David Swanson

David Swanson is an author, activist, journalist, and radio host. He is director of WorldBeyondWar.org and campaign coordinator for RootsAction.org. Swanson’s books include War Is A Lie and When the World Outlawed War. He blogs at DavidSwanson.org and WarIsACrime.org. He hosts Talk Nation Radio. He is a 2015, 2016, 2017 Nobel Peace Prize Nominee.

Why 55 U.S. Senators Voted for Genocide in Yemen

A vote against one war is never just a vote against one war. It’s a vote to challenge, if ever so slightly, the power of the war machine. Some Senators are paid not to do that.

David Swanson
By David Swanson
In this Tuesday, March 22, 2016 photo, infant Udai Faisal, who is suffering from acute malnutrition, is hospitalized at Al-Sabeen Hospital in Sanaa, Yemen. Udai died on March 24. Hunger has been the most horrific consequence of Yemen’s conflict and has spiraled since Saudi Arabia and its allies, backed by the U.S., launched a campaign of airstrikes and a naval blockade a year ago. (AP Photo/Maad al-Zikry)

Tuesday’s debate and vote in the U.S. Senate on whether to end (technically whether or not to vote on whether to end) U.S. participation in the war on Yemen can certainly be presented as a step forward. While 55 U.S. Senators voted to keep the war rolling along, 44 voted not to table the resolution to end it. Of those 44, some, including “leaders”

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Yes, the United States Used Biological Weapons on North Korea

In its near decimation of North Korea, the United States tried to spread diseases like bubonic plague, dropped 32,500 tons of napalm, and killed nearly 3 million people.

David Swanson
By David Swanson
Bombs drop from a U.S. Air Force 3rd bomber wing B26 light bomber somewhere in North Korea. All told, the U.S. dropped 635,000 tons of bombs on Korea during the war, most of it in the North, including with 32,500 tons of napalm, March 18, 1953. (U.S. Air Force via AP)

Opinion -- It’s sort of silly that it matters. The United States bombed North Korea flat with ordinary, non-bioweapons bombs. It ran out of standing structures to bomb. People lived in caves, if they lived. Millions died, most of them from regular old non-scandalous but mass-murderous bombs (including, of course, Napalm which melts people but

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The ICC Has Announced It Will Finally Treat War as a Crime

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) could try the United States for attacking a country if (1) that country brought a case, and (2) the United States agreed to the process, and (3) the United States chose not to block any judgment by using its veto power at the U.N. Security Council.

David Swanson
By David Swanson
Bandar bin Sultan (left) has been close to multiple US administrations spannig decades with direct involvement in events ranging from Reagan's Nicaraguan Contra program (including being named in the Iran-Contra scandal), to making the case for the Iraq War as a trusted friend of Bush and Cheney, to directing Obama-era covert operations to arm jihadists in Syria.

War is a crime. The International Criminal Court has just announced that it will finally treat it as a crime, sort-of, kind-of. But how can war’s status as a crime effectively deter the world’s leading war-maker from threatening and launching more wars, large and small? How can laws against war actually be put to use? How can the ICC’s announcement

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76 Years of Pearl Harbor Lies

“New Pearl Harbors” are longed for by war makers, claimed, and exploited. Yet the original Pearl Harbor remains the most popular U.S. argument for all things military.

David Swanson
By David Swanson
U.S. President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump lay a wreath at the USS Arizona Memorial in Pearl Harbor, Honolulu, Hawaii, Nov. 3, 2017. (AP/Andrew Harnik)

Donald Trump is tweeting about a particular spot in Hawaii. He visited it recently on his way to threaten war in Asia. It’s a big feature this week in lots of U.S. magazines and newspapers. It has a lovely name that sounds like murder and blood because Japanese airplanes engaged in large-scale murder there in 1941: Pearl Harbor. Pearl Harbor Day

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Are Tweets Making Everyone Twits?

Have we lost our ability to debate, analyze and have productive public discourse? Childish oversimplification seems to be the new normal.

David Swanson
By David Swanson
Trump protester Bryan Sanders, center left, is punched by a Trump supporter as he is escorted out of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's rally at the Tucson Arena in downtown Tucson, Ariz., Saturday, March 19, 2016. (Mike Christy/Arizona Daily Star via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT

Opinion -- Childish oversimplification seems to be spreading throughout public discourse. Maybe it’s the character limits on tweets. Maybe it’s the second limits between commercials. Maybe it’s two-party politics. Maybe it’s an excess of information. Maybe it’s presidential example. Maybe it is, in fact, thousands of different things, because the

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Mass Shooters are Disproportionately US Veterans

Military veterans are more than twice as likely to be mass shooters

David Swanson
By David Swanson
A U.S. Army soldier shares a bag of sunflower seeds with a fellow soldier, as they wait for a helicopter to pick them up in a field of barley nearly ready to harvest, outside Tall Ash Shawr, a village in northwestern Iraq, Monday, May 19, 2003. (AP/Brennan Linsley)

Editorial -- Are veterans of the U.S. military disproportionately likely to be mass killers in the United States? Asking such a question is difficult, first because of concerns of profiling, discrimination, etc., and second, because it’s hard to answer. It’s important to answer because it’s important for us to know whether military training is

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A Confession: I Met With The Russian Ambassador

Though now billed as a “spymaster,” Russian Ambassador Kislyak was well known as a social butterfly, meeting a wide range of Americans, including politicians, academics and activists, which led David Swanson to this “confession.”

David Swanson
By David Swanson
Russia's ambassador to the U.S. Sergey Kislyak, speaks with reporters in Washington, Sept. 6, 2013. (AP/Cliff Owen)

It was August 2014. Our secret and nefarious meeting had to be disguised as a public event. So, the Russian Ambassador to the United States, Sergey Ivanovich Kislyak, spoke at the University of Virginia, in an event organized by the Center for Politics, which no doubt has video of the proceedings and was of course in on the conspiracy. Kislyak

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