David Swanson's Blog, page 210
July 19, 2011
Audio: David Swanson and Coy Barefoot on Debt and Delusions
Charlottesville Right Now (Subscribe)Charlottesville Right Now: 7-19-11 David Swanson
LISTEN HERE
Contest: A Graphic Needed for "Let's Try Democracy"
I need a graphic to use for linking to this site, to put on T-shirts, stickers, etc.
Does "Let's Try Democracy" inspire any graphic artistry from generous contributors?
I'll give you full credit and link to your site!
david at davidswanson dot org
July 18, 2011
Move the Budget Debate to One of Those Democracies We're Bombing into Place
Imagine how radically different the current debate over the Giant Debt Ceiling Monster would look if we moved it to one of those nations we're bombing into a democracy. Imagine us all still U.S. residents with the same views we have now, but imagine that our representatives in Washington, D.C., were obliged to give a damn what we thought.
Prisoners Have Nothing to Gain By Eating
Prisoners risking death by refusing food in the Pelican Bay supermax, and those hunger striking in solidarity in prisons around California are a judgment of our sickness. "The degree of civilization in a society," said Dostoyevsky, "can be judged by entering its prisons."
Civilization is something we no longer seem to aspire to. The United States locks up more people and a greater percentage of its people than anyone else. We lock them in training centers for anger and violence. We subject them to rape, assault, humiliation, and isolation. We throw the innocent in with the guilty, the young with the old, the nonviolent with the violent, the hopeful with those who've lost all interest in life.
July 17, 2011
Audio: 'West media flippant on govt. foul-ups'
From Press TV
The West's mainstream media outlets easily ignore serious government issues and only magnify diversionary stories and celebrity scandals, says David Swanson, an author and co-founder of Warisacrime.org.
"When it comes to investigating the claims of national governments and the arguments for wars based on blatant lies, these same media outlets act as dutiful stenographers," David Swanson told Press TV's U.S. Desk in a Sunday interview.
"So it really is giving a quite distorted picture of an aggressive reportorial organization that when it comes to matter of importance...it really isn't," the author of "War Is A Lie" added.
Swanson made a reference to the recent phone hacking scandal by a subsidiary newspaper of media magnate Rupert Murdoch and said that such issues receive media coverage in certain areas such as when a celebrity's phone is for instance also hacked in the scandal.
However, he said, "I just would much prefer that they (Murdoch) were prosecuted for the crimes of selling illegal wars, something that he openly confesses to and doesn't result in the same sort of scandal."
RG/KA/DB
July 14, 2011
Get It Right: Charge Murdoch With Murder
Nailing Rupert Murdoch for his employees' phone tapping or bribery would be a little like bringing down Al Capone for tax fraud, or George W. Bush for torture. I'd be glad to see it happen but there'd still be something perverse about it.
I remember how outraged Americans were in 2005 learning about our government's warrantless spying, or for that matter how furious some of my compatriots become when a census form expects them to reveal how many bathrooms are in their home.
I'm entirely supportive of outrage. I just have larger crimes in mind. Specifically this:
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights:
"Article 20
"1. Any propaganda for war shall be prohibited by law."
July 13, 2011
July 12, 2011
Years Later: Human Rights Watch Announces That Bush and Cheney Tortured -- What Gives?
Statutes of limitations for torture not resulting in death have passed. The DOJ has refused to prosecute 99 of 101 cases of torture-to-death that it looked at. Obama has long since publicly told the DOJ not to prosecute the CIA for torture. Obama's torture of Bradley Manning has been widely ignored. Rendition has been established as normal. Torturers have published confessional/bragging memoirs. Habeas corpus has been formally ended. The Bagram-Gitmo archipelago is here to stay. Torture continues in Iraq, Afghanistan, elsewhere. Assassinations have been established as the truly big new fashion. Harold Koh has replaced John Yoo as the Guy Who Will "Legalize" Anything. We've got more illegal wars going at once than ever before. Congress has practically dropped the pretense of a rule of law. The President can't clear his throat without opposing "relitigating the past," as if on the planet he comes from it is common to litigate the future. And Human Rights Watch has chosen this moment to announce that Bush and Cheney might just have been responsible for torture?
(Washington, DC) - Overwhelming evidence of torture by the Bush administration obliges President Barack Obama to order a criminal investigation into allegations of detainee abuse authorized by former President George W. Bush and other senior officials, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. The Obama administration has failed to meet US obligations under the Convention against Torture to investigate acts of torture and other ill-treatment of detainees, Human Rights Watch said.
Hey, thanks, Sherlock. What was your first clue?
I'm glad someone still cares. But why not care a little faster? This report ends by reviewing foreign efforts to step in where the U.S. justice system has failed, and U.S. efforts -- successful thus far -- to prevent that.
If Human Rights Watch turns against illegal wars someday, we can perhaps expect a review of the bombing of Libya several years after it ceases. And we'll be better off, I guess. But why not speak up at the time? If Bush and Cheney belong in prison, why would it have been so unacceptably impolite to impeach them and remove them from office?
