David Swanson

The United States excels at hating taxes, and for good reason. The U.S. government gives you damn near nothing in return for them. You pay them at a higher rate than do billionaires or corporations. Cheating is permitted only if at a sufficiently large scale. And once you’ve paid your… »

Sometimes I struggle to explain why none of the endless wars can ever be ended. Are they just too profitable? Is the propaganda self-fulfilling and self-believing? Is the bureaucratic inertia that powerful? No combination of semi-rational motivations ever seems sufficient. But here’s a potentially relevant fact: there are still people… »

President Joe Biden is proposing a level of Pentagon spending so close to that of Trump’s last year in office that Bloomberg calls it a 0.4% reduction adjusting for inflation while Politico calls it a 1.5% increase and “effectively an inflation-adjusted budget boost.” I call it a disgusting violation of the will… »

Why should rich people get pandemic survival checks? Why shouldn’t descendants of enslaved people get reparations payments? Why should someone who doesn’t go to college pay taxes to make college free? Why should smokers get health coverage? Why should someone get out of their student debt when I didn’t? I… »

By David Swanson Things that we now know are not actually true: Russia impacted the U.S. election results in 2016 or 2020. Russia hacked into U.S. election machines. The recent U.S. government report alleging election interference contained any evidence of anything. The report so much as alleged Russian involvement in the… »

By David Swanson Many people in the United States, as in many other places, are getting angrier. This would be a good thing if they all understood whom they should be angry at and the superiority of nonviolent activism to stupid, futile violence. They should be angry at billionaires hoarding wealth, corporations… »

1. Victories that are only partial are not fictional. When a ruler, like Biden, finally announces the end of a war, like the war on Yemen, it is as important to recognize what it does mean as what it doesn’t. It doesn’t mean the U.S. military and U.S.-made weapons will… »

Next only to the worst destroyers of the earth’s climate slowing their destructive activities, one of the best steps that could be taken for this planet might be for the destroyers of the Amazon rain forests to knock it off. They’re led by one of the world’s leading buffoonish fascist… »

NATO and various columnists employed by major U.S. newspapers and “think” tanks believe that military spending levels should be measured in comparison to nations’ financial economies. If you have more money, you should spend more money on wars and war preparations. I’m not sure if this is based on opinion… »

Dear President Joe Biden, Congratulations and best wishes! The Pope of your church in October 2020 wrote these words: “We can no longer think of war as a solution, because its risks will probably always be greater than its supposed benefits. In view of this, it is very difficult nowadays… »