David Swanson's Blog, page 13
January 9, 2017
Jan 29: David Swanson Speaking in Arlington Virginia on State of War and What to Do About It
Nova Catholic Community invites you to join us on
January 29 at 11:30 am, Kenmore Middle School Cafeteria
200 S. Carlin Springs Rd, Arlington, VA 22204
to hear David Swanson talk about our permanent state of war and what we can do about it.
(You are also welcome to join us for liturgy at 10:15 am.)
Talk Nation Radio: Millions Lose Their Minds Over Russia
https://soundcloud.com/davidcnswanson/talk-nation-radio-millions-lose-their-minds-over-russia
This week on Talk Nation Radio: millions of Americans lose their everloving minds over unproven accusations against Russia, the ACLU and CAIR publish claim that war on Iraq has been to protect the U.S. Bill of Rights, and a torture report gets buried.
Total run time: 29:00
Host: David Swanson.
Producer: David Swanson.
Music by Duke Ellington.
Download from LetsTryDemocracy or Archive.
Pacifica stations can also download from Audioport.
Syndicated by Pacifica Network.
Please encourage your local radio stations to carry this program every week!
Please embed the SoundCloud audio on your own website!
Past Talk Nation Radio shows are all available free and complete at
http://TalkNationRadio.org
and at
https://soundcloud.com/davidcnswanson/tracks
‘Not enough Americans protesting NATO eastward expansion’
Interview I did with RT here.
RT cut out the part where I said the Baltic states were afraid of Russia.
January 8, 2017
Allegations Against Russia Less Credible Every Day
The U.S. government has now generated numerous news stories and released multiple "reports" aimed at persuading us that Vladimir Putin is to blame for Donald Trump becoming president. U.S. media has dutifully informed us that the case has been made. What has been made is the case for writing your own news coverage. The "reports" from the "intelligence community" are no lengthier than the New York Times and Washington Post articles about them. Why not just read the reports and cut out the middle-person?
January 6, 2017
Why Release the Torture Report Now
A young man was tortured in Chicago this week. It wasn’t an act of the Chicago police. It was live streamed on Facebook. And the President of the United States declared it an horrific hate crime.
The President did not advise “looking forward” rather than enforcing the law. Nor did he hold open the possibility that the crime might have served some higher purpose. In fact, he didn’t excuse the crime in any way that might help recommend it for imitation by others.
Yet this same president has forbidden the prosecution of U.S. government torturers for the past 8 years and has now seen fit to keep a four-year-old Senate report on their torture secret for at least 12 years more.
January 4, 2017
Yes, Positivity, Pangloss, Partisanship, Propaganda, and Populism
Eight years ago Yes! Magazine published a political platform of progressive policies, along with polling showing strong majority support for each proposal. Now, eight years later, we can show almost total failure to advance any of the proposals, most of which were focused on the U.S. federal government.
Where there have been any small successes, they have mostly come at the state or local level or outside the United States. New York State just took a step toward free college and Washington State toward shutting down fossil fuels while everyone was watching Donald Trump's twitter feed. Most of the world's nations are working on a new treaty to ban nuclear weapons from the earth, while Obama's government has invested heavily in new nukes and (far more offensively, I'm told) Trump has tweeted about them.
The general federal-level failure in the United States is very clearly because the U.S. government in Washington D.C. is a financially corrupted and anti-democratic structure, and because the U.S. public is generally disinclined to hold it accountable. The United States enjoys remarkably less activism than many other countries, and suffers as a result.
A huge reason for the activism shortage is partisan loyalty. Of that minority of people who will do anything at all, many will only make demands of or protest members of one political party. For the other party all is forgiven. And most policy positions are utterly expendable at the slightest shift in the party line. Witness the current Democratic fever for believing the CIA on faith and desiring hostility toward Russia.
January 3, 2017
Talk Nation Radio: Dave Webb on Keeping Weapons and Nuclear Power Out of Space
Dave Webb is a member of the World Beyond War Coordinating Committee and chair of the UK Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), and well as Vice President of the International Peace Bureau (IPB) and the Convenor of the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space: http://space4peace.org
Webb is an Emeritus Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies at Leeds Beckett University (previously Leeds Metropolitan University). Webb has been involved in the campaign to scrap the UK Trident nuclear weapons system and has also focused on campaigning to close two U.S. bases in Yorkshire (where he lives) – Fylingdales (a missile defence radar base) and Menwith Hill (the huge NSA spy base).
We discuss the upcoming 25th Annual Global Network Conference & Protest: "Pivot Toward War: US Missile Defense & the Weaponization of Space" to be held on April 7-9, 2017, in Huntsville, Alabama: http://space4peace.org
Total run time: 29:00
Host: David Swanson.
Producer: David Swanson.
Music by Duke Ellington.
Download from LetsTryDemocracy or Archive.
Pacifica stations can also download from Audioport.
Syndicated by Pacifica Network.
Please encourage your local radio stations to carry this program every week!
Please embed the SoundCloud audio on your own website!
