Author: David Swanson

The buzzing noise of a drone never ceases. A missile screaming into your house is hard to miss. Gun fire. The door kicked in. These are not subtle gestures. Yet Norman Solomon’s new book is called War Made Invisible. What?

Of course, the people whose government is the leading war maker and weapons dealer mostly have nothing to do with war. Most of them are not in the military. Most of them do not work for the weapons business. Most of them cannot name most of the wars currently happening. And most of them do not know that their nation is the leading weapons dealer, base builder, coup instigator, drone killer, and war wager.

Continue reading “Can You See War?”

National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said this week, when asked about UK shipments of Depleted Uranium weapons to Ukraine: “If Russia is deeply concerned about the welfare of their tanks and tank soldiers, the safest thing for them to do is move them across the border, get them out of Ukraine.”

Meanwhile, Pentagon spokesperson Garron Garn said Depleted Uranium had “saved the lives of many service members in combat,” and “other countries have long possessed depleted uranium rounds as well, including Russia.”

Continue reading “Leading US War Propagandist John Kirby Thinks Depleted Uranium Is Just Fine”

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.

If you add in the free weapons for Ukraine, then, even adjusting for inflation, the record fell this past year and will probably be broken again in the coming year.

You’ll hear all sorts of different numbers, depending on what’s included. Most used is probably $886 billion for what Biden has just proposed, which includes the military, the nuclear weapons, and some of “ Homeland Security.” In the absence of massive public pressure on a topic the public hardly knows exists, we can count on an increase by Congress, plus major new piles of free weapons to Ukraine. For the first time, US military spending (not counting various secret spending, veterans spending, etc.) will likely top $950 billion as predicted here.

Continue reading “How US Military Spending Works”

World BEYOND War has launched a new online tool that allows the user to view a globe pock-marked with 867 U.S. military bases in countries other than the United States, and to zoom in for a satellite view of and detailed information on each base. The tool also allows filtering the map or list of bases by country, government type, opening date, number of personnel, or acres of land occupied.

This visual database was researched and developed by World BEYOND War to help journalists, activists, researchers, and individual readers understand the immense problem of excessive preparation for war, which inevitably leads to international bullying, meddling, threats, escalation, and mass atrocity. By illustrating the extent of the US empire of military outposts, World BEYOND War hopes to call attention to the wider problem of war preparations. Thanks to davidvine.net for a variety of information included in this tool.

Continue reading “See 867 Military Bases on New Online Tool”

Every Single Member of Congress Is Willing to Let Yemeni Children Die.

If you want to prove that statement wrong, I think you’ll want to start by proving wrong one or more of these five points:

1. A single member of the House or Senate can compel a speedy vote on ending U.S. participation in the war on Yemen.
2. Not one single member has done so.
3. Ending US participation would effectively end the war.
4. Despite the temporary truce, millions of lives depend on ending the war.
5. The passionate speeches in 2018 and 2019 by Senators and Representatives demanding an end to the war when they knew they could count on a veto from Trump have vanished during the Biden years chiefly because Party is more important than human lives.

Continue reading “Every Single Member of Congress Is Willing To Let Yemeni Children Die”

From DavidSwanson.com:

Daniel Ellsberg is a former U.S. military analyst employed by the RAND Corporation who precipitated a national uproar in 1971 when he released the Pentagon Papers, the U.S. military’s account of activities during the Vietnam War, to The New York Times. Ellsberg has continued as a political activist, giving lecture tours and speaking out about current events, and as an author of critically important books, and as a guest on this program and many others. Dan Ellsberg has recently published with Norman Solomon an article in The Nation magazine titled “To Avoid Armageddon, Don’t Modernize Missiles—Eliminate Them.”