David Swanson's Blog, page 169
August 28, 2012
Talk Nation Radio: How Young People Shut Down a Strip Mine in West Virginia and Why
Eva Westheimer was recently arrested for shutting down a strip mine in West Virginia, along with Radical Action for Mountain People's Survival ( http://rampscampaign.org ). Westheimer is a junior at Warren Wilson College in North Carolina. She describes the recent action she took, the ongoing campaign, and what motivates her.
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About Face, Bloody Hell
"About Face: Military Resisters Turn Against War," is a book that should be stacked up on a table in every high school cafeteria, next to the vultures. Sorry, I mean the war pushers. Sorry, I mean the good recruiters for the services of the profiteers of death. Sorry, you know the people I mean. That is, unless useful books can make it into classrooms, which would be even better.
Most G.I. resistance in Vietnam, this book points out, came from those who had willingly signed up, not from draftees. It is often those who believe the hype, who are trying to benefit the world by going to war, who find the will try to benefit the world when their blinders have been removed and they've seen what war is and what war is used for.
"About Face" collects stories of recent resistance within the "volunteer" U.S. military. These are young people with few job options who choose military "service" but discover it isn't a service. They all have stories, many of them highlighting particular moments of conversion. The reality is usually more complex and gradual, but the stories make the point.
Benji Lewis was a Marine in Iraq. After two "tours" he gave some thought to things that had happened on his first tour, including this:
"They were shooting at this lady who was walking up to our posts waving her arms and asking for help in Arabic. So I came up close and talked to her, and her face looked like death itself. She had salt crusted all over her face. It was obvious that she had been crying for quite a bit. I kind of got the story that she had a family. We were like, 'Go back home, go to your family.' And then it came out that she was asking for help. Three days ago, her entire family, her children, had been pretty much buried in the rubble of their house, and she was asking for help. I asked my staff sergeant, 'Can we help her?' He said to tell her to walk to the Red Cross aid station, which was a few miles away. We couldn't leave our posts to help her, so we gave her a couple of bottles of water and wished her luck, you know. It downed on me later on that me being the adjusting gunner for the mortar section, there was a good probability that I was the one that put those rounds on her house."
Lewis refused orders for his Individual Ready Reserve recall and was discharged with no penalties. While some resisters are punished, that does not seem to be the norm. Often the resistance takes the form of going AWOL, and in some cases later turning oneself in. Andre Shepherd sought refugee status in Germany:
"I made a decision during [a] two-week period that I would have to walk away from the service rather than either get myself killed or get somebody else killed in a war that was based on a pack of lies."
Some resisters don't believe they should request conscientious objector status, because that requires opposing all wars. Having come to see through the lies and horror of one war, they still fantasize that some other war might be a good idea. Those who do apply for conscientious objector status don't always receive it, but many do. Hart Viges joined up in 2001, gung ho for the war on terra. He was honorably discharged as a conscientious objector three years later. "I am opposed to all wars," he says. "When anybody picks up a tool to violently fight their brother or sister, I am opposed to it and do not support it. I finally found my fight, my good fight. It's the path that I am most comfortable with, more comfortable with myself than I have ever been in the rest of my life." Telling the truth about war turns out to be great therapy for veterans and for our whole society.
But the stories should perhaps be taken in small doses. Reading through these books without pause can make you understand why it is sometimes the counselors who hear all the soldiers' stories who end up losing their own minds. "About Face" informs potential recruits and those already recruited that they have options, as well as informing aging peace activists where the young ones are: they're among the veterans. Many other books and videos can add to the reality that needs to be communicated to a culture increasingly viewing war as a harmless sport. Probably the most powerful collection of veterans' stories I've read is "Bloody Hell" by Dan Hallock. This is essentially an uncensored view of what can become of you if you don't resist.
