David Swanson's Blog, page 196
December 19, 2011
Rep. Robert Hurt Just Sent Me a Letter
When a group of us citizens visited Rep. Hurt's Charlottesville office on Thursday, his staff said there was a press release on his website already explaining his vote against the National Defense Authorization Act. There wasn't.
I thanked Hurt on his FaceBook page, and he deleted the thank you.
It is likely no press release was sent to the press because there has been no story printed or reported anywhere, to my knowledge, outside of my commentary on Coy Barefoot's radio show.
Sure, for the first time in modern memory, a Fifth District Congress Member has voted against a "Defense" bill, and he's done so because it savages the Bill of Rights. But those facts do not override the supreme Commandment of Journalism, namely: Thou Shalt Not Report on Government Until Goverment Tells You What to Report in a Handy Press Release.
On the other hand, Hurt's DC office told me on the phone, and his staff in Charlottesville told me in person, that he voted No because of his opposition to the measure allowing eternal imprisonment without trial. And now he has said the same in a letter I just received:
"After studying the controversial provisions and after hearing from many in the Fifth District, I concluded that the detainee provisions in the bill did not provide clear and unambiguous protection of the constitutional rights of American citizens. For this reason, I opposed the bill on final passage."
The bill easily passed. It is unlikely Hurt received much flak from the Republican Party for this vote. But he would if he were to publicly demand a veto. He would if he were to introduce legislation similar to Senator Feinstein's excluding US legal residents from the newly codified abuses. And he certainly would if he were to expand that remedy to protect the rights of the other 95% of humanity.
But why would Hurt take any further steps when nobody even knows he took this one?
December 16, 2011
Set Your Doomsday Clock to 11:51
The National Defense Authorization Act is not a leap from democracy to tyranny, but it is another major step on a steady and accelerating decade-long march toward a police state. The doomsday clock of our republic just got noticeably closer to midnight, and the fact that almost nobody knows it, simply moves that fatal minute-hand a bit further still.
December 15, 2011
Audio: Coy Barefoot and David Swanson Discuss the National Defense Authorization Act
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[image error] Charlottesville Right Now (Subscribe)
Charlottesville Right Now: 12-14-11 David Swanson
David Swanson joins Coy live on the program.
Local Newspaper The Hook Makes Me Runner Up Person of Year for Chasing Dick Cheney Away - Gotta Love Charlottesville
By Courteney Stuart | stuart@readthehook.com
DAVID SWANSON
When conservatives hear progressive political activist David Swanson coming, they might want to run away. But sometimes, they do so quite literally. After Vice President Dick Cheney announced plans to speak at the Miller Center on November 16, Swanson publicly called for Cheney's arrest for conspiracy to commit torture. "Were a local resident credibly accused of torture, I sincerely doubt you would hesitate to seek his or her immediate arrest and indictment," Swanson wrote in a November 14 letter emailed to Charlottesville and Albemarle law enforcement and posted on his website, warisacrime.org. Mere hours later, the Miller Center announced that Cheney's visit would be postponed for "personal reasons" and that he'd reschedule for early next year. Coincidence? Perhaps. But either way, Swanson will undoubtedly lead the welcome parade if the former Veep appears.
December 13, 2011
SIGN HERE If You Think Charlottesville City Council Should Speak Up for Peace and Justice
In September 2011, participants in a conference on the Military Industrial Complex at 50 included Mayor Dave Norris, City Council Member Kristin Szakos, and then-candidate but now City Council Member-Elect Dede Smith. As the mayor pointed out at the time, that's a majority of a five-member council. We plan to attend the new council's first meeting on January 2, 2012, to request consideration and passage of a resolution. We have begun collecting signatures beneath this statement:
Protest Life-Imprisonment Without Charge or Trial: Thursday, December 15, Noon, Robert Hurt's Charlottesville Office
The National Defense Authorization Act, if it becomes law, will allow the U.S. president and military to lock you or anyone else up indefinitely without charge or trial. President Obama had threatened to veto, because he wanted even more power than that. He wanted the power to imprison or murder anyone with or without the military. The conference committee has modified the bill to accomodate him. Now the bill goes to a final vote in the House and Senate, and then to the President for a signature, a veto, or -- as long as we're trashing the Constitution anyway -- a possible law-altering signing statement.
