David Swanson's Blog, page 151
February 21, 2013
Tour de Peace
Between April 4 and July 3, the entire country (and the other 96% of humanity too) is invited to join in a bicycle ride from California to Washington, D.C. You can join as a bicycler or as a sponsor.
This won't be a ride to raise awareness about cruelty to animals, but it will raise awareness about war -- by many measures the greatest destroyer of the natural environment we have, as well as consisting first and foremost of the mass killing of that peculiar animal we're all rather fond of: the homo sapiens.
This won't be a ride to raise money for cancer research, but it will raise money for the campaign to abolish war -- a carcinogen if the people of Fallujah ever saw one.
This paragraph is exclusively for supporters of President Obama. If that's not you, please skip to the following paragraph right now. With Republicans out of the White House and no election this year, there is no need to fund election campaigns or to work against particular wars. This is a moment in which our time and our resources are freed up to support long-term structure building so that the plague of war never returns. Remember all those promises to engage in policy-based activism once the most important election of our lives was over? This is the time to get in better physical shape before phone banking season. Pump up your tires and polish your handlebars! Stop reading and get riding right now.
With presidential war powers expanding rapidly and war gaining widespread acceptance among liberals there is an urgent need for an educational and organizing effort that pedals under, over, and around the barricades of the corporate media. U.S. forces are in more nations than ever before, the military budget is still rising and will still be rising even if the sequester "cuts" go through, the CIA has been handed war making powers, the president has claimed the power to spy without warrants, imprison without trial, and murder at will. Wars are launched on nations like Libya in defiance of Congress and the United Nations, with blowback spreading rapidly. Pentagon friendly dictatorships like Saudi Arabia and Bahrain are backed against their people's nonviolent movements for democracy, while violence is encouraged in Syria and Iran. Palestinians are left to their fate, while a new kind of war launched from flying robots slaughters men, women, and children, traumatizes populations, and generates refugee crises, engulfing nations in boiling hatred of the United States of America.
When MSNBC assigns David Axelrod (who refused to deny that President Obama maintains the power to torture anyone as he sees fit) to analyze and punditrify John Brennan's refusal to deny that President Obama maintains the power to murder U.S. citizens within the United States (never mind anyone at all outside the United States or 96% of humanity within it), the triumph of freemarket journalism will have reached a pinnacle unsurpassed in history, putting the Soviet Union's efforts to shame and finally concluding the Cold War, unless nobody notices.
You know who just might wake some people up to what's staring them in the face?
Cindy Sheehan. Cindy has proposed the Tour de Peace. She's been lining up events and participants along the route. She's ready to ride, and to me she is an inspiration. Cindy's appeal, both before and after the corporate media made her a story in Crawford Texas seven-and-a-half years ago, was her uncensored honesty. She's still got it. I've seen a lot of people dump their heart and soul into the peace movement over the past decade and burn out and quit. I appreciate their efforts. We need sprinters, just as the Tour de Peace needs short-distance riders.
But when I see someone become even more aware of the evil that has swallowed up our government, and continually find new ways to confront it, I see a model others should follow. Cindy's gone at it as hard as anyone. She's taken nasty blows from the right and the so-called left. She's burned out and quit, too, but never for more than a day or so. She just keeps coming. Cindy has quit paying her taxes because of the wars they fund. She's been arrested for nonviolent resistance countless times. She's traveled endlessly, speaking and inspiring. She's written a stack of important books. She's hosted a radio show, blogged, and run for Congress and the Vice Presidency. And in this age in which pundits openly say they'd oppose the president's abuses if he were a Republican, Cindy goes ahead and opposed them anyway, with plenty of opposition left over for the Congress, the courts, the funders, the weapons makers, the lobbyists, and the White House Press Corpse.
Creating a mass of people in the streets for peace or justice usually requires money and staff, bus rentals and leg work, coalition building and compromising. Two moments stand out in my mind when none of that was needed. One was when Cindy went to Crawford. The other was when Occupy went to Wall Street. Both were moments of brilliant principled and courageous activism. Neither would have ever been heard of by most who heard of them if not for the corporate media. I've seen Cindy attempt to recreate Crawford countless times since (not to mention before), without the same success. She does so fully aware of the forces at work. She does so with every effort to create our own media and bypass the corporate censors. And she does so knowing that the only way to guarantee failure is to not try.