"Bloody Hell" shows us homeless men, men mad with nightmares, in prison, on death row, drunk, weeping, drugged, screaming, suicidal, and unable to prevent themselves from harming those they love. A Vietnam veteran identified as Lee married and had a little girl with a Vietnamese woman while stationed in Vietnam during the war. That wife and daughter, plus drug use, were what carried him through the hell he was a part of, the killing and the dying all around him. But the Army denied the legitimacy of his marriage and made clear he would have to leave his wife and daughter behind or desert:
"Chi and I met one last time before I was supposed to leave. We both cried our eyes out. It was so bad, so much pain. We trembled in each other's arms. I left her and went back to my unit. Then she sent me a note saying to meet her at a cliff above the South China Sea, a very beautiful place where we had gone a lot. I went. I was leaving tomorrow, so I had to see her today. I took an officer's jeep and drove to the cliff. There they were, waiting, crying. We didn't talk, we just held each other, with Le in between us. We cried so much. I reached into my pocket and took out my pistol, put it to Chi's head and pulled the trigger. There was a splatter -- then her blood gushed out -- all over me. I held her tightly -- with Le screaming still between us. I held her as long as I could -- then let her go -- over the cliff and into the sea they both fell. I pounded the earth as hard as I could -- I screamed till I had no voice. I had nothing left inside me when I drove back. I should have died in Vietnam instead of living the thousands of deaths that I have. Back at the hooch no one said a word to me. I had walked in covered with blood and looked pretty bad -- no one said a word."
Lee recounts his life back in the United States as a veteran, with a new wife, and a new child. You can imagine. But you should read it. Everyone should. Especially everyone who's 17 and not the child of a billionaire.
Shooting Your Own Side
Veterans' stories often depict war differently from what the television told us. Drones won't talk, of course, but human warriors tell us how early the 2003 invasion of Iraq began, how the Gulf of Tonkin incident didn't happen, and how countless families have been murdered rather than liberated. "Bloody Hell" includes an account from a veteran named Doug of the 1989 U.S. attack on Panama. I had known that the war plans had been in place months before an incident that was used to justify this "intervention" against long-time U.S.-backed dictator Manuel Noriega. Some drunk Panamanian soldiers had beaten up a U.S. navy officer and threatened his wife. But listen to this account from Doug:
"At Fort Bragg I was ordered to go on a mission against a group of people I had never dreamed of -- our own soldiers. I was assembled along with Michael and four other men whom I never had met before. We were among the few soldiers in the U.S. Army at the time with combat experience, with confirmed sniper kills; we were also the best of the best. The thinking at the Pentagon was that to get the soldiers stationed in Panama to fight, they had to have very good reasons. We're talking here about soldiers who have never experienced combat before. And the best way to get them riled up was to attack them. When Michael asked what the other four men in our mission were doing, we were told it was none of our business. You see, American soldiers, especially infantry soldiers, stick together. If one of them gets into a predicament in a bar -- I mean a fight -- the others don't walk away, they join in. You don't fight one of them, you fight all of them. Their training has taught them to be a team; they depend on each other, and it doesn't matter if it's a barroom brawl or not. They depend on each other to get home. So what better way to get them all worked up than to take pot shots at them? We were told that we would be saving lives by doing this. For weeks leading up to the invasion of Panama, Michael and I took pot shots at soldiers during the night."
There's wrong.
And then there's Army wrong.
Boiling Frogs: Activist and Author David Swanson on the Thinning Ranks of Peace Activists and the Expanding War Machinery
by Peter B. Collins on August 27, 2012
Preview Clip
David Swanson, author and tireless, inspiring activist, joins us for this Boiling Frogs interview, co-hosted with Sibel Edmonds.Author and peace activist David Swanson joins us to discuss our nation’s perpetual war status, the latest in the peace activists’ movement, and the disappearance of Anti-Republicans from the peace movement since Barack Obama’s presidency. He talks about the need to overcome Americans’ understanding of the war machine as a jobs engine and militarism as a normal way of life, and for broader understanding of the Military Industrial Complex as the top opponent of all that is good and just, broader-based opposition to not only domestic surveillance drones but also our killer drones abroad, and more!
David Swanson is an activist, blogger and author, and a founder of WarIsACrime.Org. He was press secretary for Dennis Kucinich’s 2004 presidential campaign, is co-founder of AfterDowningStreet.org, and a board member of Progressive Democrats of America, the Backbone Campaign, and Voters for Peace. Mr. Swanson has authored several books including Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union, War Is A Lie , When the World Outlawed War, and The Military Industrial Complex at 50. To learn more about David Swanson visit http://davidswanson.org
WBAI on When the Republican Convention Favored Peace
http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/program/62456
Program details below...
