David Swanson is a longtime peace and justice activist and author of War Is a Lie and Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union.
Hunger-Striking Students Finally See Some Progress for University of Virginia Workers
Crossposted from AlternetA living-wage campaign at the University of Virginia has been pressing the university's six-figure-salary administrators to treat its workers better for the past 14 years, sometimes winning higher wages, but always watching them be wiped out by the soaring cost of living in Charlottesville. The workers, lacking a ...
The Peace Movement Needs Kucinich, With or Without Congress
If Congressman Dennis Kucinich becomes simply Dennis Kucinich sans the "Congressman" his value to the peace movement need not diminish. I admit it's been nice having someone in Congress who would say and do what he would. There have been and remain other relatively strong voices for peace, but none ...
Un-Cheating Justice: Two Years Left to Prosecute Bush
Elizabeth Holtzman knows something about struggles for justice in the U.S. government. She was a member of Congress and of the House Judiciary Committee that voted for articles of impeachment against President Richard Nixon in 1973. She proposed the bill that in 1973 required that "state secrets" claims be evaluated ...
Why Students Are Hunger Striking in Virginia
Twelve students at the University of Virginia on Saturday began a hunger strike for a living wage policy for university employees. They've taken this step after having exhausted just about every other possible approach over a period of 14 years. I was part of the campaign way back when it ...
An Election We Should Be Following
For progressives and populists around the country who take an interest in Congressional races there are always a few good challengers we might hope to send to Washington. Incumbents, we assume, can take care of themselves. But in Northern Ohio, redistricting has thrown two incumbents into one district. It's a ...
A Crazy Republican Attack That Obama Himself Agrees With
Imagine if a bunch of the craziest war-hungry Republicans in the House filmed themselves in a nutty bat-guano video packed with lies addressed to the President of the United States. And then imagine President Barack Obama almost immediately agreeing with them. I can think of two ways in which such ...
Panetta: Military Spending Is Going Up
On Thursday, Leon Panetta held a press conference announcing what he called "cuts" to military spending. The first question following his remarks pointed out that the "cuts" are to dream budgets, while the actual spending will be increased over Panetta's 10-year plan. Is there any year, the reporter asked, out ...
The State of Obama's 2008 Promises
Presidential candidate Barack Obama won the Democratic primary last time around largely on the strength of his extremely limited and inconsistent opposition to the war on Iraq. Then he chose as his running mate Senator Joe Biden, a man who had led efforts in the U.S. Senate to support the ...
Constitutional Amendment to Create Public Financing Introduced by Kucinich
I recently recommened a comprehensive Constitutional amendment addressing the corruption of our elections. The largest piece of it, largely inspired by an amendment drafted by Russell Simmons, had not been introduced in Congress . . . until now. Congressman Dennis Kucinich has just introduced HJRes100 which proposes this Constitutional Amendment: ...
Charlottesville, Va., City Council Passes Resolution Opposing War on Iran
The City Council of Charlottesville, Virginia, home of Thomas Jefferson, James Monroe, and the University of Virginia, passed on Tuesday evening, January 17, 2012, a resolution believed to be a first in the country, opposing the launching of a war on Iran, as well as calling for an end to ...
Corporate Personhood Cannot Withstand Organized Persons
There are many schemes now for undoing the doctrines under which corporations claim constitutional rights and bribery is deemed constitutionally protected "speech." Every single one of these schemes depends on a massive movement of public pressure all across the homeland formerly known as the United States of America. With such ...
Corporate Personhood Worse, Ending It Easier, Than You Think
Don't take it from me. Take it from the book being published today that will mainstream the movement to end corporate personhood: "Corporations Are Not People: Why They Have More Rights Than You Do, And What You Can Do About It," by Jeff Clements with foreword by Bill Moyers. Clements ...
The push to attack Iran has been on for so long that entire categories of arguments for it (such as that the Iranians are fueling the Iraqi resistance) have come and gone. At DontAttackIran.org we've been collecting the arguments for and against attacking Iran for years. We've campaigned against an ...
Obama Crowned Himself on New Year's Eve
These were among the complaints registered the last time this nation had a king: "He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good."He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent ...
1. Toilet Paper. Instead of hoarding toilet paper for the coming disaster and anarchy that should never be out of your mind if you want to remain easily manipulable by cynical demagogues, invest in providing clean and accessible bathrooms for the homeless. This will radically improve the lives of millions ...
This time of year is ideal for reflecting on the miracle of Christmas 1914, that famous temporary truce and friendship between opposing sides in the midst of a war. Here was a new type of slaughter confronted with a new type of humanism, the leading edges of two opposing trends. ...
Set Your Doomsday Clock to 11:51
The National Defense Authorization Act is not a leap from democracy to tyranny, but it is another major step on a steady and accelerating decade-long march toward a police state. The doomsday clock of our republic just got noticeably closer to midnight, and the fact that almost nobody knows it, ...
The current President and Congress are destroying our Constitutional rights, our planet's climate, and the vestiges of a social safety net, and you are obsessing over a freak show of self-hating homosexuals and anti-intellectual intellectuals jumping through hoops in a corporate media circus with Ringmaster Donald Trump. Is this a ...