What if we were to create a movement capable of thinking of itself as real and national or international even outside of our television sets? One of the side effects would be its inevitable infiltration into our television sets. But the primary effect would be the beginning of hope and change as something more than perverse slogans of star-gazing servitude.
When the Tour de Peace leaves Casey Sheehan's grave in Vacaville, Calif., on the ninth anniversary of his death in Iraq and the 45th of Dr. King's in Memphis, it will follow the mother road, Route 66, to Chicago, and other highways and byways from there to D.C. The tour will conclude on July 3, 2013, with a ride from Arlington National Cemetery to the White House.
This August will mark 8 years since Sheehan began her widely reported protest at then-President George W. Bush's "ranch". She was demanding to know what the "noble cause" was for which Bush claimed Americans were dying in Iraq. Neither Bush nor Obama has yet offered a justification for a global war now in its 12th year. The Tour de Peace will carry with it these demands:
To end wars,
To end immunity for U.S. war crimes,
To end suppression of our civil rights,
To end the use of fossil fuels,
To end persecution of whistleblowers,
To end partisan apathy and inaction.
as well as the names of everyone who signs on in support.
Watch the trailer here.
February 20, 2013
Talk Nation Radio: The Crisis in Mali and How to Stop Contributing to It
Ana Edwards is the host of Defenders Live on WRIR in Richmond, Va. Edwards tells us what we should know about Mali, the crisis there, the causes of it, what the Pentagon should stop doing, and what the people of Richmond are doing to help.
Total run time: 29:00
Host: David Swanson.
Producer: David Swanson.
Music by Duke Ellington.
Download or get embed code from Archive or AudioPort or LetsTryDemocracy.
Syndicated by Pacifica Network.
Please encourage your local radio stations to carry this program every week!
Embed on your own site with this code:
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Lawrence Wilkerson and David Swanson Debate Colin Powell's Lies at the United Nations
When I wrote about MSNBC's documentary on Iraq war lies this week, I linked to an earlier blog post of mine that drew heavily on a House Judiciary Committee report on the same topic, as well as to Lawrence Wilkerson's recent debate with Norman Solomon on Democracy Now!
When Brad Friedman reposted my Hubris review, he suggested I ask Wilkerson for a response. I did and here it is:
February 19, 2013
Media Tips
First and foremost, be the media. Produce your own reports, analysis, photos, videos. Use the internet to make your news available.
Having produced your own media, it will require little work to produce press releases for the corporate media. A press release that's already written like a newspaper article will appeal to busy/lazy reporters more than one requiring more work from them. Be sure to include links to your photos and videos, and the names and identifications and contact information for people who can be interviewed.
Working With Reporters
Help Reporters.
February 18, 2013
Hubris Isn't the Half of It
As our government was making a fraudulent case to attack Iraq in 2002-2003, the MSNBC television network was doing everything it could to help, including booting Phil Donahue and Jeff Cohen off the air. The Donahue Show was deemed likely to be insufficiently war-boosting and was thus removed 10 years ago next week, and 10 days after the largest antiwar (or anything else) demonstrations in the history of the world, as a preemptive strike against the voices of honest peaceful people.
From there, MSNBC proceeded to support the war with mild critiques around the edges, and to white-out the idea of impeachment or accountability.
February 17, 2013
Pseudo-Protests and Serious Climate Crisis
"You elected this president. You reelected this president. . . . Stop being chumps!" --Van Jones
Going in, I was of mixed views regarding Sunday's rally in Washington, D.C., to save the earth's climate from the tar sands pipeline. I still am.
Why on a Sunday when there's no government around to protest, shut down, or interfere with?
And why all the pro-Obama rhetoric? Robert Kennedy, Jr., was among the celebrities getting arrested at the White House in the days leading up, and his comment to the media was typical. Obama won't allow the tar sands pipeline, he said, because Obama has "a strong moral core" and doesn't do really evil things.
February 15, 2013
Foodopoly: Too Big to Eat
We've come to understand that the banks are too big to fail, too big to take to trial, too big not to let them write our public policy, too big not to reward them for ruining our economy.
Why have we come to understand that?
We've been told it by a mega media cartel that has itself been deemed too big to fail, too big not to subsidize with our airwaves, too big not to reward with political ads buying back our airwaves in little bits and pieces.
