Search Results for: russiagate

Remarks in Göteborg, Sweden, November 11, 2024.

It’s wonderful to be here with many of you whose work I’ve known but whom I’ve rarely if ever been with in person. I am very grateful to John Jones and Tomas Magnusson and all those involved in arranging this event.

It’s wonderful to be in a country which — like Norway, where I was yesterday — some of my great-grandparents came from, including here in Sweden the ones who gave me my last name. I imagine some of you read more

One of the most impressive things about U.S. elections always appears to be the way in which the 96% of humanity outside of the United States consents to doing nothing at all for the better part of a year, so that U.S. media outlets can focus fulltime on the election. Of course, it could be that this, like much else in U.S. elections, is a bit of an illusion.

The highlights of the recent debate would seem to be, from the discussion that has followed:

1. an aging fascist buffoon falsely claiming that a group of people he’s demonizing wants to eat your pets — the wrong kind of animals, you should be serving the livestock industry that is helping render the Earth uninhabitable — and
2. the same racist nitwit fumbling around about having “concepts of a plan” for healthcare — but please pay no attention to the healthcare solution long since found by every other wealthy nation on the planet and shunned by both major political cartels in Washington.

And yet, the most significant bit of the debate read more

There’s a guide at wordsaboutwar.org to some of the standard war language used for big bucks by professional propagandists and for free by almost everyone else who has normalized it and not given it another thought. Manufacturing tools for mass murder is called “the defense industry,” those murdered are called “collateral damage,” the purpose is labeled “the national interest,” etc.

The trouble with talking like the Pentagon or CNN is not just that it helps to — in the words of read more

Remarks at The Columbus Free Press Annual Awards Dinner, November 9, 2023

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, September 9, 2023

Remarks for second session of Kateri Peace Conference, September 9, 2023

Two hundred years ago this coming December, a local boy from my town gave a speech. In the years that followed pundits and politicians took an excerpt of that speech, carved it in marble, lit it with eternal white phosphorus bombs, and prayed to it before every shareholders meeting. They named it the Monroe Doctrine. It created the model, used ever more frequently up to read more

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, February 5, 2023

David Swanson is the author of the new book The Monroe Doctrine at 200 and What to Replace It With.

The Monroe Doctrine was first discussed under that name as justification for the U.S. war on Mexico that moved the western U.S. border south, swallowing up the present-day states of California, Nevada, and Utah, most of New Mexico, Arizona and Colorado, and parts of Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Wyoming. By no means was that as far south as some read more

The task before the United States is to end its Monroe Doctrine, and to end it not only in Latin America but globally, and to not only end it but to replace it with the positive actions of joining the world as a law-abiding member.

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

Supposedly the election of Joe Biden to the White House was the first U.S. election marred in any serious way — marred by Republicans, members of the military, and clownish rioters at the Capitol. While I wish Democrats also cared about keeping any of the promises they were elected on, I don’t think they take what happened on and about January 6, 2021, too seriously — quite the reverse. But I don’t think there was a pristine election system to be marred.

Democrats themselves read more

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, December 28, 2021

Thom Hartmann has written an enormous number of great books, and the latest is no exception. It’s called The Hidden History of Big Brother in America: How the Death of Privacy and the Rise of Surveillance Threaten Us and Our Democracy. Thom is not the least bit xenophobic, paranoid, or war-inclined. He dishes out criticism — most of it clearly well-merited — to numerous governments including the one in Washington, D.C. Yet I think read more