David Swanson's Blog, page 197
December 5, 2011
We're Playing Nuclear Roulette
The International Forum on Globalization has published the most concise, useful, readable, and damning denunciation of nuclear technology I've seen. And it's available for free as a PDF right here:
Nuclear Roulette: The Case Against a "Nuclear Renaissance"
Nuclear energy suffers from the following drawbacks:
December 4, 2011
70 Years of Lying About Pearl Harbor
British Prime Minister Winston Churchill's fervent hope for years was that Japan would attack the United States. This would permit the United States (not legally, but politically) to fully enter World War II in Europe, as its president wanted to do, as opposed to merely providing weaponry and assisting in targeting of submarines as it had been doing. Of course, Germany's declaration of war, which followed Pearl Harbor and the immediate U.S. declaration of war on Japan, helped as well, but it was Pearl Harbor that radically converted the American people from opposition to support for war.
December 3, 2011
What to Replace the Imprison-Americans Bill With
The funny thing about the bill that the Senate just passed that lets presidents and the military lock you up without a charge or a trial — well, not funny ha ha but funny unusual — is that the basic bill to which that little monstrosity was attached is even worse. It's a bill to dump over $650 billion into wars and aggressive weaponry, continue the slaughter in Afghanistan, ramp up the creation and use of drones, and expand U.S. military bases around the globe.
December 2, 2011
Why We Need a Veto More Than Ever
The Merkley amendment calling for a swifter withdrawal from Afghanistan passed on Wednesday. And a "compromise" was forced on Thursday over the section allowing process-free imprisonment of anyone, including U.S. citizens.
Sadly, the so-called compromise simply states that this new law will not change existing law. Yet this new law's language is worse than existing written law, and the Obama Administration's view of existing law is worse still.
We must demand a veto of this bill more clearly and loudly than ever.
This meaningless compromise was reach after the Senate voted down both Udall's amendment stripping out the offending language and an amendment from Feinstein creating an exception for U.S. citizens to the newly codified presidential power to imprison people without charge or trial.
We simply cannot accept our government allowing the President and the military to lock us away in violation of our Constitutional rights.
November 30, 2011
The Senate and the Afghanistan War
The Senate just voted against the Afghanistan war. Here's the good, the bad, and the ugly.
THE GOOD
The U.S. Senate on Wednesday voted by voice vote to pass an amendment that concludes thus:
"Resolved, That it is the sense of the Senate that—
1) the President of the United States should expedite the transition of the responsibility for military and security operations to the Government of Afghanistan;
Be in Lee Park at 11 pm Tonight
Actually, be there at 10:45 pm tonight.
It's important.
Lee Park is right on Market Street in downtown.
It is the encampment of OccupyCville.
At 11 pm police may tell everyone to leave or be arrested. If they do, you can certainly leave. I'm not asking you to risk arrest unless you want to.
Many are willing to risk arrest, and we should support them.
In cities across the country, police have backed off on threatened evictions because of the number of people present. Our presence helps whether we are willing to risk arrest or not. It's also going to be a fun time with chanting, singing, marching, and the warmth of our community.
The First Amendment does not have an expiration date. They are not trying to evict people from the park in order to allow different people a turn. They want the park empty of political expression, other than the gigantic statue of Robert E. Lee.
You remember all those times you've asked, or heard someone ask, "What can we do?"
This is what you can do: Be in Lee Park at 11 pm tonight. And bring a camera.
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David Swanson is the author of "When the World Outlawed War," "War Is A Lie" and "Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union." He blogs at http://davidswanson.org and http://warisacrime.org and works for the online activist organization http://rootsaction.org
Audio: David Swanson and Mayor Dave Norris on OccupyCville
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[image error] Charlottesville Right Now (Subscribe)
Charlottesville Right Now: 11-30-11 David Swanson
David Swanson, of davidswanson.org joins Coy to weigh-in on the "Occupy Charlottesville" movement and freedom to assemble.
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[image error] Charlottesville Right Now (Subscribe)
Charlottesville Right Now: 11-29-11 Dave Norris
Occupation Evicted? Occupy the Place Responsible: DC
Has the First Amendment expired in your public square? Has your local park prioritized empty vistas over the right to petition your government for a redress of grievances, thereby adding one more grievance to the list?
November 26, 2011
Bruce Levine Interviews David Swanson on When the World Outlawed War
For those who know war only through television, criminalizing it sounds like proposing to criminalize government. But there was a time when the masses made war illegal.
David Swanson's recently released book, When the World Outlawed War, tells the story of how the highly energized peace movement in the 1920s, supported by an overwhelming majority of U.S. citizens from every level of society, was able to push politicians into something quite remarkable—the Kellogg-Briand Pact and the renunciation of war as an instrument of national policy. The 1920s "War Outlawry" movement in the United States was so popular that most politicians could not afford to oppose it. David Swanson, since serving as press secretary in Dennis Kucinich's 2004 presidential campaign, has emerged as one of the leading anti-war activists in the United States. While Swanson has fought against the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and tried to alert Americans to the fact that U.S. military spending is the source of most of our economic problems, his anti-war activism goes much deeper. He wants to stigmatize militarist politicians as criminals. In his previous book War is a Lie, Swanson made the case for the abolition of war as an instrument of national policy, and When the World Outlawed War provides an historical example of just how powerful war abolitionism can be.
Bruce Levine: At a college lecture that you recently gave, you asked the students and professors if they believed war was illegal or if they had ever heard of the Kellogg-Briand Pact, and only about 2 or 3 percent of a large group raised their hands. But what really seems to have disturbed you is when you asked if war should be illegal, and only 5 percent thought that it should be.
