David Swanson: The advantage to the expect-the-best-and-the-facts-be-damned approach is clear. Lots of people like it. You can’t have a mass rally without lots of people.
Stop Picking on Poor Plutocrats
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David Swanson: After 10 months of election obsession and lesser-evilism, this place could look more or less the way it would have had Occupy never arisen.
The Last Whistleblowers
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David Swanson: We are going to need to develop a counter culture, the culture one can see blossoming in the Occupy encampments, a culture in which honesty and integrity are the norm, a culture in which decent behavior leads to acceptance rather than ostracism.
Occupy the Winter of Our Discontent
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David Swanson: Above all: stay! Continue to hold public space! Grow, and rotate people. No single person need stay forever. But the 99% of the 99% that cheers from the sidelines needs to get into the squares and parks.
A 51st State for Armed Robotic Drones
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David Swanson: Weaponized unmanned aerial vehicles, also known as drones, have their own caucus in Congress, and the Pentagon’s plan is to give them their own state as well.
When the Public Rises, We’ll Want an Ally in Congress
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David Swanson: I think Norman Solomon would make a better Congress member than I would, and than most of us would.
Is Israel’s Right Wing in Eric Cantor’s District?
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David Swanson: The problem is that the interests of the Israeli government, far from always representing the Israeli people, in no way represent those of the American people or the people of Virginia.
The Cure for Plutocracy: Strike!
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David Swanson: How do you get politicians living off legalized bribery to criminalize bribery? How do you persuade the corporate media to report on the interests of flesh-and-blood, non-corporate people?
Why Am I A Peace Activist? Why Aren’t You?
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David Swanson: The obvious question is probably how I became a peace activist. To my mind, however, the question has always been why anybody is not. I understand there are not a lot of job openings for professional peace activists, but there are unlimited part-time volunteer positions.
On Visiting an Unwinnable War
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David Swanson: If Afghanistan is to have peace, Galtung believes, it will need a loose federation of governments within and a confederation of allied countries without, including countries like Pakistan and Iran.
Why Pentagon Claims MLK Would Love War on Afghanistan
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David Swanson: A poll last spring found that 85% of Kandaharis consider the Taliban “our Afghan brothers.” The poll was commissioned by the Pentagon. The same poll found that 94% favored peace negotiations, not war. So, out of the goodness of our racist hearts, we brought them more war.
Be the Peace You Want to See on Earth
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David Swanson: I’ve never found any opponent of war who didn’t believe there was evil in the world. After all, we oppose war because it is evil. Did Martin Luther King, Jr., stand idle in the face of threats? Are you serious?
Freedom Watch Threw a War and Nobody Came
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David Swanson: The Neoconservatives, despite wandering in the wilderness after their Iraq debacle, are trying to keep the dream of serial wars in the Middle East alive.
How the Korean War Began
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David Swanson: The Korean War was waged in supposed defense of the way of life in the United States and in supposed defense of South Korea against aggression by North Korea.
The New War Congress: An Obama-Republican War Alliance?
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David Swanson: The most silvery of possible silver linings here may lie in the possibility of a reborn peace movement. George W. Bush’s new memoir actually reveals the surprising strength the peace movement had achieved by 2006.
Election Guide for Election Haters
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David Swanson: I’ll admit it right now. My name is David and I hate elections. (HI, DAVID!) I hate choosing the evil of two lessers. I hate attack ads. I hate endless repetitive debates that exclude all the interesting questions. I hate painting one candidate as all bad and the other as infallible even when I have to squint to see a difference between them.
U.S. Wars Are Bankrupting the World
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David Swanson: The endless and infinite “war on terra” is bankrupting the planet. I don’t mean moral bankruptcy; that goes without saying. I mean financial bankruptcy.
Will Sanity Be Restored and Fear Be Kept Alive?
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David Swanson: If our government is, uniquely among wealthy countries, denying people healthcare, shouldn’t we talk about that? How “sane” can it be to always seek out the middle ground and believe whatever propositions lie halfway between advocacy for peace and justice and advocacy for glorified racist ignorance and corporatism?
Howard Zinn’s the Bomb
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David Swanson: The late Howard Zinn’s new book The Bomb is a brilliant little dissection of some of the central myths of our militarized society.
When Teachers Unions Back War Escalations
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David Swanson: There is nothing altruistic in the idea of peace activists helping workers and the unemployed here at home. That’s how you build a movement for any political end, and that’s how you keep our young people from becoming cannon fodder.
Jim Dean Sorta Kinda Supports Marcy Winograd
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David Swanson: Marcy Winograd is a stand-out. She’s is campaigning against Congresswoman Jane Harman, a wealthy warmonger corporatist who has been caught conspiring against her nation with foreign agents, who suppressed the warranteless spying story until George W. Bush could get a second term in office, and who has referred to herself proudly as “the best Republican in the Democratic Party.” Marcy Winograd, on the other hand, has been a leader of Progressive Democrats of America and has perhaps the smartest and most progressive platform in the country. She also garnered 38% last time, with no help.
Our National Epidemic of Violence
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David Swanson: If you wanted to increase violence, he writes, you would take the following steps that the United States has taken: Punish more and more people more and more harshly; ban drugs that inhibit violence and legalize and advertise those that stimulate it; use taxes and economic policies to widen disparities in wealth and income; deny the poor education; perpetuate racism; produce entertainment that glorifies violence; make lethal weapons readily available; maximize the polarization of social roles of men and women; encourage prejudice against homosexuality; use violence to punish children in school and at home; and keep unemployment sufficiently high. And why would you do that? Possibly because most victims of violence are poor, and the poor can organize in rebellion against the rich when they aren’t terrorized by crime.
When Woolsey Met Harman
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David Swanson: Fortunately, I get the impression that a great many Angelenos and Americans are principled, decent, and sophisticated enough to support Woolsey when she does right and oppose her when she does wrong, and to overwhelm her misplaced advocacy with our support, donations, and volunteer time for the woman who will be the leader of the fight for the people’s views against the corporate agenda in the 112th Congress, Marcy Winograd.
A Year of Fall and Decline
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David Swanson: This year opened with the United States Supreme Court claiming further power to rewrite the U.S. Constitution, specifically by further opening up elections to the highest bidder.
Resolved
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David Swanson: I resolve never to expect elections alone to change anything, and to understand that my activist work begins the day after an election.
An AVATAR Awakening
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David Swanson: Let’s face it, if James Cameron had made a movie with the Iraqi resistance as the heroes and the U.S. military as the enemies, and had set it in Iraq or anywhere else on planet earth, the packed theaters viewing “Avatar” would have been replaced by a screening in a living room for eight people and a dog.
How to End Wars
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The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has said that he’d like to see another $50 billion passed in another supplemental war spending bill in the next few months. This is money to fund an escalation that we are supposed to believe has not been decided upon yet. This must be stopped.
Dangerous People Needed
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Ellsberg risked life in prison to expose the lies that had taken this nation into war in Vietnam, lies from Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson. And Nixon believed that Ellsberg had incriminating documents on his own lies, which led Henry Kissinger to call Ellsberg “the most dangerous man in America.”
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