Image by Truthout.org via Flickr
by David Swanson
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Let’s Try Democracy
Originally posted May 26, 2019
May 29, 2023
The U.S. Army tweeted a harmless rah-rah tweet and got hit with a burst of reality never encountered on corporate-controlled media. Score one for the internet.
Image by denisedaysmith via Flickr
by David Swanson
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Let’s Try Democracy
April 22, 2023
This week on Talk World Radio, we’re talking about a Zone of Peace in the Americas, and events in Uganda, and presidential indictments, and everything we find time for with Margaret Kimberley, Executive Editor and Senior Columnist at Black Agenda Report, member of the coordinating committee of Black Alliance for Peace, and author of a wonderful book previously discussed on this show called Prejudential: Black America and the Presidents.
Image by Lynn Friedman via Flickr
by David Swanson
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Let’s Try Democracy
April 12, 2023
The New York Times routinely tells bigger lies than the clumsy nonsense it published about weapons in Iraq. Here’s an example. This package of lies is called “Liberals Have a Blind Spot on Defense” but mentions nothing related to defense. It simply pretends that militarism is defensive by applying that word and by lying that “we face simultaneous and growing military threats from Russia and China.” Seriously? Where?
Image by Daniel Lobo via Flickr
by David Swanson
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Let’s Try Democracy, Mar. 10, 2023
March 15, 2023
Here’s how this works each year.
1) Biden proposes a massive increase in military spending — above and beyond both what he proposed the year before and what the Congress increased that to. If you look at U.S. military spending according to SIPRI in constant 2021 dollars from 1949 to now (all the years they provide, with their calculation adjusting for inflation), Obama’s 2011 record will probably fall this year. If you look at actual numbers, not adjusting for inflation, Biden has set a new record each year.
Image by Steve Rhodes via Flickr
Dandelion Salad
March 9, 2023
Shadowproof on Mar 7, 2023
Shadowproof and Project Censored present a conversation between Kevin Gosztola and Daniel Ellsberg to celebrate the release of Kevin’s book, Guilty of Journalism: The Political Case Against Julian Assange.
Image by r2hox via Flickr
by David Swanson
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Let’s Try Democracy, Feb. 7, 2023
February 8, 2023
“It’s incredible the extent to which people still fantasize about a nuclear war in one part of the globe as if the scientists haven’t told us it impacts the entire Earth and the cloud of dust renders agriculture impossible and everybody starves and the living envy the dead.” — David Swanson.
Screenshot by Dandelion Salad via Flickr
by David Swanson
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Let’s Try Democracy, Jan. 17, 2023
January 19, 2023
David Swanson is the author of the new book The Monroe Doctrine at 200 and What to Replace It With.
The Monroe Doctrine was and is a justification for actions, some good, some indifferent, but the overwhelming bulk reprehensible. The Monroe Doctrine remains in place, both explicitly and dressed up in novel language. Additional doctrines have been built on its foundations. Here are the words of the Monroe Doctrine, as carefully selected from President James Monroe’s State of the Union Address 200 years ago on December 2, 1823:
Continue reading
Image by Daniel Arrhakis via Flickr
by David Swanson
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Let’s Try Democracy
December 29, 2022
There’s a simple idea, advanced most effectively by Daniel Ellsberg. Whether you love nuclear weapons, believe they’re unfortunately necessary, or think they’re the stupidest thing ever to spend a cent — much less trillions of dollars — on, you ought never to imagine a need for more than the nukes on submarines and airplanes. Having them on land as well, whether you call it a Holy Triad of nuclear weapon types or not, ought to be understood as really, really dumb, no matter what you think of loading up subs and planes with enough weapons to end all life on Earth many times over. You may, as I do, believe that almost nothing could be crazier than nukes on subs and planes; or you may swear that such deployments amount to the wisest action ever taken by the human species, or by the 4% of humanity that you give a damn about, or anything in between. But there is something crazier, that we should all be able to come together and recognize as the single craziest thing ever: nukes on land, ICBMs, Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles.