Past Talk Nation Radio shows are all available free and complete at
http://TalkNationRadio.org
and at
https://soundcloud.com/davidcnswanson/tracks
January 2, 2017
Fantasies About Russia Could Doom Opposition to Trump
To many Democrats for whom killing a million people in Iraq just didn't rise to the level of an impeachable offense, and who considered Obama's bombing of eight nations and the creation of the drone murder program to be praiseworthy, Trump will be impeachable on Day 1.
Indeed Trump should be impeached on Day 1, but the same Democrats who found the one nominee who could lose to Trump will find the one argument for impeachment that can explode in their own faces. Here's a "progressive" Democrat:
"In his dalliance with Vladimir Putin, Trump’s actions are skirting treason. ... By undermining further investigation or sanctions against the Russian manipulation of the 2016 election, Trump as president would be giving aid and comfort to Russian interference with American democracy."
There's a bit of a nod there -- in the word "investigations" -- to the lack of any evidence that Russia manipulated any U.S. election, yet that manipulation is stated as fact, and a failure to support further sanctions as punishment for it becomes "aid and comfort." What level of punishment exactly constitutes the absence of aid and comfort? And how does that level of punishment compare with the level likely to produce war or nuclear holocaust? Who knows.
Failure to sufficiently punish a foreign government, even for an actual proven offense, has never been a high crime and misdemeanor. The United States is in fact bound by the Hague Convention of 1899, the Kellogg-Briand Pact, and the United Nations Charter to take any such dispute to arbitration and to settle it by pacific means. But that would require producing some evidence rather than mere allegations. Lawless "punishment" is much easier.
But further evidence can emerge to counter the claim. The lack of evidence for the claim can weigh ever more heavily on public opinion. And the dangers of creating further hostility with Russia can enter the consciousness of additional people.
Meanwhile, we have a man planning to be president later this month whose business dealings clearly violate the U.S. Constitution in terms of not only foreign but also domestic corruption. That's a perfectly overwhelming case for impeachment and removal from office that doesn't require opposing a single incident of mass murder or offending a single Pentagon contractor.
Beyond that, Trump is becoming president after election day intimidation, the partisan-based removal of voters from the rolls, and opposition to attempting to count paper ballots where they existed. He's arriving with the stated policies of unconstitutionally discriminating against Muslims, murdering families, stealing oil, torturing, and proliferating nuclear weapons.
In other words, Donald Trump will be from Day 1 an impeachable president, and Democrats will have already spent months building their campaign around the one thing that won't work. Imagine what will happen after all their hearings and press conferences, when their supporters find out that they aren't even accusing Vladimir Putin of hacking into election machines, that in fact they are accusing unknown individuals of hacking into Democrats' emails, and that they are then vaguely speculating that those individuals could have been sources for WikiLeaks, thereby informing the U.S. public of what was quite obvious and ought to have been widely reported for the good of the U.S. government, namely that the DNC rigged its primary.
By the time the Democrats beat themselves to the floor with this charade, more facts will likely have come out regarding WikiLeaks' actual source(s), and more hostility will likely have been stirred up with Russia. The war hawks have already got Trump talking up nuclear escalation.
Luckily there is an ace in the hole. There is something else that Democrats will be eager to hold Trump accountable for. And give Trump a month and he'll produce it. I'm referring, of course, to that greatest fear of Our Beloved Founding Fathers, the ultimate high crime and misdemeanor: the presidential sex scandal.
December 30, 2016
Russians, By Fling -- To the tune of "Russians" by Sting
In Liberal America, there's a growing feeling of hysteria
Conditioned to accept whatever's claimed
As long as it's Donald and the Russians blamed
Mr. Putin says he'll be friends with you
I don't subscribe to this point of view
It would be such an ignorant thing to do
If the Russians hate their children too
How can I risk my little boy with Oppenheimer's deadly toy
There is no monopoly in common sense
On either side of all the missile defense
We share the same biology
Regardless of ideology
Believe me when I say to you
The Russians hacked your cell phone too
There is no historical precedent
To put a stooge in the office of the President
There's no such thing as a winnable war
It's a lie we don't reject anymore
Obama says we will protect you
I don't subscribe to this point of view
Believe me when I say to you
I know the Russians hate their children too
We share the same biology
Regardless of ideology
What might kill us, me, and you
Is if the Russians hate their children too
ACLU & CAIR Use Cville Spokesman to Claim War on Iraq Was for Bill of Rights
Are you old enough to remember when liberal groups openly admitted that the war on Iraq was illegal and fraudulent, based on oil and profit and sadism?
Well, can you recall when the proponents of the war claimed it was a defense against nonexistent ties to terrorists and nonexistent weapons?
Even if you've wiped those memories, let me assure you, NOBODY ever claimed that attacking and destroying Iraq was necessary to protect civil liberties in the United States (which have been seriously eroded during the course of the war).
Yet, in recent months the generic defense of murdering large numbers of people far away has taken over as the explanation for the war on Iraq.
The ACLU on Friday used the voice of my fellow Charlottesvillian Khizr Khan to claim that attacking Iraq was done "in defense of our country's ideals."
