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David Swanson is the author of "When the World Outlawed War," "War Is A Lie" and "Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union." He blogs at http://davidswanson.org and http://warisacrime.org and works for the online activist organization http://rootsaction.org
SHARE Tuesday, March 11, 2025 Letter to Europe from an American
It's with a very heavy heart that I watch Europe imitate the militarism of the United States, moving massive resources from human and environmental needs to weapons, celebrating proposals from good liberal civic groups to steal money from Russia and dump it into more weapons, cutting deals to have the ingredients for more weapons dug out of your soil by a distant empire that routinely spits on your head...
SHARE Monday, March 10, 2025 Trump Buyers' Remorse is Just a Miniature Model
You voted for Trump and are being deported, or losing your job, or paying more for eggs. Now you're the subject of so-called journalism about your "buyer's remorse". This is an extremely weak version of the sort of transformation that is needed -- the sort of Saul-to-Paul awakening, forehead-slapping, I've-been-an-idiot, redemption-seeking metamorphosizing needed from millions of people, Trump voters and otherwise.
SHARE Sunday, March 9, 2025 The Five Excuses for Genocide
On Monday I interviewed a member of the Executive Committee of AIPAC. I asked him how he could defend and promote apartheid and genocide. He was not a legal witness; I could not order him not to change the subject. Still, he provided pretty clear (if very weak) excuses for genocide, which I think can be broken up into five types.
SHARE Saturday, February 22, 2025 Trump, Nukes, and Cartoons
A president can demand that governments spend vastly more on wars and propose cutting war spending in half. The same skills that once made the holy Trinity both single and triple can make sense of this. The threats and demands are brilliant negotiating, or the proposed reductions are a brilliant distraction. But you cannot actually take enlarging and shrinking military spending at face value and proclaim them both right.
SHARE Saturday, February 15, 2025 Start a Lasting Peace in Ukraine Now
We are heartened to learn that the U.S. government is communicating with the Russian government, and are only sorry that such a basic step seemingly required a presidential election, when a glance at the Doomsday Clock ought to have been sufficient.
SHARE Friday, February 7, 2025 Bibi: The Making of a Genocidaire
In the end, I have to say, they got Nixon on trivial nonsense, but they got him. If Netanyahu goes down for a box of Cuban cigars, and his replacement understands that part of the problem was genocide, I bet even the Cubans will celebrate.
SHARE Friday, January 31, 2025 Free Cuba
Remarks at the Sixth International Conference for World Balance in Havana, Cuba, Jan. 30, 2025
SHARE Thursday, January 23, 2025 The Nazi Salute Has U.S. Origins
An imperial presidency, a cult of idiocracy, and a team of hateful oligarchs is the problem.
A salute is just a symbol.
SHARE Tuesday, January 21, 2025 Another World Is Already Here
I hope everyone in the world reads the new book Another World Is Possible: Lessons for America from Around the Globe by Natasha Hakimi Zapata. I think the lessons could be for anywhere on Earth. They are stories of what is possible for the United States (or in some cases a single state thereof) or most anywhere else. But they are also stories of what is already real in certain parts of the world.
SHARE Sunday, January 19, 2025 Hegseth Is a Bad Joke
Like the Republican Party whose senators will make Pete Hegseth the next U.S. Secretary of War, Hegseth is a bad joke. The Democratic minority in the horribly unrepresentative Senate is a joke you might hear at an amateur mic night.
(3 comments) SHARE Friday, January 17, 2025 Why War Books Never Answer the Question
Does slavery have a future? Cannibalism? Blood feuds? Patriarchy? Small pox? Capital punishment? Astrology? Maybe. Not yes. Only maybe. And that's all such books can and should say about war.
SHARE Saturday, January 4, 2025 The Military is the Extremism
According to a headline in The Hill newspaper, which takes a position typical of U.S. corporate media, "New Year's attacks fuel fears of extremism in military."
In other words, an institution openly dedicated to mass killing and destruction may have fallen victim to infiltration by "extremists." As if there could be something more extreme than a military.
SHARE Tuesday, December 31, 2024 The Trump Five Percent
When Donald Trump again warms the throne in Washington on Martin Luther King Day, each of the three evils that King worked to abolish will get a major boost: racism, extreme materialism, and militarism.
SHARE Friday, December 20, 2024 We Are One-Quarter Through War's Last Century
There are clearly two ways in which this could be war's last century, and I'm betting we'll get either one or the other. In one, war eliminates us. End of story. In the other we eliminate war. Beginning of story.
SHARE Friday, December 13, 2024 It's Time to De-Normalize Murder
I was asked to talk about Gaza and Syria, and so I shall, but I also want to talk about de-normalizing murder. There have been human societies in which murder was unthinkable, where the most typical Hollywood movie -- marketed to U.S. children -- has been seen as horrific and traumatizing. Normalizing murder is an option, not required by genes or economics or physics. I want us to take responsibility for that.
SHARE Sunday, December 8, 2024 The U.S. Congress Pretends to Exist
I don't claim to have all the answers, but I do have a question. If the $16 billion just spent on a U.S. election were spent next time on educating, training, mobilizing, and sustaining a nonviolent surrounding of the State Department until it complied with U.S. laws, would that do more good?