Image by Ged Carroll via Flickr
by David Swanson
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Let’s Try Democracy, Dec. 1, 2022
December 3, 2022
Massachusetts Peace Action on Dec 1, 2022
The first casualty of war, and militarism, is the truth. And the corporate mainstream media works diligently hand-in-glove with the US military-industrial complex to make this happen. Through its unquestioning repetition of government propaganda, its lies of omission, and its ratings-hungry war mongering, the media have become an essential part of the information war so endemic to US imperialism.
Image by Felton Davis via Flickr
with Ralph Nader, Medea Benjamin and David Swanson
Ralph Nader Radio Hour on Nov 26, 2022
On this week of Thanksgiving, Ralph welcomes two distinguished anti-war activists and Nobel Peace Prize nominees, Medea Benjamin, co-founder of CODE Pink to discuss her book War in Ukraine: Making Sense of a Senseless Conflict and David Swanson of World Beyond War to not only put the conflict in Ukraine in context but also to reveal the financial incentives that drive endless war.
Image by U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Jette Carr via U.S. Secretary of Defense via Flickr
by David Swanson
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Let’s Try Democracy, Nov. 21, 2022
November 22, 2022
Here’s a video of John Oliver denouncing FIFA for putting the World Cup in Qatar, a place that uses slavery and abuses women and abuses LGBT people. It’s a video about how everyone else glosses over nasty truths. Oliver drags in Russia as a past World Cup host that abuses protesters, and even Saudi Arabia as a possible host in the distant future that commits all sorts of atrocities. My concern is not just that the U.S., as one of the planned hosts four years hence, gets a pass on its general behavior. My concern is that the U.S. has far outdone FIFA this year, and every year, in Qatar. The U.S. has put six things into that horrific little oil dictatorship, each of which is worse than the World Cup.
Image by borderhacker via Flickr
by David Swanson
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Let’s Try Democracy, Nov. 15, 2022
November 16, 2022
The one nation on Earth that has not ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the leading hold-out on basic human rights treaties in general, and the wealthy nation that imposes the biggest hurdles on young people seeking an education has a reason that’s seldom talked about for making college expensive and keeping the chains of student debt wrapped tightly around millions of ankles — and it’s a reason related to the militarized spreading of the Rules Based Order.
Image by Leo Reynolds via Flickr
by David Swanson
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Let’s Try Democracy, Nov. 2, 2018
Originally published Nov. 12, 2018
November 10, 2022
Some are inclined to recognize that Trumpies are dwelling in an alternative universe in which neither climate collapse nor nuclear apocalypse is a concern but terrifying wild hoards of Muslim Hondurans are skipping and dancing into the Fatherland armed with gang symbols, deadly rocks, and socialistic tendencies.
Image by Tim Pierce via Flickr
by David Swanson
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Let’s Try Democracy, Nov. 5, 2022
November 6, 2022
After the U.S. has spent months privately telling Ukraine not to negotiate peace and publicly telling Ukraine to help itself to an all-you-can-eat weapons buffet with breaks to pose for heroic portraits, and not long at all after telling Congress Members to beat themselves with whips for suggesting negotiating peace, the White House has privately asked Ukraine to pretend to be open to peace negotiations because it looks bad to have Russia willing (or at least saying it’s willing) to discuss peace and Ukraine not saying that. Or, in the words of the Bezos Post:
Continue reading
Image by Cheshire County Democrats via Flickr
Updated Oct. 28, 2022: added video interview with Kucinich
Republished with permission from David Swanson at World Beyond War
by Dennis Kucinich
World Beyond War, Oct. 26, 2022
October 27, 2022
CLEVELAND (Oct. 26) Weds — Dennis J. Kucinich, former Congressman and former Democratic Presidential candidate today called upon Congressional Democrats to “rethink their opposition to diplomacy” as a means to end the war between Russia and Ukraine.
Dandelion Salad 