David Swanson's Blog, page 15
December 18, 2016
Monday Morning Bernie Backing
The growing push to defeat Trump by any of the following means:
Taking the CIA's warmongering on faith and blaming Vladimir Putin for everything,
Accusing the FBI,
Pressing for majority rule despite the electoral college,
Protesting voters being stripped from the rolls,
Objecting to intimidation at the polls,
Trying to undo the blocking of votes by those lacking IDs,
Remedying broken and insufficient and unverifiable machines,
Counting paper ballots where they exist,
Threatening impeachment over Trump's unconstitutional presents and emoluments from foreign nations unless he sells his foreign businesses,
Arguing for disqualification on the ground of mental illness,
Praying and fantasizing,
would be far more energized and popular if the "defeated" candidate were Bernie Sanders, who -- judging by all existing polling (and theorizing what his general election campaign would have looked like) -- would almost certainly not have been defeated by any means in the first place.
December 14, 2016
Think Politicians Are Trying to Scare You? You're Not Paranoid.
Part I. Personal
Wednesday evening I answered the phone, and a man pretending to work for the local sheriff's department asked me to identify myself, told me that the call would be recorded because it might be used against me in a court of law, and ordered me to get a pen and paper. He spoke fast and unclearly and with lots of strange background noises. He claimed that I had failed to appear for jury duty and I would be arrested if I didn't do what he said. (I'd received no notice of jury duty.)
I ignored obvious signs that this guy was a fraud. He was not calling from a local number. He couldn't pronounce the name of my street. I had to ask him four times before he told me his supposed name, which he didn't seem totally sure of. He was extremely hostile while claiming to have no choice about behaving that way. And when questioned on things he said, he offered explanations, but the explanations made no sense. He said that because he was required to treat me as a criminal I had to tell him my cell phone number. What? He said I could pay a fine and would get it back the next day, but I couldn't pay wish cash or check or credit card because the sheriff's department considered it inappropriate to use a form of payment that included personal information. What? Personalized cash?
I waited through all this patent nonsense (including him doubling the amount of the fine, apparently under the impression that he'd hooked a true sucker) until the guy said I could not come to the sheriff's department to clear things up but would have to go withdraw the money from the bank (which was, of course, closed for the night, and ATMs have limits). Then I'd have to use the money to buy some kind of card at a grocery store. As soon as he said that, I called 911 on my other phone and asked their advice. They told me to hang up on the guy, and they said it with an air of tired annoyance. My wife, who's better informed than I, then told me there'd been a news report about this scam.
VIDEO: Militarizing Police and a Policelike Military
C-Span Video is here.
Speakers:
Jamani Montague
Jamani Montague is a student activist at Emory University, studying International Studies and Environmental Science. Her research interests include race theory, prison ecology, comparative politics and eco-colonialism. Jamani is the Prison Advocacy Coordinator for RootsAction.org, where she works closely with prisoners, the media, and legal activists to bring civil and environmental justice to those behind bars. She plans to pursue a PhD in Environmental Health Studies and eventually teach in universities and prisons.
David Swanson
David Swanson is an author, activist, journalist, and radio host. He is director of WorldBeyondWar.org and campaign coordinator for RootsAction.org. Swanson's books include War Is A Lie and When the World Outlawed War. He blogs at DavidSwanson.org and WarIsACrime.org. He hosts Talk Nation Radio. He is a 2015 and 2016 Nobel Peace Prize Nominee.
Leah Muskin-Pierret
Leah is an activist working on challenging U.S. militarism in the Middle East. She focuses on ending U.S. complicity in Israeli apartheid to make way for Palestinian liberation. She hopes to chip away steadily at the military industrial complex until that day when activists have all the resources they need and the military needs to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber.
Miriam Pemberton
Miriam Pemberton is a Research Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies. She directs its Peace Economy Transitions Project which focuses on helping to build the foundations of a postwar economy at the federal, state and local levels. She co-chairs the Budget Priorities Working Group, the principal information-sharing collaboration of U.S. NGOs working on reducing Pentagon spending.
In addition to articles and opeds, her publications include two report series. “Military vs. Climate Security” compares federal spending on the two security domains, and argues for a shift of security resources toward mitigating climate change. “A Unified Security Budget for the United States” examined the balance of spending on military forces, homeland security and non-military foreign engagement and argues for a rebalanced security budget.
With William Hartung of the New America Foundation, she is co-editor of the book Lessons from Iraq: Avoiding the Next War (Paradigm Publishers, 2008). Formerly she was editor, researcher and finally director of the National Commission for Economic Conversion and Disarmament. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan.
