatorship, religious lunatics seized power and treated the people of Iran so cruelly for so long that many of them longed for that dictatorship — or the CIA-owned son thereof — and still do. When Iraq attacked Iran, the U.S. provided targeting assistance and chemical weapons. Then the U.S. labeled Iran read more

By David Swanson, Progressive Hub, April 15, 2026

Nell Bernstein’s new book is called In Our Future We Are Free: The Dismantling of the Youth Prison. It tells us that in the United States in 2000 the number of young people held inside locked buildings was 108,800 and in 2022 it was 27,600. At least two-thirds of youth prisons and jails have been shut down. This is an enormous, dramatic, positive development in an era when most people imagine that the closest thing to good news out read more

Peering out from the United States, it’s hard to see much of China. One learns general facts and gathers views from a small number of people. But I can’t make a lot of sense out of this 4% of humanity over here (or myself for that matter), and don’t have much hope at all for deeply understanding that 17% of humanity over there. It seems worth some effort, however, to build better relationships and understanding, since the U.S. government is overwhelmingly obsessed with competing with China, read more

Of course it would take millions of images to convey the full story of the harm done by military bases, foreign and domestic, but a key point is, I think, conveyed by the map above. The countries colored blue or purple have U.S. military bases in them. The countries colored red or purple have been threatened with war by the United States or actually attacked or invaded by the U.S. military within the past year.

The blue countries tell a story of global empire, of a nation seeking to dominate the read more

Opening remarks of #NoWar2025

Good morning, afternoon, and evening. Thank you to everyone who is here and to all of the wonderful speakers and participants we are about to hear from over the next three days and to all of our staff and volunteers, especially Greta Zarro our Organizing Director, who have planned this conference. We expect over 500 registrants from at least 42 countries to hear from at least 33 speakers. We have 22 endorsers and 10 sponsors. Those sponsors include our top or War Abolisher read more

Every once in a while I come across mention of something that I proceed to forget again, which is that a copy of La Rotonda exists in the West Bank. That is, a near reproduction of a famous Renaissance villa sits on a hill in Palestine. It’s in the bottom right of the image above.

My first thought, when I remember this, is sadness that the U.S.-Israeli war machine will probably blow this building up.

My second thought is that poor Palestine is afflicted, on top of everything else, with billionaires read more