-Robert Knight
Senior National Correspondent
"Five O'Clock Shadow"
WBAI . 99.5FM . wbai.org
We Are the 99.5!
Republican Convention/Day 1
Series:
"Five O'Clock Shadow" with Robert Knight
Program Type:
Daily Program
Featured Speakers/Commentators:
Calvin Coolige; David Swanson; RNC; Ivan Eland; Ron Paul; Robert Knight
Summary:
REPUBLICAN NATIONAL CONVENTION COVERAGE: DAY ONE
WHAT A DIFFERENCE A CENTURY MAKES: REPUBLICAN MORPHING FROM PEACE TO WAR
CALVIN COOLIDGE - 1924 Campaign Statement of contemporaneous Republican Party principles;
DAVID SWANSON [ davidswanson.org , rootsaction.org ], author of "War Is a Lie," discusses his latest essay, "A Forgotten RNC," and the counterintuitive peace-asserting Republican (and Socialist and Progressive) party philosophy of 1924's "outlawry" movement leading to the Kellog-Briand Treaty that nominally refutes war as an instrument of statecraft;
RNC (2012) - Opening Statement and immediate "adjournment";
Daniel R. Queen [ queenspalaceinc.com ] - "Voter Suppression";
IVAN ELAND [ independent.org ], senior fellow at the Independent Institute, and author of "Recarving Rushmore: Ranking the Presidents on Peace, Prosperity and Liberty," discusses the Ron Paul populist/libertarian impulse within the Republican party, and the prospects of his international anti-war philosophy being subverted by domestic conservative interests; and
RON PAUL addresses supporters at a "Sun Dome" rally in Tampa.
Credits:
Anchor: Robert Knight
Producer: Thiago Barrozo
Engineer: Michael G. Haskins
Origin: WBAI/Pacifica
Support the "Shadow" - give2wbai.org
August 27, 2012
Audio: David Swanson on Protesting Obama's War Making
Charlottesville Right Now: 8-27-12 David Swanson
David Swanson, renowned activist and author joins the show to discuss the President's upcoming visit in Charlottesville.
August 26, 2012
August 27th and the Strangest Dream
In a few places around the country groups are working to make August 27th a local or national holiday as a result of reading "When the World Outlawed War."
“Last night I had the strangest dream I’d ever dreamed before,” wrote Ed McCurdy in 1950 in what became a popular folk song. “I dreamed the world had all agreed to put an end to war. I dreamed I saw a mighty room, and the room was filled with men. And the paper they were signing said they’d never fight again.” (Here are a few videos: Johnny Cash - Pete Seeger - Simon and Garfunkel - John Denver - Serena Ryder.)
That scene had happened in reality on August 27, 1928, in Paris, France. The treaty that was signed that day, the Kellogg-Briand Pact, was subsequently ratified by the United States Senate in a vote of 85 to 1 and remains on the books (and on the U.S. State Department’s website) to this day as part of what Article VI of the U.S. Constitution calls “the supreme Law of the Land.” Frank Kellogg, the U.S. Secretary of State who made this treaty happen, was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize and saw his public reputation soar — so much so that the United States named a ship after him, one of the “Liberty ships” that carried war supplies to Europe during World War II. Kellogg was dead at the time. So, many believed, were prospects for world peace. But following World War II, for the first time ever people were prosecuted for the brand new crime of making war -- these charges explicitly justified by the Kellogg-Briand Pact. And the wealthy nations have not gone to war with each other since. War continues against and among poor nations only, much to our shame. But the possibility of eliminating war entirely if we choose has been well established.
IMAGE: the author at Frank Kellogg's house in St. Paul, Minn. Photo by Coleen Rowley.
The Kellogg-Briand Pact and its renunciation of war as an instrument of national policy is something we might want to revive. This treaty gathered the adherence of the world’s nations swiftly and publicly, driven by fervent public demand. We might think about how public opinion of that sort might be created anew, what insights it possessed that have yet to be realized, and what systems of communication, education, and elections would allow the public again to influence government policy, as the ongoing campaign to eliminate war — understood by its originators to be an undertaking of generations — continues to develop.
