By David Swanson
It’s been two years since I wrote on this topic. At that time, at least 36% of U.S. mass shooters had been trained by the U.S. military. Since then, a grand total of nobody at all has written on the topic.

 

By David Swanson
"Good Morning! Would you mind staying a safe distance away?"

"Hi! Nice mask! Could you please wear it on your face instead of your chin?"

Helping people reduce the risk of spreading a deadly disease requires being willing to offend them.

And as they long for a return to normalcy, you should be preparing to be a lot more offensive.

By David Swanson
Villanova University is hosting a West Point Military Academy-supported event about “Just War” theory.

By David Swanson
One should not sell bombs to a government that abuses human rights, which means murders a man without using one of the bombs.

By David Swanson
Toward the end of altering our idea of what counts as “doing something”, I offer this composite representation of numerous media interviews I’ve done.

By Joan Brunwasser
President Obama has been credited with "ending" and "drawing down" this war not only while expanding it to triple the size but also for a longer period of time than various other major wars combined.The catch is that this war is not over or ending. This year was more deadly than any of the previous 12. War is optional, that it is not imposed on us, that we have the responsibility to scale it back or to end it.

By David Swanson
LONDON
Before long public pressure might just lead Britain to drop out of participation in US wars, a move that would seriously damage future pretences of acting as an international coalition.

By BiteBack Publishing
Hindsight can be a troublesome thing. I distinctly remember ranting on this very blog about Gaddafi’s barbaric treatment of his own people. I never went so far as to suggest that we should send in the gunboats, so to speak, but rest assured, I thought it. When I read David Cameron’s words to the Kuwaiti Parliament and then again in the UK Parliament, I felt reasurred that we should back the uprising on humanitarian grounds. A popular uprising against four decades of Gaddafi rule being violently quashed by a bloke who, to be frank, I never really liked.

By David Swanson
Written for the forthcoming collection, "Why Peace?"
More than any other description, except for perhaps husband and father, I have been for the past six years a peace activist. Yet, I hesitate on the question of how to tell my personal story of experience with war. I recently visited Afghanistan briefly, in order to speak with people who have experienced war. I've spoken with many U.S. soldiers and non-U.S. victims of war. But I have no experience of war. Being in Washington, D.C., on September 11, 2001, doesn't change that; by the time a crime had been transformed into a war, the war had been moved elsewhere.

A People's Hymn
By David Swanson

From the Capitol in Madison
To the shores of Tripoli
We will fight the people's battles
And we'll fight them peacefully;
First we learn nonviolent tactics,
And we train before we start.
For our fight will be relentless,
We commit with all our heart.

Our flags unfurl to every breeze
From dawn to setting sun;
We will fight in every clime and place
And we'll never touch a gun.
In the snow of far-off Northern lands
And in sunny tropic seas
You will find us always on the job
Building new democracies.

Here's health to everyone on earth
Whom we are proud to serve;
In many a strife we'll risk our life
And never lose our nerve.
If the tyrants and their funders
Wish history to please
They will step out of their palaces
And join our democracies.

A Debate Between David Swanson and Ted Rall

A Nonviolent Exchange of Views in Four Parts
1. Don't You Know That You Can Count Me Out - In
By David Swanson
Ted Rall's new book "The Anti-American Manifesto”advocates for violent revolution, even if we have to join with rightwingers and racists to do it, and even if we have no control over the outcome which could easily be something worse than what we've got. We have a moral duty, Rall argues, to kill some people.

By David Swanson
Remarks at Veterans For Peace Convention, Asheville, NC, July 27, 2014
I started seeing graphics pop up on social media sites this past week that said about Gaza: "It's not war. It's murder."  So I started asking people what exactly they think war is if it's distinct from murder. 

By David Swanson
Remarks at Independence from America event outside Menwith Hill "RFA" (NSA) base in Yorkshire
Can I just say how wonderful it is to be outside of the United States on the Fourth of July?  There are many wonderful and beautiful things in the United States, including my family and friends, including thousands of truly dedicated peace activists, including people bravely going to prison to protest the murders by drone of others they've never met in distant lands whose loved ones will probably never hear about the sacrifices protesters are making.  (Did you know the commander of a military base in New York State has court orders of protection to keep specific nonviolent peace activists away from his base to ensure his physical safety -- or is it his peace of mind?)  And, of course, millions of Americans who tolerate or celebrate wars or climate destruction are wonderful and even heroic in their families and neighborhoods and towns -- and that's valuable too.

By David Swanson
Remarks in London, England, July 2, 2014.
In eight days, on 10 July Mary Ann Grady-Flores, a grandmother from Ithaca, NY, is scheduled to be sentenced to up to one year in prison. Her crime is violating an order of protection, which is a legal tool to protect a particular person from the violence of another particular person. In this case, the commander of Hancock Air Base has been legally protected from dedicated nonviolent protesters, despite the protection of commanding his own military base, and despite the protesters having no idea who the guy is. That's how badly the people in charge of the flying killer robots we call drones want to avoid any questioning of their activity entering the minds of the drone pilots.

By David Swanson
Now that the U.S. government has released parts of its We-Can-Kill-People-With-Drones memo, it's hard to miss why it was kept secret until now.

By David Swanson
Iraq was saved from ignorant subhuman barbarism by a gentlewoman named Gertrude at the time that the civilized nations of the world were, in a quite advanced and sophisticated manner, slaughtering their young men in a project now called the First World War.