David Swanson's Blog, page 180
May 8, 2012
Bank of America Prepares for Shareholders Meeting as if Under Assault
Bank of America has hired G4S for its shareholder meeting. According to Wikipedia:
"G4S plc (formerly Group 4 Securicor) (LSE: , OMX: G4S) is a global security services company headquartered in Crawley, United Kingdom. It is the world's largest security company measured by revenues and has operations in more than 125 countries.[2][3] With over 630,000 employees, it is the world's second-largest private sector employer (after Wal-Mart Stores).[2][4]"
G4S and its subsidiary Wackenhut have a lengthy criminal record:
"In March of 2006, whistle-blowers employed at Wackenhut released information to the press revealing that the company cheated on an anti-terrorism drill at a US nuclear site.
"... In 2009, an Aboriginal man from Western Australia died of heat stroke after being transported in a G4S (then GSL) van without air conditioning or water.[26]
"... On June 13, 2010, a video posted on YouTube by documentary filmmaker James Fox showed Wackenhut guards preventing reporters from covering the BP oil spill.[30]
"... In October 2010, three G4S-guards heavily restrained and held down 46-year old Angolan deportee Jimmy Mubenga on departing British Airways flight 77, at Heathrow Airport. Security guards kept him restrained in his seat as he began shouting and seeking to resist his deportation. Police and paramedics were called when Mubenga lost consciousness. The aircraft, which had been due to lift off, then returned to the terminal.[31] Mubenga was pronounced dead later that evening at Hillingdon hospital.[32]"
The kind souls from G4S, being housed in two downtown hotels by B of A, will be joined by off-duty police hired by B of A, wearing their police uniforms, and empowered to arrest on B of A's behalf and at the order of B of A security.
What is this militarized, privatized emergency preparation for?
Are foreign armies descending upon the shareholders meeting of the Bank of America?
Nope.
Actually citizens of the Country of America. Newspaper headlines explain:
Bank of America braces for protesters onslaught
"In Charlotte, protesters are expected to demand a complete halt to foreclosures, forgiveness of student loan debt, a stop to financing coal projects, an end to political spending and an end to seven-figure compensation packages."
Uh oh. More cops! More guns! Quick! What would Bloomberg do?
The protesters' plans, of course, are for a nonviolent march and rally.
B of A billionaires aren't afraid for their physical safety. They're afraid their shareholders may side with their victims.
Drones in U.S. Flight Paths: What Could Go Wrong?
On March 9th the Federal Aviation Administration requested comments from the public on drone test sites. On May 8th, lengthy comments were submitted by Not 1 More Acre! and Purgatoire, Apishapa & Comanche Grassland Trust. The FAA asked all the wrong questions, but still got a lot of the right answers. When the drone accidents start, and you're told "Nobody could have known," refer them here: PDF.
I would have asked "Should weaponized drones be permitted to exist on earth?" and "How can surveillance drones possibly comply with the Fourth Amendment?" The FAA asked:
"The Congressional language asks the FAA to consult with and leverage the resources of the Department of Defense and NASA in this effort. Since many public operators already have access to test ranges and control the management and use of those ranges, should the management of these new test ranges be held by local governments or should private entity [sic] schedule and manage the airspace?"
Not 1 More Acre! replied:
"Neither. Although the pilot UAS [Unmanned Aircraft System] program is a Congressional mandate, and the timelines are accelerated, the complexities and potential dangers of integration of UAS into civilian airspace must not be delegated to local governments or private organizations in the name of expediency, entrepreneurship, or profit. . . . The wording of Question A suggests that the FAA is contemplating abdicating its inherent authority to manage the NAS [National Airspace System] by ceding broad discretion over UAS flight operations. . . .
". . . The primary driver of the move to integration has clearly been contractors funded by the DOD, working in concert with the secretive Joint Special Forces Operation Command, the Department of Homeland Security, and the CIA, among others. . . . Private defense [sic] contractors increasingly woo local law enforcement agencies and other community groups with grants to help fund the purchase of new UAS. The FAA should not allow any other federal agency to usurp its authority over the NAS or circumvent the pre-decisional public disclosure requirements of NEPA [National Environmental Policy Act] including agencies like the CIA, NASA, and JSOC which are not transparent or accountable to the public."