We might begin by remembering what the Kellogg-Briand Pact is and where it came from. Perhaps, in between celebrating Veterans Day, Memorial Day, Yellow Ribbon Day, Patriots Day, Independence Day, Flag Day, Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day, and the Iraq-Afghanistan Wars Day legislated by Congress in 2011, not to mention the militaristic festival that bombards us every September 11th, we could squeeze in a day marking a step toward peace. I propose we do so every August 27th. Perhaps a national focus for Kellogg-Briand Day might be on an event in the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., (if it safely reopens following the recent earthquake) where the inscription below the Kellogg Window gives Kellogg, who is buried there, credit for having “sought equity and peace among the nations of the world.”
We would be celebrating a step toward peace, not its achievement. We celebrate steps taken toward establishing civil rights, despite that remaining a work in progress. By marking partial achievements we help build the momentum that will achieve more. We also, of course, respect and celebrate the ancient establishment of laws banning murder and theft, although murder and theft are still with us. The earliest laws making war into a crime, something it had not been before, are just as significant and will long be remembered if the movement for the Outlawry of war succeeds. If it does not, and if the nuclear proliferation, economic exploitation, and environmental degradation that come with our wars continue, then before long there may be nobody remembering anything at all.
Another way to revive a treaty that in fact remains law would, of course, be to begin complying with it. When lawyers, politicians, and judges want to bestow human rights on corporations, they do so largely on the basis of a court reporter’s note added to, but not actually part of, a Supreme Court ruling from over a century back. When the Department of Justice wants to “legalize” torture or, for that matter, war, it reaches back to a twisted reading of one of the Federalist Papers or a court decision from some long forgotten era. If anyone in power today favored peace, there would be every justification for recalling and making use of the Kellogg-Briand Pact. It is actually law. And it is far more recent law than the U.S. Constitution itself, which our elected officials still claim, mostly unconvincingly, to support. The Pact, excluding formalities and procedural matters, reads in full,
The High Contracting Parties solemly [sic] declare in the names of their respective peoples that they condemn recourse to war for the solution of international controversies, and renounce it, as an instrument of national policy in their relations with one another.
The High Contracting Parties agree that the settlement or solution of all disputes or conflicts of whatever nature or of whatever origin they may be, which may arise among them, shall never be sought except by pacific means.
The French Foreign Minister Aristide Briand, whose initiative had led to the Pact and whose previous work for peace had already earned him a Nobel Peace Prize, remarked at the signing ceremony,
For the first time, on a scale as absolute as it is vast, a treaty has been truly devoted to the very establishment of peace, and has laid down laws that are new and free from all political considerations. Such a treaty means a beginning and not an end. . . . [S]elfish and willful war which has been regarded from of old as springing from divine right, and has remained in international ethics as an attribute of sovereignty, has been at last deprived by law of what constituted its most serious danger, its legitimacy. For the future, branded with illegality, it is by mutual accord truly and regularly outlawed so that a culprit must incur the unconditional condemnation and probably the hostility of all his co-signatories.
August 24, 2012
A Forgotten RNC
The acceptance speech of the Republican candidate for U.S. president in 1924 would have made a dramatic improvement on President Barack Obama's Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech of 2009. The 1924 speech was given by the incumbent president who would go on to win reelection and to act on his rhetorical commitments. His name was Calvin Coolidge.
Should More of the Blood Be on the Train Tracks?
At this year's Veterans For Peace convention in Miami, VFP President Leah Bolger challenged members to take risks: "Many of you have risked a lot for war. What will you risk for peace?"
One VFP member, S. Brian Willson, gave his legs and part of his skull for peace. It was 1987, and the U.S. military was shipping weapons to port, in order to ship them to El Salvador and Nicaragua, where they would be used to slaughter the people of those nations, where, in Willson's words "In one country, we supported a puppet government against a people's revolution; in the other, we supported a puppet revolution against a people's government."
Willson had decided that his own life was not worth more than the lives of non-Americans, that they were losing their lives and limbs as a direct result of our inaction, and that he had a moral responsibility to act. Willson and others sat down on a train track in front of a train full of weapons. The train usually traveled at 5 miles per hour. The train would stop. The protesters would be removed from the tracks. That was the standard practice, and that was the law. But that's not what happened the day Willson lost his legs.