December 13, 2016
December 12, 2016
Talk Nation Radio: Craig Murray: Russia Didn't Do It; Vincent Emanuele on Stopping Pipelines and Wars
[image error] https://soundcloud.com/davidcnswanson/talk-nation-radio-craig-murray-russia-didnt-do-it-vincent-emanuele-on-stopping-pipelines
Craig Murray is an author, broadcaster and human rights activist. He was British Ambassador to Uzbekistan from August 2002 to October 2004 and Rector of the University of Dundee from 2007 to 2010. See https://www.craigmurray.org.uk
Murray explains that he has met the leaker of either the DNC or Podesta emails and that both sets of emails were leaked by one or more people at either the NSA or the Democratic Party, that Russia played no role at all.
Vincent Emanuele (pictured at right) joined the United States Marine Corps as a squad automatic machine gunner in 2002. After two combat-deployments in Iraq, he refused orders for a third and immediately began organizing with Veterans for Peace and Iraq Veterans Against the War. In 2008, Vince testified to Congress at the Winter Soldier Hearings on Capitol Hill, where he provided detailed accounts of war crimes, atrocities, drug abuse and sexual assault within the military. See https://www.facebook.com/vincentjr.emanuele
Emanuele is just back from Standing Rock and discusses environmental and antiwar strategy. This show contains half our discussion. The second half will appear next week.
Total run time: 29:00
Host: David Swanson.
Producer: David Swanson.
Music by Duke Ellington.
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Syndicated by Pacifica Network.
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Past Talk Nation Radio shows are all available free and complete at
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If Phil Ochs Were Alive, Though I'd Not Wish It on Him
I cried when they mocked Donna Brazile
Tears ran down my spine
And I cried when Joe Biden stepped aside
As though I'd lost a father of mine
But Chelsea Manning got what was coming
She got what he asked for this time
So love me, love me, love me, i'm a liberal
I go to white BLM rallies
I arrive in my new hybrid car
I back GLBTQ in the Army
I love all immigrants from afar
But don't talk about revolution
That's going a little bit too far
So love me, love me, love me, i'm a liberal
I cheered when Hillary was chosen
My faith in the system restored
I'm in favor of affordable college
For those who stand out from the hoard
I love humanitarian bombings
And canvassing votes door-to-door
So love me, love me, love me, i'm a liberal
The people who voted for Donald
Should all hang their heads in shame
I can't understand how their minds work
The facts can't deny climate change
But anonymous CIA sources
Are doubted only by the deeply deranged
So love me, love me, love me, i'm a liberal
I watch MSNBC daily
I've learned to take every view
You know, I've demonized Vladimir Putin
And I'm ready to come after you
In defending our sacred elections
There's no one more red, white and blue
So love me, love me, love me, i'm a liberal
I vote for the Democtratic Party
They want Presidents to be strong
Except for Republican presidents
Whose whole inclination is wrong
I'll send all the money you ask for
But don't ask me to come on along
So love me, love me, love me, i'm a liberal
Once i was young and impulsive
I wore every conceivable pin
Even went to the socialist meetings
Learned all the old union hymns
But i've grown older and wiser
And that's why i'm turning you in
So love me, love me, love me, i'm a liberal
December 10, 2016
BREAKING: The CIA Never Ever Lies
At moments like these, when every good responsible and enlightened liberal is recognizing the need to destroy the world in order to save it, by getting World War III started with Russia before Trump can move in and damage anything, I believe it is important to remember a few facts that will strengthen our resolve:
The oligarch who owns the Washington Post has CIA contracts worth at least twice what he paid to buy the Washington Post, thus making the Washington Post the most reliable authority on the CIA we have ever, ever had.
When the CIA concludes things in secret that are reported to the Washington Post by anonymous sources the reliability of the conclusions is heightened exponentially.
Phrases like "individuals with connections to the Russian government" are simply shorthand for "Vladimir Putin" because the Washington Post has too much good taste to actually print that name.
Claims to know extremely difficult things to know, like the motivations of said individuals, are essentially fact, given what we know of the CIA's near perfect record over the decades.
Getting this wrong, much less questioning something or asking to see any evidence, would endanger us all and threaten innocent children with having false statements made about them in a Russian accent.
The fact that the group of people producing our information is referred to as "the Intelligence Community" means it is intelligent and communal, while the fact that people within that community refused to go along with its claims or allow them to become a so-called national intelligence estimate means that there are traitors right in the heart of our holy warriors' sanctuary.
If you doubt that the CIA is always, always right you need only focus your attention on the fact that there are Republicans questioning these claims, including Republicans who are terrible people, on top of which Donald Trump is a racist, sexist pig.
Good people are loyal Democrats, and when the Democrats did the thing that we now know was revealed by Putin in order to make Trump president (namely cheating its politically and morally superior candidate out of its nomination) that was done as a generous sacrifice for us and our children.
Claims made without public evidence have never turned out to be false or exaggerated in the slightest in the past, certainly not in Ukraine, Syria, Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Vietnam, Nicaragua, or any other part of the earth.
When I looked into every past war and discovered that they were always preceded by lies, it was because I had secret psychic information that at some future date Vladimir would reward me. I should wait patiently for his payment and then report it to the CIA/Washington Post.