Of course, there's a catch. Even the accountable agency has, naturally, ceased to be accountable:
"However, the FAA has never conducted any NEPA review related to UAS. The agency has never prepared an Environmental Impact Statement or Environmental Assessment to disclose the potential impacts of UAS to the public and agency officials, despite issuing hundreds of Certificates of Waiver and Authorization to some 60 public agencies."
Have you heard about the 51st State for Armed Robotic Drones?
The 63 drone sites in the U.S.?
The 30,000 drones planned for U.S. skies?
The habit drones have of crashing even on their own?
While initially cheaper than manned planes, unmanned drones of the sort used now tend to require many more personnel: 168 people to keep a Predator drone in the air for 24 hours, plus 19 analysts to process the videos created by a drone. Drones and their related technologies are increasing in price rapidly. And to make matters worse, they tend to crash. They even "go rogue," lose contact with their "pilots" and fly off on their own. The U.S. Navy has a drone that self-destructs if you accidentally touch the space bar on the computer keyboard. Drones also tend to supply so-called enemies with information, including the endless hours of video they record, and to infect U.S. military computers with viruses. But these are the sorts of SNAFUs that come with any project lacking oversight, accountability, or cost controls. The companies with the biggest drone contracts did not invest in developing the best technologies but in paying off the most Congress members.
What could go wrong?
May 2, 2012
"We Did Not Choose This War" and Other Hypocrisies
By Leah Bolger and David Swanson
"We did not choose this war. This war came to us on 9/11. We don't go looking for a fight. But when we see our homeland violated, when we see our fellow citizens killed, then we understand what we have to do."
These are the words that President Obama used on Tuesday to describe the Afghanistan war, but they would have been more appropriately said by any Afghan citizen.
Talk Nation Radio: Rebecca Vilkomerson on Jewish Voice for Peace
Rebecca Vilkomerson is the executive director of Jewish Voice for Peace. She discusses Jewish-American opposition to the Israeli government's policies of war and occupation. Vilkomerson has over 15 years of experience in community organizing, advocacy, program development and fundraising in the United States and Israel. She has been an active member of JVP since 2002, and lived in Israel with her family from 2006-2009. In 2010, the Forward recognized her as one of the 50 most influential Jewish leaders in the U.S.
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May 1, 2012
Leaving Afghanistan by Staying
Is staying in Afghanistan OK with you as long as we call it leaving?
President Obama has signed an agreement with President Karzai to keep a major U.S. military presence in Afghanistan (currently about three times the size Obama began with) through the end of 2014, and to allow a significant unspecified presence beyond that date, with no end date stipulated. Obama stresses that no permanent U.S. bases will be involved, but his agreement requires Afghanistan to let U.S. troops use "Afghan" bases.
Obama forgot to provide any reason not to withdraw from Afghanistan now, given majority U.S. desire to end the war. Like Newt Gingrich promising to quit campaigning before actually doing so, Obama is promising to leave Afghanistan, but not yet -- except that he isn't promising to ever leave at all. The agreement is open-ended.
Obama spoke on Tuesday of a transition to Afghan control, but we've heard that talk for a decade. That's not some new bright idea that requires two-and-a-half more years to develop.
Obama talked of fighting al Qaeda, but the U.S. has not been fighting al Qaeda in Afghanistan, and has admitted for years that there is virtually no al Qaeda presence there. That's not the two-year project, and it's not the reason to remain indefinitely after 2014.
The agreement requires that all "entities" involved in a peace process renounce violence, but the Taliban will no more do that while under foreign occupation than the United States will do so while occupying. This is not a serious plan to leave. Nor is it a plan based on Afghan sovereignty, numerous claims to the contrary notwithstanding. This is a treaty for more years of war, on the model of the Bush-Maliki treaty for Iraq, but with the difference that theirs included an end date.