February 13, 2013
Talk Nation Radio: "I Killed People in Afghanistan: Was I Right or Wrong?"
Tim Kudo is a U.S. Marine who has participated in the war on Afghanistan.
He's authored these columns:
Washington Post: I Killed People in Afghanistan. Was I Right or Wrong?
Washington Post: How the Marines Video Made the Afghan War Even Tougher
New York Times: On War and Redemption
Kudo discusses the morality of war with, and disagrees with, host David Swanson.
Total run time: 29:00
Host: David Swanson.
Producer: David Swanson.
Music by Duke Ellington.
Download or get embed code from Archive or AudioPort or LetsTryDemocracy.
Syndicated by Pacifica Network.
Please encourage your local radio stations to carry this program every week!
Embed on your own site with this code:
<object autostart="false" data="http://davidswanson.org/sites/davidsw..." height="100px" width="400px"></object>
Past Talk Nation Radio shows are all available free and complete at http://davidswanson.org/talknationradio
ICYMI the SOTU Is SNAFU
A mountain of bad, in fact deadly, ideas that Congress will eagerly support, and a handful of good proposals that no one will work for and Congress will strive to bury: the SOTU is SNAFU, ICYMI.
Obama's hiring Romney campaign staff, pushing for a massive corporate trade deal with Europe as well as the Pacific nations, militarizing the Mexican border, and promising not to spend a dime before listing all the good things he'll spend it on. He'll defend human rights in Egypt (but not mention billions of dollars' worth of weapons he'll give the Egyptian government). "Sudden, harsh, arbitrary cuts would jeopardize our military readiness," he said. Readiness for what, Mr. President?
"We have kept Congress fully informed of our efforts," Obama lied about his drone kill program, and Congress cheered. He said he'd end the war on Afghanistan, and they cheered. They sat silently through the next few sentences as he promised NOT to end that war, and then they picked up the cheering again. He hyped the military as a jobs program. He committed to cutting Medicare. Cheers, cheers, cheers.
"We produce more oil at home," he bragged. "We produce more natural gas than ever." We need "a bipartisan, market-based solution to climate change, like the one John McCain and Joe Lieberman worked on." Inspiring!
EXTREME WHETHER
I recently read the script of a new play by Karen Malpede called "Extreme Whether." The title picks up on the crisis of global warming and the choice it presents to our species. The play will be performed in New York as part of a Festival of Conscience along with Malpede's brilliant antiwar play "Another Life."
"Extreme Whether" is a riff on the story of James Hansen, the NASA scientist who has been trying to tell Congress that the environment is collapsing since 1988. Malpede invents a family story for a character like Hansen. At least in reading (much different from watching) the story at first seems insufficiently tragic. But as the play advances, so does its vision of the damage being done. Yet the closer the play gets to communicating the apocalypse that may be to come, the more it appears to have fallen short, although it is of course the play itself that is waking one up to the horror. Some things defy description even as they're told to you. In the end, the play is sufficiently tragic, but it presents an image of people as irrational, hedonistic, and therefore hopeless -- an image we should be constantly correcting if possible, except that it, too, seems pretty accurate.
The real Hansen will be speaking at the Festival of Conscience, as will I. See the schedule below.
FEBRUARY 17th
First, this Sunday is a day to rally in Washington, D.C., for serious action on climate change. Be there. And make sure anyone who's not on board with this movement watches a performance of "Extreme Whether."
And that evening, help mark 10 Years of D.C. Poets Against the War.
Ann B. Knox, read a poem called "This Moment" in front of the White House on February 12, 2003:
We meet in this wind-harsh square
with some expectation,
some hope our presence will count,
our voices be heard.
We speak from what we know
and we know no poem
stirs from a closed mind.
Has the mailed fist
so closed on its own purpose
we speak to stone?
Pay attention, our words matter,
these bare trees matter,
the Potomac flowing black
under white ice matters,
kids, woods, a leashed dog,
poems matter.
All our lives converge
on this moment
and what follows tonight,
tomorrow, next week
will change our whole
desperate earth.
##
"Sudden, harsh, arbitrary cuts would jeopardize our military readiness," he said.
Readiness for what, Mr. President?
##
ANOTHER LIFE
Written by KAREN MALPEDE
ANOTHER LIFE
Performances Thursday - Sunday, March 28 - April 21
Thursday, Friday, Saturday at 8:00pm
Sunday at 3:00pm
starring George Bartenieff with Abbas Noori Abbood, Christen Gifford, Abraham Makany, Alex Tavis & Di Zhu.
