Search Results for: ukraine

Why Can’t Anti-Imperial Wars Be Justified?

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, June 22, 2022

Let’s say that we are participants in a popular democratic socialist human-rights-loving movement and successful and fairly-elected national government, and we’re invaded and overthrown by a rightwing military, foreign or domestic, with horrific violence. What should we do?

I’m not asking what can we do that might have better results than doing nothing. Almost anything meets that standard.

I’m not asking what can we do that we’ll be able read more

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Canada’s War Problem

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, June 20, 2022
With thanks to World BEYOND War, WILPF, and RootsAction for useful resources.

Why shouldn’t Canada buy F-35s?

The F-35 is not a tool of peace or even of military defense. It is a stealth, offensive, nuclear-weapons-capable airplane designed for surprise attacks with the potential to intentionally or accidentally launch or escalate wars, including nuclear war. It is for attacking cities, not just other airplanes.

The F-35 is one of the weapons with read more

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McNamara’s Son on Some of His Father’s Lies About Vietnam


(a current image of the house that the McNamara’s lived in in Washington DC)

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, June 15, 2022

Pretty much anything that complicates the story of a person is a good corrective to the tendency to simplify and caricature. So, one has to welcome Craig McNamara’s book, Because Our Fathers Lied: A Memoir of Truth and Family, from Vietnam to Today. Craig’s father, Robert McNamara was Secretary of War (“Defense”) for much of the war on Vietnam. He’d read more

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The Eight Stupidest Things About Nuclear Weapons

1. Nukes are the “tough on crime” of foreign policy

Investing in children’s welfare and education costs less and reduces more crime than “tough on crime” policies which are often counterproductive, but voters in San Francisco just obeyed a bunch of corporate advertising and recalled a District Attorney because he had reduced crime rather than being “tough on crime.” Nuclear weapons cost tens of billions of dollars a year, plus the costs of the airplanes, read more

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U.S. Military Spending Is Undebatable Because Indefensible

Spain, Thailand, Germany, Japan, Netherlands — The word has gone out that every government can buy a lot more weapons with either no debate at all or with all debate shut down by a single word: Russia. Do a web search for “weapons buying” and you’ll find story after story about U.S. residents solving their personal problems the way their government does. But search for the secret code words “defense spending” and the headlines look like a united global community of nations each doing read more

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Turn Out for the Poor People’s Campaign, Regardless of Its Shortcomings

By David Swanson

Everyone should get in the streets of Washington DC for the event planned by the Poor People’s Campaign on June 18 — if not sooner.

In a normal country, the streets would long since have been packed, government offices surrounded, public squares occupied, and change demanded. The U.S. — and the world with it — is suffering severely from unrepresentative government, the hoarding of wealth by a tiny group of overlords, the devastation of the Earth’s climate read more

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The Answer to the Latest Greedy War Spending Should Not Be Greed

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, May 20, 2022

I know I should consider myself lucky to have located anybody at all in the United States who opposes the latest $40 billion “for Ukraine.” But from both the right and the left, those who oppose it almost universally express resentment of spending money “on Ukraine” instead of keeping that money in the US of A or spending it on “Americans.”

The first problem with this is a factual one. The vast majority of that money will never leave the read more

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If Televisions Cared About This Planet

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, May 6, 2022

When we doubt that swift and dramatic change is possible, what we really mean is that we haven’t seen much swift and dramatic change for the better lately. There’s actually no disputing that massive and almost instant change is perfectly possible. For example, in a matter of days, the unified voices of virtually every television network, newspaper, news website, and entertainment outlet in the United States took millions of people without a thought read more

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