David Swanson - Latest News [Page 1]
How To Beat A Capitol Police Officer With An American Flag Pole
Tuesday, 12 January 2021, 10:12 am | David Swanson
Eleven years ago, the Onion reported that the U.S. flag had been recalled after causing 143 million deaths. Last week, a Trumpy beat a Capitol Police officer with a pole holding a U.S. flag. At first glance this seems like an amateur move. If you ... More >>
Top 10 Ways Neera Tanden Has Been Misunderstood
Thursday, 10 December 2020, 10:04 am | David Swanson
When Neera Tanden emailed her colleagues in support of forcing Libya to pay for the privilege of having been bombed, many misunderstood, including one of her colleagues who emailed back objecting to creating what he supposed was an obvious financial ... More >>
Biden’s Actions So Far Would Have Ye Olde Resistance In The Streets If He Were Republican
Thursday, 3 December 2020, 9:31 am | David Swanson
Take a gander, if you can stomach it, at buildbackbetter.gov . Now, be honest, if this were the work of a Republican would you be ready to protest? Not only did you not vote for anything new, as the vast majority of the nominees and the policy proposals ... More >>
Everything Will Fundamentally Change
Monday, 9 November 2020, 8:57 am | David Swanson
Delaware Senator Joesph Biden presents Secretary of “Defense” William Cohen with a model C5 aircraft at a luncheon in Sec. Cohen’s honor during his visit to Dover Air Force Base on Wednesday, December 15, 1999. In June 2019, Joe Biden promised ... More >>
In 1940, The United States Decided To Rule The World
Wednesday, 4 November 2020, 9:29 am | David Swanson
Stephen Wertheim’s Tomorrow, The World examines a shift in elite U.S. foreign-policy thinking that took place in mid-1940. Why in that moment, a year and a half before the Japanese attacks on the Philippines, Hawaii, and other outposts, did it become ... More >>
Lies And The Fascists Who Believe Them
Wednesday, 28 October 2020, 10:29 am | David Swanson
A Brief History of Fascist Lies is the title of a new book by Federico Finchelstein, the author of a number of books on fascism and populism. Finchelstein both draws distinctions that slot politicians into categories (such as fascist or populist) ... More >>
Troops Out Of Germany And Down A Rabbit Hole
Tuesday, 27 October 2020, 10:45 am | David Swanson
I read this nightmare fantasy in the Financial Times : “Of course, a second term for Mr Trump would have a wholly different impact on US-German relations than would a Joe Biden presidency. It is conceivable that a victorious Mr Trump would push hard ... More >>
There Are Anti-War Candidates
Saturday, 24 October 2020, 3:58 pm | David Swanson
By David Swanson https://davidswanson.org/there-are-anti-war-candidates/ I don’t have any use for PEP politicians (progressive except on the Pentagon), but there are going to be serious members of the U.S. Congress next year who aren’t afraid ... More >>
Unique New U.S. Genre Emerges: The War-Is-Good-for-You Book
Thursday, 8 October 2020, 8:19 am | David Swanson
By David Swanson https://davidswanson.org/unique-new-u-s-genre-emerges-the-war-is-good-for-you-book/ The New York Times loves the latest war-is-good-for-you book, War: How Conflict Shaped Us by Margaret MacMillan. The book fits into the growing and exclusively ... More >>
What Waging War Is Really Like
Friday, 2 October 2020, 8:56 am | David Swanson
The vast majority of people who experience war directly, first-hand, rather than through Hollywood movies or politicians’ speeches, are the people who live where wars are waged. In wars involving distant wealthy nations on one-side, some 95% of ... More >>
The Long History Of The Nazi Salute And The USA
Thursday, 1 October 2020, 4:45 pm | David Swanson
Photo by Jack Gilroy, Great Bend, Penn., September 28, 2020 If you do a web search for images of “Nazi salute” you find old photos from Germany and recent photos from the United States. But if you search for images of “Bellamy salute” you ... More >>
What Trump And Biden Should Have Done In War On Vietnam
Sunday, 27 September 2020, 8:27 am | David Swanson
Donald Trump and Joe Biden were athletes who got deferments and dubious medical-based exemptions to participating in the mass slaughter of Vietnamese, Laotian, and Cambodian men, women, and children. The common criticism of one or the other of them, based ... More >>
WWII Was Not Fought To Save Anyone From Death Camps
Tuesday, 22 September 2020, 7:57 am | David Swanson
By David Swanson, excerpted from Leaving World War II Behind . https://davidswanson.org/wwii-was-not-fought-to-save-anyone-from-death-camps/ If you were to listen to people justifying WWII today, and using WWII to justify the subsequent 75 years of wars and war preparations, the first thing ... More >>
Six Reasons Julian Assange Should Be Thanked, Not Punished
Saturday, 19 September 2020, 7:20 am | David Swanson
By World BEYOND War, September 18, 2020 https://worldbeyondwar.org/assange/ 1. The effort to extradite and prosecute Julian Assange for journalism is a threat to future journalism that challenges power and violence, but a defense of the media practice ... More >>
Monopoly: Root Of All Evil
Tuesday, 8 September 2020, 9:51 am | David Swanson
The Monopoly game originally had an anti-monopoly, pro-cooperation (not corporation , COOPeration!) version. Somebody should revive it, along with the understanding of the game as a warning of horrific evils, not just arcane Wall Street issues, and ... More >>
Dear “Washington Football Team"
Friday, 24 July 2020, 3:38 pm | David Swanson
This isn’t free unsolicited advice on your new name, because (1) you’ve pretended to ask everyone for input, and (2) if you name your team the Washington Warriors next year, as I’m guessing you would have done by now if not for some legal dispute, ... More >>
Charlottesville Va. Bans Militarized Policing — Your City Can Too
Tuesday, 21 July 2020, 4:15 pm | David Swanson
By unanimous vote, the City Council of Charlottesville, Va., on Monday evening voted to ban militarized policing. Specifically, the City Council resolved that “the Charlottesville Police Department shall not acquire weaponry from the United States ... More >>
Bats With Napalm Vests And Other Great American Innovations
Friday, 17 July 2020, 9:15 am | David Swanson
By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, July 16, 2020 https://worldbeyondwar.org/bats-with-napalm-vests-and-other-great-american-innovations/ Nicholson Baker’s new book, Baseless: My Search for Secrets in the Ruins of the Freedom of Information Act , is staggeringly good. If I point out any minor ... More >>
Mommy, Where Do Peace Activists Come From?
Thursday, 9 July 2020, 7:16 am | David Swanson
The Kateri Peace Conference, which has been held in upstate New York for 22 years, will be held online this year , allowing anyone in the world who can get online to attend and hear from and speak with such wonderful U.S. peace activists — (Hey, ... More >>
The Beginning Of The End
Friday, 3 July 2020, 7:36 am | David Swanson
The Beginning or the End may have been the beginning of the end. If you imagine humanity existing a century from now in a society that includes history classes, you can expect, barring major changes, that U.S. text books will describe this as ... More >>