This bill is a direct assault on the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth amendments. That's the majority of our Bill of Rights. Thursday, December 15th is Bill of Rights Day. Here's how we can celebrate:
Be at Congressman Hurt's office at noon to demand that he vote "No" (or to protest if he has already voted "Yes" by then).
This is part of a national effort and there is more information available at http://bordc.org/ndaa
Rep. Robert Hurt's Office
686 Berkmar Circle
Charlottesville, VA 22901
Phone: 434-973-9631 Fax: 434-973-9635
Phone for DC office: 202-225-4711
December 8, 2011
Try Not to Think of a Newt
The current President and Congress are destroying our Constitutional rights, our planet's climate, and the vestiges of a social safety net, and you are obsessing over a freak show of self-hating homosexuals and anti-intellectual intellectuals jumping through hoops in a corporate media circus with Ringmaster Donald Trump. Is this a good use of your time?
December 7, 2011
Want to See How Pearl Harbor Is Used to Sell Weapons, Start Wars, and Destroy the Economy? Open a Newspaper.
Start with this one.
Pearl Harbor and World War II brought us together as a nation. We believed we could not be beaten. And we prevailed. But why is Congress now so intent on destroying our feelings of patriotism and decimating our national defense? Many Congress members want to cut our national defense spending in an effort to compensate for their ineptness, for not fulfilling their responsibilities as our representatives and for catering to other groups and politicians for the sake of their pet (pork) projects and the next election. They forget (or don't know) that their No. 1 priority is the defense of our country, and related to that, the protection of our veterans' benefits. . . .
Could the fact that America forgot about what happened at Pearl Harbor and let down its guard have helped allow the attacks of 9/11 to happen? And will this forgetfulness and ignorance stoke terrorists' ambitions to expand their attacks? Because Congress' "supercommittee" failed to meet its deadline last month to identify $1.2 trillion in savings, spending cut triggers are now set to take effect in 2013, including $600 billion for defense. If Congress is allowed to cut the military budget, another attack becomes more likely.
We must call the president, our congressional leaders, our two state senators and our representatives in the House to tell them to stop their foolishness, renew the military and Veterans Affairs budgets, and even increase them so that we may both strengthen our programs for research and development in order to remain the largest and best-equipped military in the world and to respect and honor our past veteran heroes.
If we allow them to make defense cuts all in the name of getting out of Iraq, and eventually Afghanistan (which is probably a mistake, but that discussion will be for another day), there will be no more research funds to remain No. 1, no upgrades, no new tanks, planes, ships and drones, neither more nor better body armor and vehicles.
Regardless of whether you believe the legend of Pearl Harbor, it is very difficult to deny that this is a different world. The United States does not just have the most expensive military in the world, but one the size of the rest of the world's put together. The United States has bases in most of the world's other countries. The United States dominates the oceans and outerspace. The United States has sliced the planet up into command zones. We're dumping 65% of discretionary spending into the military. While we've roughly doubled this spending, both in real dollars and as a percentage of the federal budget since 9-11, the fact is that the nuclear arsenal and the empire of bases and all the endless spending had nothing to do with 9-11 other than serving to provoke it. Your newspaper is asking you to live in a dream world, and to destroy this one in the process.
No new tanks? No new planes? $600 billion sounds big, but over 10 years it's $60 billion out of an annual "security" budget of well over a trillion, or well under 6%. All that's required to turn that into an increase instead of a cut is to take it out of a "projected" budget that increases by more than 6%. If any actual cutting happens, you can rest assured our misrepresentatives will do everything in their power to take the money out of non-military areas, or at least to cut troop benefits rather than the sacred and profitable tanks and planes etc., almost none of which has anything to do with "defense."