The agreement says it enters into force when "the Parties notify one another, through diplomatic channels, of the completion of their respective internal legal requirements." The U.S. Constitution requires ratification by the Senate of all treaties. Congress could insist on its right to approve or reject this, just as the Afghan Parliament will be permitted to do. Or Congress could require withdrawal now, as does bill HR 780, which has 70 cosponsors.
The written agreement doesn't mention it, but Obama said on Tuesday that he would withdraw 23,000 troops by the end of the summer, after which reductions would continue "at a steady pace." Assuming 90,000 U.S. troops now in Afghanistan, a steady pace would get them all home by about a year from now, not two-and-a-half years from now. But Obama says that it will be the end of 2014, not when the last troop leaves, but when a significant number of troops remain, as Afghans become "fully responsible for the security of their country" -- except for whatever it is that the U.S. troops will do.
Obama is full of praise for U.S. troops, as if they've benefitted Afghanistan. And he's full of concern for the suffering of U.S. troops and U.S. citizens. When he mentions Afghans, at best he equates their suffering under U.S. bombs, drones, night raids, and prison cells, to the suffering of Americans scared by their television sets and forced to over-eat to relieve their stress. "Neither Americans nor the Afghan people asked for this war," Obama said, forgetting that one of those two countries had invaded the other one and occupied it for over a decade. "The reason America is safe is because of you," Obama told U.S. troops, forgetting that the war has made our nation more hated around the world.
This agreement is inexcusable. It's also vague and preliminary. A more detailed treaty will be worked out on May 20th when NATO meets in Chicago. We need to be there en masse in protest.
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David Swanson's books include "War Is A Lie."
The Libyan Model and the Oxymoron: Class of 2012 Queen and King
There's a new Atrocity Prevention Board in town, and its chief tool for preventing atrocities will be . . . wait for it . . . atrocities!
What a breakthrough! And this clown is forming a tentative life partnership with an unbelievably beautiful model from Libya. The key word is "unbelievably."
The Atrocity Prevention Board is rumored to still be married to World War II, but the primary reason to doubt the latest gossip is the grotesque hideousness of the Libyan Model with no makeup in the light of day.
Medea Benjamin in Charlottesville on Friday, May 4th
Medea Benjamin will speak at Random Row Books in Charlottesville, Va. at 7 p.m. on Friday, May 4th.
Random Row Books
315 West Main Street
Charlottesville, VA 22902
434-295-2493
Free. Open to the Public.
Medea Benjamin is cofounder of Global Exchange and of CodePink: Women for Peace. She is the author of the new book "Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control" and was an organizer of the Drone Summit held this past weekend in Washington, D.C.
Benjamin was forcibly removed on Monday from a speech by White House Counterterrorism Advisor John Brennan, who defended the use of drones to kill in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Yemen.
Medea asked him: "How many people are you willing to sacrifice? Why are you lying to the American people and not saying how many innocents have been killed? I speak out on behalf of Tariq Aziz, a 16-year-old in Pakistan, who was killed because he wanted to document the drone strikes. I speak out on behalf of Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, a 16-year-old born in Denver, killed in Yemen, just because his father was someone who we don’t like. I speak out on behalf of the Constitution, on behalf of the rule of law. I love the rule of law, I love my country, you are making us less safe by killing so many innocent people."
Benjamin was a guest last week on Talk Nation Radio
http://davidswanson.org/talknationradio
And on Democracy Now!
http://www.democracynow.org/2012/4/27/as_obama_expands_drone_war_activists
Associated Press: "Pakistan on Monday condemned a U.S. drone strike that killed three suspected Islamist militants in the northwest, the first since the country's parliament demanded that Washington end the attacks two weeks ago."
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/red-cross-british-worker-killed-pakistan-16237610#.T6AMG47W-D4
Domestic Drones Flying from Five Locations in Virginia, Sixty-Three in United States
Welcome home, war!