What to Replace the Imprison-Americans Bill With
The funny thing about the bill that the Senate just passed that lets presidents and the military lock you up without a charge or a trial — well, not funny ha ha but funny unusual — is that the basic bill to which that little monstrosity was attached is even ...
Occupation Evicted? Occupy the Place Responsible: DC
Has the First Amendment expired in your public square? Has your local park prioritized empty vistas over the right to petition your government for a redress of grievances, thereby adding one more grievance to the list? Here's a proposal. Pack up all of your grievances in a bag and bring ...
I'm thankful that a growing number of us reject the idea of a mysterious being to which we should be thankful, and for the concomitant growing assumption of responsibility for our own fate. I'm thankful that there are so many people doing so many things for which I am thankful. ...
One Veteran's Rough Path from Killing and Torturing to Peace
Not yet 30, Evan Knappenberger has already lived several lives. His story destroys the U.S. government's case against whistleblower Bradley Manning, exposes the toxic mix of fraud and incompetence that creates U.S. war policies, and highlights the damage so often done to soldiers who come home without visible injuries. Knappenberger, ...
Believe it or not, November 11th was not made a holiday in order to celebrate war, support troops, or cheer the 11th year of occupying Afghanistan. This day was made a holiday in order to celebrate an armistice that ended what was up until that point, in 1918, one of ...
Imagine If War Were Illegal — It Is!
A Forgotten Law We Need In January 1929 the U.S. Senate ratified by a vote of 85 to 1 a treaty that is still on the books, still upheld by most of the world, still listed on the U.S. State Department's website -- a treaty that under Article VI of ...
US Army Assaults Its Biggest Fan
One of the most valuable benefits of putting political action into the form of nonviolent encampments is that we learn each other's stories as we occupy our public parks and squares. Here's a story from the October2011 occupation in Freedom Plaza, Washington, D.C. There are many more, and we'd like ...
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May 13th, 2013
Why We Allow the Destruction of Our Planet
It's not enough to point out that our political system is completely corrupted by money, including money from coal and oil and nukes and gas. ...
May 8th, 2013
Most of the world's governments no longer use the death penalty. Among wealthy nations there is one exception remaining. The United States is among the ...
May 5th, 2013
Some Don't Pay Their War Taxes
This past Saturday morning felt like mid-winter in Asheville, North Carolina, but was actually some weeks past tax day, and dozens of people were gathered ...
April 29th, 2013
The Revolution That's Not Being Televised
Hundreds gathered in Dallas to reject the Bush Lie Bury, and three went to jail. I flew from Dallas to Syracuse, where hundreds protested Obama's ...
April 23rd, 2013
Dallas Morning News Claims Bush Never Lied
George W. Bush should be given an indictment, not a library. An online email action is letting the Department of Justice know the facts about ...
April 18th, 2013
Vile, Filthy, Bloody, Dirty Wars
Jeremy Scahill, author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army, has a new book that should be required reading for Congress ...
April 17th, 2013
Vieques 10 Years After the Bombing Stopped
By Helen Jaccard and David Swanson, http://warisacrime.org/viequesTen years ago May 1, the people of Vieques, Puerto Rico and their supporters from around the world defeated ...
February 9th, 2011
Nonviolent Activism Is Middle Eastern
Muslims can look back to the classic nonviolent struggle against British empire waged by the Pashtuns from 1930-1934 in what is now Pakistan and Afghanistan. ...
May 19th, 2011
'Support Killing People or Lose Your Job'
"Ban the bombers are afraid of a fight "Peace hurts business and that ain't right "How do I know? I read it in the Daily ...
June 24th, 2011
Fifty years ago, freedom riders traveled by bus into the U.S. South. Now American freedom riders are joining their allies from around the world on ...
September 2nd, 2011
No, not 29 million job offers. I'm no better at applying for jobs than you are, and my town offers nothing but dead-end McJobs or ...
July 1st, 2011
How We Really Get Rid of Clarence Thomas
Am I the only one who noticed that ex-Nixon lawyer John Dean's article "John Dean Knows How to Get Rid of Clarence Thomas" concludes thus: ...
May 2nd, 2011
The plane I was on landed in Washington, D.C., Sunday night, and the pilot came on the intercom to tell everyone to celebrate: our government ...
May 13th, 2013
Why We Allow the Destruction of Our Planet
It's not enough to point out that our political system is completely corrupted by money, including money from coal and oil and nukes and gas. ...
'Dirty Wars' by Jeremy Scahill
Why have you started a comedy festival in northern Michigan in the middle of winter?
Because if you were here in the dead of winter in the middle of nowhere (which is actually somewhere to us), you'd need a few laughs too ... Continue Reading
Michael Moore on MSNBC with Michael Eric Dyson, 3/22/13
Michael Moore on Democracy Now!, 6/28/12
Michael Moore on the Rachel Maddow Show, 5/11/12
Michael Moore on MSNBC, Super Tuesday, 3/6/12
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Michael Moore on the Rachel Maddow Show, 2/27/12
