David Swanson's Blog, page 222
April 25, 2011
10 Ways Ellsberg and Manning Are Different
1. More Americans learned much more of the information that Ellsberg made public.
2. It was always assumed that Ellsberg would have a trial (as of course he did), whereas I see no reason to assume Manning ever will. (I'm almost alone in this, but - hey - it's my list.)
3. They tried to kill Ellsberg but did not torture him.
4. Ellsberg was out on personal recognizance, while Manning has been held in an isolated 6x12 cell for the better part of a year.
5. We had a relatively good commmunications system back then.
6. We had a Congress.
7. We had relatively good courts, and courts outside the military were in play.
8. The info Ellsberg leaked was more top secret than Manning's and known to a handful of people, not the crowds of loyal drones with access to Manning's who did nothing.
9. Nixon didn't have Democratic Party Immunity.
10. Ellsberg, now in his 80s, is known to be saner and sharper than most living humans, while Bradley Manning's mental health is now, as a result of his torture at the hands of Obama's Marine Corps, very much in doubt.
April 24, 2011
Your Local Military Industrial Complex
As in any other U.S. city, things are looking up for Charlottesville, Va., job seekers who don't mind helping to kill tons of people for no good reason. This week's "community job fair" features some prominent members of the Charlottesville community whom we don't usually think of as such.
When I travel the country, people often inform me that their town is a military-industrial town as if that were unusual. I always ask them if they can name a U.S. town that isn't -- in part because nobody has yet been able to, and in part because if someone ever does I might want to move there.
April 23, 2011
White House Website Lying About Your Taxes
The White House has a handy website to mislead you about your tax dollars at http://www.whitehouse.gov/taxreceipt
It claims that only 26.3% goes to "National Defense". This is similar to the claim in the 1040EZ US income tax form booklet (see pages 36-37). Here are those two pages in a PDF. There the claim is that the U.S. government only spends 22% of its money on "National defense, veterans, and foreign affairs." The form admits that you could leave out the "foreign affairs" part and still be at 21%.
The White House website claims to calculate both veterans' expenses and foreign affairs separately and still put "defense" alone at 26.3%.
April 22, 2011
A Unified Theory of War and Taxes
If you hate taxes but dutifully cheer for wars, it's lucky you also oppose school funding sufficient to produce historical literacy. Taxes are a byproduct of wars. Were it not for wars and war propaganda, this country would have never begun paying taxes. If we were to end wars, and only if we were to end wars, we could consider ending taxes too.
But wait! Wasn't the war for independence a war against taxes? Aren't taxes created by weakness, while militarism generates wealth? Isn't it the effeminate socialists and pacifists who oppose wars?
April 21, 2011
Libya: another neocon war
By David Swanson, The Guardian
Liberal supporters of this 'humanitarian intervention' have merely become useful idiots of the same old nefarious purposes
Libya and hindsight
Hindsight can be a troublesome thing. I distinctly remember ranting on this very blog about Gaddafi's barbaric treatment of his own people. I never went so far as to suggest that we should send in the gunboats, so to speak, but rest assured, I thought it. When I read David Cameron's words to the Kuwaiti Parliament and then again in the UK Parliament, I felt reasurred that we should back the uprising on humanitarian grounds. A popular uprising against four decades of Gaddafi rule being violently quashed by a bloke who, to be frank, I never really liked.
Now, regime change is looking ever more likely in Libya as we try to get more involved but become more evasive about being involved. We've sent in 'advisers' to assist in organisational matters. Not ground troops. OK? Peter Brookes' cartoon in The Times today was a good one. Soldiers marching on their hands, their legs facing the sky: "No boots on the ground…" Yes, very good Peter, I've definitely heard that somewhere before.
This is all relative to Biteback, we're publishing War is a Lie by David Swanson. But on re-reading it last night in preparation for writing a blog to let you all know it was available, I read this:
"Imagine if war were really fought for strategic, principled, humanitarian goals… wouldn't we count the foreign dead in order to make some sort of rough calculation of whether the good we were trying to do outweighed the damage?"
It goes without saying that not enough has been made of the death-toll in Libya. I've tried to find out and I still don't know how many have died. But – in the understatement of the century – aerial bombardment isn't the most accurate of strategies. In light of what's going on in Libya each point in Swanson's polemic is more urgent, more pertinent.
He argues that there is no such thing as an honest war, that every war ever fought has been sold to both sides as a fight between the forces of good and evil and that politicians are willing to tell any lie to ensure the public believe they are in the right and the enemy undeniably in the wrong.
David Swanson is an anti-war activist and in War is a Lie he deconstructs virtually every argument ever put forward in favour of war. Drawing on examples throughout history, including the Second World War and the Iraq War, he shows how politicians will use any excuse not simply to justify war but to continue it after the death toll has long since shown the utter futility of continuing with the bloodshed.
War is a Lie is as relevant now as it will ever be.
You can buy a copy now, priced £9.99
