Killing Resolves Nothing

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Sunday May 01, 2011 · 11:50 PM PDT

2011/05/01 · 23:50

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 had killed Osama bin Laden. This was better than winning the Super Bowl, he said.

Set aside for a moment the morality of cheering for the killing of a human being -- which despite the pilot's prompting nobody on the plane did. In purely Realpolitik terms, killing foreign leaders whom we've previously supported has been an ongoing disaster.

Our killing of Saddam Hussein has been followed by years of war and hundreds of thousands of pointless deaths. Our attempts to kill Muammar Gadaffi have killed his children and grandchildren and will end no war if they eventually succeed. Our attempts to kill Osama bin Laden, including wars justified by that mission, have involved nearly a decade of senseless slaughter in Afghanistan and the rest of the ongoing global "generational" war that is consuming our nation.

David Swanson

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Friday April 29, 2011 · 8:27 PM PDT

2011/04/29 · 20:27

The Charlottesville Daily Progress, to its credit, did something that I don't think it or most small-town newspapers have done before, and certainly have not done often: it wrote about the local congress member's position on military spending. Sure it's where half of our income taxes go, but it's hardly ever mentioned.

Hurt told the paper that he wants to cut spending, but not in the military: "I think everybody would agree that national defense is a top priority for our government and really for any government." Does Hurt really think that? Because this is where a dog being better qualified for Congress than Hurt comes in.

David Swanson

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Thursday April 28, 2011 · 8:21 PM PDT

2011/04/28 · 20:21

I'm feeling pretty guilty. I hadn't known I was causing billionaires so much suffering. The former co-chair of President Obama's deficit (a.k.a. catfood) commission just asked me during a public event to stop going after rich people. Then he came up to me after the event to make sure I'd gotten the point. He seemed truly worried about it.

David Swanson

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Wednesday April 27, 2011 · 10:02 PM PDT

2011/04/27 · 22:02

Vermont is going to have a very hard time implementing single-payer, and the reason is not pretty.

David Swanson

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Wednesday April 27, 2011 · 3:00 PM PDT

2011/04/27 · 15:00

In May 2009, Congressmen Eric Cantor (R., Va.) and Steny Hoyer (D., Md.) wrote to President Barack Obama about U.S. policy toward Israel. Their staff sent the letter as a PDF but forgot to change the name of the file to something other than "AIPAC Letter Hoyer Cantor May 2009.pdf."

David Swanson

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Tuesday April 26, 2011 · 5:48 AM PDT

2011/04/26 · 05:48

In December 2009, psychologist Bruce Levine published an article at Alternet called "Are Americans a Broken People?" His timing couldn't have been better. Americans of good will and bad analysis were suffering a severe fit of Obamanation withdrawal. The article was reposted everywhere, commented on endlessly, and responded to voluminously. (This was my response.) Levine has now developed his article into an important book called "Get Up, Stand Up."

David Swanson

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Friday April 22, 2011 · 9:59 AM PDT

2011/04/22 · 09:59

If you hate taxes but dutifully cheer for wars, it's lucky you also oppose school funding sufficient to produce historical literacy. Taxes are a byproduct of wars. Were it not for wars and war propaganda, this country would have never begun paying taxes. If we were to end wars, and only if we were to end wars, we could consider ending taxes too.

But wait! Wasn't the war for independence a war against taxes? Aren't taxes created by weakness, while militarism generates wealth? Isn't it the effeminate socialists and pacifists who oppose wars?

David Swanson

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Wednesday April 20, 2011 · 2:39 AM PDT

2011/04/20 · 02:39

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? How do you take over a political party when the only other one allowed to compete is worse? These are not koans, but actual problems with a single solution.

It might seem like there are a million solutions: pass state-level clean election laws, build independent media, build a new party, etc. But the fundamental answer is that when the deck is stacked against you, you insist on a new deck. Power, as Frederick Douglas told us, concedes nothing without a demand. We cannot legislate our way out of plutocracy. Instead, we the people must seize power.

The problem of seizing power for non-billionaires is the problem of the dying labor movement. To many, this looks like an unsolvable riddle as well. How do you pass the Employee Free Choice Act to legalize unionizing when you have no aggressive unions willing to pressure Congress to do so? And if Congress works for corporate masters, do we need to apply the pressure there instead? But making a scene in a corporate lobby doesn't hurt a corporation in an era of shamelessness, and we can't unelect CEOs.

What to do?

David Swanson

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Tuesday April 19, 2011 · 5:38 AM PDT

2011/04/19 · 05:38

A year ago BP began filling the Gulf of Mexico with oil.

Last week BP blocked a woman from entering its annual meeting.

Which will prove the bigger mistake?

David Swanson

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Monday April 18, 2011 · 9:32 AM PDT

2011/04/18 · 09:32

Before Tahrir Square happened almost nobody predicted that President Hosni Mubarak would be forced out of office by a movement that didn't pick up a gun. Had President Barack Obama expected that outcome, he might have publicly backed Mubarak's departure before, rather than after, Mubarak stepped down.

Obama can be seen as overcompensating for that performance in Libya, but there he is placing faith in weapons. Anybody can do that. Egypt still has a long way to go on its path to a just society. But the question of whether Tunisian-Egyptian movements will find success elsewhere is the question of whether people can take the far more challenging step of placing trust in nonviolence.

Those who believed a nonviolent movement, one that would involve youth and women, could gain power in Egypt, worked for years to make it happen. Those saying it couldn't be done were not permitted to get in the way of those doing it. Nonviolent strategists like American Gene Sharp advised the organizers of a force that developed completely beneath the U.S. media's radar. What burst forth earlier this year appeared to be spontaneous. It was not.

David Swanson

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Saturday April 16, 2011 · 8:14 PM PDT

2011/04/16 · 20:14

On Friday on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives, congress members spoke in defense of Medicare, Social Security, the Environmental Protection Agency, and other programs that by almost anyone's definition are socialist, programs that were denounced as socialist by opponents of their passage in decades past, programs that would not have been created without the efforts of socialists and the Socialist Party.

The debate screeched to a halt, however, because an opponent of the Congressional Progressive Caucus's "People's Budget" then under discussion suggested that its supporters might be socialists. Congressman Keith Ellison, co-chair of that caucus, protested the vicious accusation and demanded that the words of his accuser be transcribed for the record (and possible legal action?). The Republican congress member guilty of the horrible slander announced that he was retracting it. Rep. Raul Grijalva, the other co-chair of the Progressive Caucus, thanked him sincerely for the retraction. Although polls show socialism to be far more popular than Congress, neither Ellison nor Grijalva insisted on being cleared of the label "congress member."

David Swanson

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Tuesday April 12, 2011 · 12:10 AM PDT

2011/04/12 · 00:10

Tuesday marks 150 years since the start of the U.S. Civil War. Newspapers everywhere are proclaiming it the deadliest war in U.S. history, the costliest U.S. war in terms of the loss of human life. That claim, like most things we say about the Civil War, is false.

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How Americans Can Get Up and Stand Up

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The Cure for Plutocracy: Strike!

BP Is Messing With the Wrong Woman

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Did You Just Call Me a Socialist?

Lies About the U.S. Civil War 150 Years Later