David Swanson's Blog, page 36
June 7, 2016
Talk Nation Radio: Ahmed Salah on Masterminding the Egyptian Revolution
[image error] https://soundcloud.com/davidcnswanson/talk-nation-radio-ahmed-salah-on-masterminding-the-egyptian-revolution
Ahmed Salah is an Egyptian democracy activist. He was a co-leader of three of Egypt’s most prominent protest movements—Kefaya, Youth for Change, and the April 6th Movement—and a principal organizer of the Egyptian Revolution. In 2013, he received the Champion of Justice Award from the Center for Justice and Accountability. His book is called You Are Under Arrest for Masterminding the Egyptian Revolution.
Total run time: 29:00
Host: David Swanson.
Producer: David Swanson.
Music by Duke Ellington.
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June 6, 2016
Beauty Contestants Now for World War, not World Peace
Even within what Dr. King called the greatest purveyor of violence in the world, there used to be one constituency you could count on to speak up for world peace: beauty contestants.
No more. And the switch has produced no scandal. Last year, when Miss Italy said she wished she could live during World War II, survivors of that worst ever horror that humanity has inflicted on itself, and other people of normal intelligence in Italy, were scandalized.
But when a soon-to-be Miss USA recently praised the U.S. military as a member of it, as a participant in it, despite the world's view that the U.S. military is the greatest threat to peace in the world, the U.S. media adored this new development.
Rhapsody of a Superdelegate
(Going to California with an aching in my heart)
Spent my days with a woman unkind
Paid my dues and renounced all that was mine
Made up my mind to make a new start
Going to California with an aching in my heart
Someone told me there's a man out there
With massive crowds and white unruly hair
Took my chances on money and fame
Believe em when they tell you the Clintons are all the same
The shit was deep and the lies were bold
Took me till tomorrow to finally feel the cold
I hear an oligarchy start to tremble and shake
As the people who've been screwed begin to wake
Seems that the power elite
Got a bern on the toes, and the higher it goes
I think it might be smoking
Wait in a line, if you get there in time
You can vote without shame and your head held high
To find a queen who wants to be king
They say she launches wars and cries and sings... la la la
Ride away fast before new lies can dawn
Tryin' to vote for someting that's never yet quite been born
Standing on the ruins of past Democrat dreams
Telling myself it's not as hard, hard, hard as it seems...
June 3, 2016
Lessons for Peace from Back in the USSR
In the early 1980s almost nobody from the United States traveled to the Soviet Union or vice versa. The Soviets wouldn't let anybody out, and good Americans were disinclined to visit the Evil Empire. But a woman in California named Sharon Tennison took the threat of nuclear war with the seriousness it deserved and still deserves. She got a group of friends together and asked the Russian consulate for permission to visit Russia, make friends, and learn.
Russia said fine. The U.S. government, in the form of the FBI and USAID, told them not to go, warned that they would not be permitted to move freely once there, and generally communicated that they, the U.S. government employees, had internalized their own propaganda. Tennison and company went anyway, had a wonderful experience, and spoke at events with slide shows upon their return, thus attracting many more people for the next trip.
Now it was Tennison's turn to brief the flabbergasted and ignorant U.S. government staff who had virtually no actual knowledge of Russia beyond what she gave them. This was back in the day when President Ronald "Is this a film or reality?" Reagan said that 20 million dead Americans would be acceptable in a war. Yet the so-called intelligence so-called community didn't know its assets from its elbows. War as a "last resort" was being considered without having considered literally any other resorts. Someone had to step in, and Sharon Tennison decided she'd try.
June 2, 2016
Thomas Friedman Says Hillary's Lies No Big Deal
Most Hillary Clinton supporters, including Hillary, mostly spend their time talking about Trump, not Clinton, not Sanders, not what should be done in the U.S. government. But they don't try to articulate a defense for this practice. A couple of obvious reasons (which they would not want to articulate) come to mind: (1) Hillary is incredibly unpopular, (2) Talking about Trump fuels the pretense that the primary is over.
Thomas "suck on this" Friedman, as FAIR points out, has blurted out his reasons for not talking about Hillary. It turns out that she lies. But we should ignore those lies because they're no big deal. Here's Suckon in his own words:
Democratic Party Ignored Its 2012 Platform
By David Swanson, American Herald Tribune
Bernie Sanders' accomplishment, whether he wins the most actual delegates, despite the rigged system, or not, and whether that garners him the nomination or not, has not been to persuade Hillary Clinton to pretend to support progressive policies. And it has not been to persuade the DNC to let progressive people have some say in drafting its 2016 platform. Sanders' accomplishment has been persuading millions of people to vote for whom they choose in defiance of the corporate media's dictates. The U.S. public's growing ability to tell the corporate media to go to hell is going to mean a lot more to our future than the outcome of any election.
If you look through the 2008 and 2012 Democratic Party Platforms, the idea that the next one could be improved upon appears obvious. The idea that it matters appears less so. In 2008, the Democratic Party was going to "defeat al Qaeda," and "win" a war on Afghanistan by escalating it, make America loved again while expanding its military presence all over the globe, eliminate nuclear weapons from the earth, handle climate change, enact the Employee Free Choice Act, etc., etc. It's not that times changed. It's not that the evil Republicans got in the way. The Democrats never attempted these things -- well, except for the one in Afghanistan that they're still attempting, and the hate-generating military expansion.
This is not necessarily a drawback in platform writing. If you fail to do something in four years, you get to stick it into the next platform four years later -- perhaps with even worse writing after some additional group-editing is applied. After the 2006 congressional victories, Rahm Emanuel told the Washington Post that the Democrats would actually not end the war on Iraq, because they preferred to run "against" it again in 2008. That attitude seems to be the model for how the 2012 Democratic Party Platform evolved out of the 2008 version.
May 31, 2016
David Swanson on War Is A Lie in Sarasota
Thanks to Mark Binder, Programmer, “Yesterday’s Dead Today”, Mondays 7-9 p.m. Eastern, WSLR Sarasota Low-Power FM Community Radio 96.5, www.wslr.org
What if Revolution Were More Than a Campaign Slogan?
Learning From Egyptian Revolution
By David Swanson
What if people in the United States came to understand "revolution" as something more than a campaign slogan in a presidential election campaign?
Ahmed Salah's new book, You Are Under Arrest for Master Minding the Egyptian Revolution (a Memoir), early on characterizes its own title as an exaggeration, but over the course of the book works to substantiate it. Salah was indeed as involved as anyone in building public momentum in Egypt over a period of years, culminating in the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak, though all of his accounts of in-fighting among various activist groups necessarily have other accounts from each individual involved.
Of course, master minding a revolution is not like master minding a construction project. It's much more of a gamble, working to prepare people to act effectively when and if a moment arises in which people are willing to act -- and then working to build on that action so that the next round is still more effective. Being able to create those moments is itself more like trying to control the weather, and I think must remain so until new democratic forms of media become truly mass media.
Cindy Sheehan and David Swanson on War Is A Lie
Peace Fresno event in Fresno, CA
Video by Richard Iyall, board member of Peace Fresno, also with Community Alliance newspaper of Fresno at fresnoalliance.com and of the Cowlitz Indian Tribe