The FAA has released a list of drone certificates. Drones are being flown by the military, by police forces, by drone companies, by universities, small towns, and counties. (Read more at the link.)
Here in Virginia, Virginia Tech in Blacksburg has an active drone flying certificate. VCU in Richmond has one that's listed as expired. The Marines in Quantico, the U.S. Army in Northern Virginia, and DARPA in Northern Virginia also fly drones, but nobody knows where in the U.S. they fly them.
April 30, 2012
Labor Not Loyalty on May 1
Two key steps have helped to ruin May Day in the United States. First, Labor Day was created at a completely different time of year -- labor day without the struggle, labor day without the history, labor day without the labor movement. Second, Loyalty Day was created on May 1st.
This Thursday in Charlottesville: Ann Wright
Retired Army Colonel Ann Wright to speak in Charlottesville, Va.
City Council Members Dave Norris and Dede Smith will be present, and we will thank them and their colleagues for having passed a resolution urging reductions in military spending and opposing any attack on Iran.
Print Flyer PDF
http://charlottesvillepeace.org/ann
7 p.m. Thursday, May 3, 2012
Albemarle County Office Building - Fifth Street Extended
Room A
Charlottesville, VA
Directions: http://www.albemarle.org/page.asp?info=dir
( Ridge Street becomes 5th Street SW. Continue on 5th Street and pass over I-64. Turn Left into the parking lot for COB-5th Street located at corner of Old Lynchburg Road and 5th Street.)
Ann Wright is a former U.S. Army Colonel and a career diplomat who received the State Department Award for Heroism in 1997, after helping to evacuate several thousand people during the civil war in Sierra Leone. She served the State Department in Micronesia, Mongolia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Grenada, and Nicaragua. She helped reopen the U.S. embassy in Afghanistan in 2001 and publicly resigned the day the United States invaded Iraq in 2003. Wright has been a fulltime peace activist since 2003, and a member of Veterans for Peace. She managed Camp Casey in Crawford, Texas, in 2005, participated in Camp Democracy in Washington, D.C., in 2006, and has been part of countless nonviolent campaigns for peace and justice since.
Wright has repeatedly gone to jail for justice. She has repeatedly interrupted Congressional hearings. Wright served as one of five judges at the January 2006 sessions of the International Commission of Inquiry On Crimes Against Humanity Committed by the Bush Administration. She was also one of three recipients of the first annual Truthout Freedom and Democracy Awards. She testified at an Article 32 hearing on behalf of U.S. Army Lt. Ehren Watada who refused to deploy to Iraq.
She was one of 38 arrested in 2007 at the Nevada Test Site protesting U.S. development of nuclear weapons. She was one of the Hancock 38 arrested in New York State in 2011 protesting the U.S. development and use of killer drones and was arrested for protesting the deplorable conditions in which alleged whistle blower Bradley Manning was held in Virginia. She has been a leading organizer of the Gaza Freedom March and other efforts to break the blockade of Gaza. She was on the Gaza Flotilla in 2010 and was an organizer for the 2011 Gaza Flotilla and the US Boat to Gaza, the Audacity of Hope.
Wright is the co-author of Dissent: Voices of Conscience, subtitled Government Insiders Speak Out Against the War in Iraq, which includes a forward by Daniel Ellsberg.
Ann will sign copies of her book.
Charlottesville Center for Peace and Justice.
WarIsACrime.org.
Charlottesville Ron Paul Revolution.
Socialist Party of Central Va.
Middle Eastern Leadership Council.
Print Flyer PDF http://warisacrime.org/sites/afterdowningstreet.org/files/annwrightad.pdf
Sibel Edmonds Finally Wins
Sibel Edmonds' new book, "Classified Woman," is like an FBI file on the FBI, only without the incompetence.
The experiences she recounts resemble K.'s trip to the castle, as told by Franz Kafka, only without the pleasantness and humanity.
I've read a million reviews of nonfiction books about our government that referred to them as "page-turners" and "gripping dramas," but I had never read a book that actually fit that description until now.