It seems that the military had decided that nonviolent protesters did not exist, that everywhere in the world the only tool available was violence. Therefore, Wilson must be a violent terrorist. Therefore, he and his companions must be planning to jump aboard the train. Therefore, the train must speed up and stop for nothing and nobody. That was the order given. The other protesters moved out of the way in time. Willson, sitting cross-legged, could not. The train ran him over. And then the men driving the train sued Willson for causing them to suffer post traumatic stress.
But something else happened too. Hundreds of people ripped up the track and built a monument out of the railroad ties. People formed blockades of trains on that track for years to come. Every train and nearly every truck was blocked until January 1990. Celebrities showed up and held rallies. Ronald Reagan's daughter wrote a kind letter to Wilson, as did professional sports teams and other big whigs congratulating him on his courageous stand. And similar actions sprang up around the country. Visiting Nicaragua, Willson was treated as a national hero.
But Willson is from our nation, and he's a global hero. Probably his most valuable act, however, has been performed behind a keyboard. "Blood on the Tracks: The Life and Times of S. Brian Willson," with an introduction by Daniel Ellsberg, is an epic. This is the long and careful transformation from an eager soldier accepting of rightwing dogma to a principled and courageous advocate for peace and ecological justice. Willson now strives to live sustainably, and brings the reader to question not only the paying of war taxes but the consumption of corporate products generated by the cruel threat of force in foreign lands.
"One day," Willson writes, "the corporations that allow and often enable terrorism in countries like Colombia will be pushed out of those countries. We will no longer be able to buy one-dollar Cokes or ninety-nine-cent-a-pound bananas. Maybe when that day comes, we will finally realize that we do not even desire cheap goods at the cost of others' lives. Maybe we will finally realize that we all share a common humanity."
Willson's book is a tour, with him, of much of the world, from the killing he participated in in Viet Nam, to that he has tried to prevent in Latin America, Palestine, and elsewhere. It’s a philosophical journey, through the course of which Willson learns much from the people he is trying to help. The Zapatistas, the Cubans, and others are not just victims of imperialism, but pioneers in sustainable (and enjoyable!) living. If that idea strikes you as crazy but you're willing to consider a careful argument from someone who began far to your right and doesn't change easily … or if the idea strikes you as plausible and you like to see it laid out in a very human story … either way, you can't do better than to read "Blood on the Tracks," and perhaps we as a people -- and I mean the human people, not the people of some nation -- would be better off if a little more of the blood we are still spilling in such great quantities were spilled on railroad tracks for peace.
Entrepreneur in Empire State Saves World Economy
No joke. A little innovative thinking and economic calculation, and someone has come up with a model in Niagara Falls that could restore the U.S. economy and every economy influenced by it, not to mention the natural environment and what's left of our miserable souls.
The Niagara Falls Air Reserve Station has long been an economic drain (military spending produces fewer jobs than energy or education or infrastructure spending or even tax cuts), an environmental disaster (with the ground poisoned, what can replace this airport?), and a symbol of corruption (with the military trying to get rid of it, Congress members have insisted on keeping the base around as a make-work jobs program protected from charges of Socialism purely by its connection to war).
Charley Bowman of the Western New York Peace Center has come up with an idea that could generate jobs, increase the area's clean energy production by 60% (and that's saying something in a place already benefitting from a fairly largish waterfall), avoid killing anybody anywhere in the world, and last as long as the sun shines, rather than as long as the Pentagon pigs out. (Playing along with the general pretense that the Pentagon is already facing big cuts may be a strategic move in getting these sorts of projects going, but the Pentagon is almost guaranteed to really face enormous cuts before the sun does.)
Bowman's idea is to cover the airport with solar panels. Covering 8 million square meters would produce 546 ongoing jobs maintaining the panels, plus power for 110,000 homes. Bowman has laid out various options and their costs and savings. The cost to the public would be no more than we now spend. Instead of one more military airport, we'd have all that clean energy and a model for the country showing how to develop a local economy. (What locality in this country doesn't have a military boondoggle that could be put to better use?) And if we kill fewer Pakistanis and Yemenis and Afghans and Iranians and Somalis in the process, generating a bit less hatred for our country, who's going to complain? The newly employed? I doubt it. Those benefitting from the clean electricity? We're talking about much of Western New York being powered by sunshine via panels that make a lot less noise and air pollution than military jets. We could try this in Eastern New York and Northern Pennsylvania and Southern Massachusetts, and … 110,000 houses here, 110,000 houses there, and pretty soon you're talking real money.