Another Life is a surreal romp through the post-9/11 decade; an out-sized mogul (George Bartenieff) controls, cashes-in, and is undone in the only American play about the U.S. torture program. Another Life has been excerpted in The Kenyon Review, given a staged reading at the National Theater of Kosovo, was a centerpiece of the Art of Justice: 9/11 Performance Project at the Gerald W. Lynch Theater, and was further acclaimed during a workshop run at the Irondale Center last March. The play, written in a fast-paced lyric language, is based on research, interviews, testimonies, the words of torturers and tortured, and has been widely praised by experts in the field of human rights, for its inventiveness, power and ability to create empathy. George Bartenieff gives a tour de force performance as the Cheneyesque mogul Handel. Christin Clifford is his wife Tess and Abbas Noori Abood his prisoner Abdul. Di Zhu is his wounded physician daughter who becomes a whistle-blower; Alex Tavis a disgraced F.B.I. officer becomes head of Handel’s private contracting interrogation business. Abraham Makany is Geoff, Lucia’s fiancé who died in the Twin Towers, and retains the innocence of a previous age. With lighting by Tony Giovennetti, video design by Luba Lukova, costumes by Sally Ann Parsons and Carissa Kelly, set by Robert Eggers and music by Arthur Rosen, and written and directed by Karen Malpede, Another Life is a challenge to the legacy of torture. March 28-April 21, Thurs-Sat. at 8pm, Sun at 3pm; special Saturday, April 13 matinee at 3 pm.
Please Note: On Saturday, April 13, there will be a 3pm Matinee performance of ANOTHER LIFE. There will be no 8pm performance on April 13.
EXTREME WHETHER
Play reading Monday, April 8 at 7pm
Saturday, April 13 at 8pm
Extreme Whether, a new play, will be given two premiere readings; itdraws inspiration from two earlier eco-conscious writers, Ibsen and Chekhov. It is a family drama set on an endangered wilderness estate in an endangered world; as immediate and startling as today’s extreme weather news. With fierce commitment to truth-telling and heroic persistence against the censorship of science a famous climate scientist and his younger colleague and lover battle industry climate change deniers to alert the wider public to the need for action. An old environmentalist, a wise child and a frog complete the cast. An original musical score by Arthur Rosen creates the cosmic dance. George Bartenieff, Kathleen Chalfant, Zack Grenier lead the cast alongside Soraya Broukhim, Kathleen Purcell and Alex Tavis in the two readings of this new play by Karen Malpede. April 8 at 7pm and April 13 at 8 pm, only.
FESTIVAL OF CONSCIENCE
Both plays are presented in conjunction with A Festival of Conscience, a series of post-show dialogues with major voices. These post-show talks are free to all.
March 28: Noor Elashi, writer, daughter of Ghassan Elashi, currently serving 65 years in a CMU prison in Colorado, for having led a Muslim charity that sent donations to Gaza, Pardiss Kabriaei, CCR lawyer representing Muslim’s in the U.S.
Thursday, April 4, David Swanson, author War Is A Lie, blogger, radio host
Sunday, April 7 (post-matinee): Elizabeth Holtzman, Cheating Justice & Karen J. Greenberg, Director, Center on National Security, Fordham Law.
Monday, April 8: 8 pm Reading Extreme Whether, post-show talk by Dr. James Hansen, NASA, America’s foremost climate scientist
Thursday, April 11, 8pm Another Life, tba post-show discussion
Friday, April 12, 8 pm Another Life, post-show Victoria Brittan, journalist, co-author, Guantanamo: Honour Bound to Defend Duty; Shadow Lives: The Forgotten Women of the War on Terror
Saturday, April 13: 2 pm matinee of Another Life. 4:30-6 Post-show panel, Ramzi Kassem, lawyer for Gitmo detainees, Jesselyn Radack, Government Accountability Project, lawyer for many of the whistle blowers, including John Kiriakou; and Tom Drake, whistle blower and former intelligence officer.
Sunday, April 14: 2 pm matinee of Another Life. 4:30-6 post-show panel, Michael Ratner, Exec. Director of CCR and lawyer for Julian Assange; and Christian Parenti, author of Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence, and other books, and contributing editor to The Nation.
