David Swanson | The Libertarian Institute

Join the CIA: Travel the World Passing Out Nuclear Blueprints

by David Swanson | Jul 15, 2019 | Featured Articles, Politics

In the year 2000, the CIA gave Iran (slightly and obviously flawed) blueprints for a key component of a nuclear weapon. In 2006 James Risen wrote about this “operation” in his book State of War. In 2015, the United States prosecuted a former CIA agent, Jeffrey Sterling, for supposedly having leaked the story to Risen. In the course of the prosecution, the CIA made public a partially redacted cable that showed that immediately after bestowing its gift on Iran, the CIA had begun efforts to do the same for Iraq. Now in 2019, Sterling is publishing his own book, Unwanted Spy: The Persecution of...

Soldiers Without Guns

by David Swanson | Jun 28, 2019 | Featured Articles, Politics

https://youtu.be/ImwipiavM8k A new film by Will Watson, called Soldiers Without Guns, ought to shock a great many people — not because it utilizes a yet more gruesome form of violence or bizarre form of sex (the usual shockers in movie reviews), but because it recounts and shows us a true story that contradicts the most basic assumptions of politics, foreign policy, and popular sociology. Bougainville Island was a paradise for millennia, inhabited sustainably by people who never caused the rest of the world the slightest trouble. Western empires fought over it, of course. Its name is that of...

Savagery and Its Promoters and Profiteers

by David Swanson | Apr 29, 2019 | Featured Articles, Politics

Max Blumenthal’s new book, “The Management of Savagery: How America’s National Security State Fueled the Rise of Al Qaeda, ISIS, and Donald Trump,” is over 300 pages and wastes not a word. It also does far more than it claims. “This book,” Blumenthal writes, “makes the case that Trump’s election would not have been possible without 9/11 and the subsequent military interventions conceived by the national security state. Further, I argue that if the CIA had not spent over a billion dollars arming Islamist militants in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union during the height of the Cold War,...

The Ancient Mythical Rites of Pearl Harbor Day

by David Swanson | Dec 10, 2018 | Featured Articles, Politics

Last week I spoke at a high school. As I often do, I told them I’d perform a magic trick. I only know one, but I know it will almost always work with no skill required. I scribbled on a piece of paper and folded it up. I asked someone to name a war that was justified. They of course said “World War II” and I opened up the paper, which read “World War II.” Magic! I could do a second part with equal reliability. I ask “Why?” They say “the Holocaust.” I could do a third part, as well. I ask “What does Evian mean?” They say “No idea” or “bottled water.” Of the great many times I’ve done this,...