Does this solution make sense? Does it in fact make so much sense as to threaten the Pentagon's bureaucrats? "Bureaucrat" is, of course, a French term meaning "We'll do things the way we've always done things even if it kills you." Never fear, bureaucrats! The Secretary of War is on the case. Leon Panetta, who 20 years ago favored exactly the kind of conversion proposed by Bowman, swooped in to the Niagara Falls Air Reserve Station on August 9th waving around giant bags of cash. "We're committed to maintaining this base for the future," Panetta said. "It's important geographically, it's important to our mission going forward." Aha! Bet you didn't see that coming! We need an Air Reserve base in Niagara Falls to hold off the Canadian menace and suppress the growing violence between New York and Ohio. It's the geographic importance! Or Congresswoman Kathleen Hochul is a Democrat. One or the other. The solar lobby just doesn't buy campaigns the way war and oil profiteers do. Bowman is proposing 546 jobs at $50,000 each, but for a mere $52,950 total dumped into Hochul's campaigns (according to OpenSecrets.org), the "defense" industry seems to have out-bid him.
Senator Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., ($194,403) has come to the principled conclusion that the base should remain a military base, and the Pentagon should figure out some way to waste money on it. Schumer assures us that Panetta is a "thoughtful, perceptive and caring" man who understands the base's importance to the Western New York economy, according to the Buffalo News. But, Panetta warns, if Congress doesn't undo by next January the "cuts" to the military that it passed last year, heads will roll, jobs will be axed, and Western New York will be forced to employ more people at a lower cost while generating clean energy for its residents. Are you scared yet? Panetta's dire warning of $487 billion in cuts is, as he sometimes mentions, "over 10 years." This means that the cuts sound bigger if you multiply them by 10. That's all it means. The annual cuts are $48 billion. But not really, because the cuts are smaller while Panetta and his boss are actually around, with most of the cuts pushed off into the latter part of the 10-year period. On top of which, the cuts are to dream budgets, not to actual budgets. Panetta's teasing of the people of Niagara Falls (You'll lose your jobs! You'll keep your jobs! You'll lose your jobs!) is the equivalent of Lockheed Martin's sending out phony pink slips to scare its workers, and both are the equivalent of a hot steaming pile of what comes out the far side of a well-fed bull.
Following Panetta's shakedown of Western New York for the war profiteers in Northern Virginia, Charley Bowman responded:
"The August 9 performance at the Niagara Falls Air Base by our elected representatives -- and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta -- can be summed up: jobs at the air base are only available through war or military research. They should know better. Following a 'lengthy' speech about the need for defense cuts, Panetta promised the frantic search will continue to discover a new military mission for the air base. His intended message was: no third world country is off limits, as we continue our struggle in the war on terror. With serious expressions on their faces, Schumer, Hochul and [Congressman Brian ($52,500)] Higgins nodded in agreement. Secretary Panetta did bring $6 million with him saying a flight simulator will be built at the air base. None of our elected leaders brought up the fact that flight simulation does not need a functioning airport. Such simulation could be done just as well in an urban setting, such as Buffalo's East Side or downtown Niagara Falls. (During the 2.5 hour long vigil outside the Niagara Falls Air Base that day, I counted 3 planes landing -- barely surpassing the flight activity at grass landing strips in rural Western N.Y.)"
August 23, 2012
Stop Imperialism: Eric Draitser and David Swanson
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INTERVIEW by Eric Draitser at http://stopimperialism.com
Eric has the pleasure of interviewing renowned author and activist David Swanson. Eric and David discuss the relationship between war and morality and the way in which media and the establishment normalize the concept of war. In addition, they examine the willingness of the mainstream Left to line up behind war, the subservience of the foundation-funded organizations and media to the imperialist ruling class, and the insidious doctrine of "humanitarian intervention" (R2P). Eric and David also try to envision a way to unite anti-war voices from all over the political spectrum in the struggle against the imperialist war machine.
