Peace and War

Dear Mr. Swanson:

Thank you for contacting me about the Convention on Cluster Munitions.  I appreciate hearing from you.

A cluster munition is a form of air-dropped or ground-launched explosive weapon designed to open in the air before making contact, dispersing smaller submunitions that can saturate a radius of up to 250 yards.  These bombs are intended for military use when attacking read more

Is War Necessary?

A Debate

David Swanson (War Is A Lie) vs. Roger Bergman (“There are just wars.”)

Oct. 5, 7:00 p.m., McCarthy Arts Center, St. Michael’s College.

Campus Road, Colchester, Vermont 05439 (just outside of Burlington).

Sponsored by the Peace and Justice Club and the Edmundite Center for Peace and Justice.

Signup and share on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/events/1800405746862756

Samantha Nutt has spent decades working on humanitarian aid in war zones. Her book, Damned Nations: Greed, Guns, Armies, and Aid, is rich in wisdom drawn from experience. But more powerful and pointed, and worth beginning and ending with, is her talk titled “The Real Harm of the Global Arms Trade.”

Nutt describes child armies across the global south including eight-year-olds who have never been to school but have fought and killed using automatic weapons. Yet, she says, war can be ended read more

The United States government recently gave more than a million dollars to the family of one victim it had killed in one of its wars. The victim happened to be Italian. If you were to find all the Iraqi families with any surviving members who had loved ones killed by the United States it might be a million families. A million times a million dollars would be enough to treat those Iraqis in this respect as if they were Europeans. Who can tell me — raise your hand — how much is a million times read more

By David Swanson, Telesur

If you want to find peace in your heart, knock yourself out. Seriously, knock yourself out, there’s nothing more peaceful. Or if you want to find peace in your family or your neighborhood, or on the sidelines of a football game during the playing of the National Anthem, there may be no better way to do it than to pledge your allegiance to permanent war on poor foreign countries.

A school board member in Virginia once agreed to support a celebration of the International read more

By David Swanson

Excerpted from the just released book War Is Never Just.

World War II is often called “the good war,” and has been since the U.S. war on Vietnam to which it was then contrasted. World War II so dominates U.S. and therefore Western entertainment and education, that “good” often comes to mean something more than “just.” The winner of the “Miss Italy” beauty pageant earlier this year got herself into a bit of a scandal by declaring that she would have liked to live read more

Several weeks back I was invited to speak this coming October at a U.S. university on ending war and making peace. As I often do, I asked whether the organizers couldn’t try to find a supporter of war with whom I could debate or discuss the topic, thus (I hoped) bringing in a larger audience of people not yet persuaded of the need to abolish the institution of warfare.

As had never happened before, the event organizers not only said yes but actually found a war supporter willing to take part read more

WHAT: Screening of Paying the Price for Peace: The Story of S. Brian Willson, and discussion with the director Bo Boudart and with peace activist David Swanson. See http://payingthepriceforpeace.com

WHEN: 7-11 p.m., Thursday, September 29

WHERE: Commonwealth Room, Newcomb Hall, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Va.

HOST: Students for Peace and Justice in Palestine

COSPONSORS: World Beyond War, RootsAction.org, and the Peace and Social Concerns Committee of Charlottesville Friends read more