Marking Pearl Harbor Day by re-legalizing the internment of Japanese Americans is bad enough.
The madness of militarism is worse.
December 6, 2011
Imprisoning of Japanese Americans and the New Defense Authorization Act
I'm editing a book in which one of the contributors writes:
In 1971, Congress passed the Anti-Detention Act, 18 U.S.C. § 4001(a), which states that "no person shall be imprisoned or otherwise detained by the United States except pursuant to an Act of Congress." Fred Koramatsu, who had brought the unsuccessful case before the Supreme Court, was eventually awarded the Medal of Honor. Congress apologized and provided for limited reparations for this heinous act.
Presumably this would be trashed by the bill now before the conference committee and soon headed to the President for a signature or veto.
The criminal abuse of Japanese Americans for which Congress had to apologize and pay reparations, and for which there is a misleadingly pro-war looking memorial hidden between the U.S. Capitol and Union Station, will now be sanctioned by the current Congress/President.
Can you feel the pride?
Are you fired up?
The more things CHANGE . . .
December 5, 2011
A National Coalition to Protect Student Privacy
Please take some time to look through the new website of the new National Coalition to Protect Student Privacy: www.studentprivacy.org
I've just joined the board because I believe a great deal of good can be done.
The National Coalition to Protect Student Privacy is a one-trick pony and that trick is the ASVAB Campaign. In short, we call for the universal selection of Option 8 for students taking the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery, or ASVAB in high schools across the country, thereby prohibiting the automatic release of test data to military recruiting services.
Sounds pretty obscure and technical, I suppose. But this is a relatively easy and proven model of denying the U.S. military what it needs in order to kill our young people by using them to kill others. Namely, it denies the military the illegal right to violate the privacy of our young people in furthering its recruitment efforts.
The website provides a detailed discussion of the insidious nature of the military's testing regime and provides a way for activists like you to contribute to its demise. The ASVAB Career Exploration Program is a fraudulent, criminal DoD venture that deceives the American public and violates state laws designed to protect the privacy of youth. We're going to bring it down with a disciplined, nuanced campaign that appeals to the most moderate of policymakers.
There's a tremendous amount of work to do. For instance, 10,000 kids in 142 Arkansas high schools are required to take the ASVAB without parental consent, and all of their data is used to recruit them. "We've always done it that way and no one has ever complained," explained one school counselor.
Until now.
We're organizing a national complaint and we're succeeding. Across the country, the selection of ASVAB Option 8 has climbed from less than 1% in 2005 (our estimate) to 4.4% in 2007 to 8.6% in 2009 to 12.2% in 2010. The new data we're expecting through our most recent FOIA will show a substantial increase in the percentage of students taking the test under Option 8, reflecting two states and several hundred more schools and school systems that have moved to protect student privacy.
The website contains the most recent test data so you can select your state and find high schools in your community that allow the Pentagon to test children. You can also see how your state stacks up with the others, in terms of the numbers tested, those who are required to take the test, and the percentages of students who take the ASVAB under Option 8.
In addition, the website describes the national campaign in detail. It provides links to information pertaining to ASVAB testing in Catholic schools, military documents relevant to the student testing program, and legislative resources.
Most importantly, the site provides a template letter for you to email to your state's superintendent of schools and school board members. Quite frequently, educational policy makers don't know the option exists to allow the testing while keeping results away from recruiters. The letter sites the statistics released by USMEPCOM and calls for the universal selection of Option 8. Contact us and we'll send you a letter already containing your state's statistics, etc. and the email addresses of officials. We're working to include that information on the site.
If you've read this far you probably see potential in this campaign. Could you help us by contributing a few dollars? Support NCPSP Also, could you forward this to others who you think might be in a position to financially support our work? We want to raise funds to hire help.
A bone to the dog is not charity. Charity is the bone shared with the dog, when you are just as hungry as the dog. - Jack London
