David Swanson's Blog, page 6
March 13, 2017
Cambridge event: U.S. Never-Ending War in the Time of Trump and How to Stop It
Where: Friends Meeting House • 5 Longfellow Park • Cambridge, MA 02138
Presentation by David Swanson followed by discussion and book signing.
David Swanson is an author, activist, journalist, and radio host. He is director of WorldBeyondWar.org and campaign coordinator for RootsAction.org. Swanson's books include War Is A Lie. He blogs at DavidSwanson.org and WarIsACrime.org. He hosts Talk Nation Radio. He is a 2015, 2016, 2017 Nobel Peace Prize Nominee.
(Suggested donation $5.00)
Sponsor: United for Justice with Peace
info@justicewithpeace.org justicewithpeace.org
Let's De-Weaponize Space and Earth
An important conference and protest are being planned for Huntsville, Alabama, April 7-9.
The events are called "Pivot Toward War: U.S. Missile Defense and the Weaponization of Space," and are the work of the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space.
World Beyond War is helping to sponsor the conference. At least four of our coordinating committee members plan to be there, and our director will be MCing one of the plenaries. We'll have a table of materials there.
To learn more, go to:
http://space4peace.org/actions/gnconf_2017.htm
To register, download the flyer that's on that page.
If you decide to attend and are willing to help World Beyond War with our table, please reply to this email. Thanks!
Remembering Past Wars . . . and Preventing the Next
An event to mark 100 years since the United States entered World War I, and 50 years since Martin Luther King Jr. made his famous speech against war. A new movement to end all war is growing.
April 4, 2017, 6-8 p.m. Busboys and Poets, 5th and K Streets NW, Washington, D.C.
Speakers:
Michael Kazin, professor of history at Georgetown University, author of War Against War: The American Fight for Peace 1914-1918.
Eugene Puryear, journalist, activist, radio host, and author of Shackled and Chained: Mass Incarceration in Capitalist America.
Medea Benjamin, cofounder of CODEPINK, author of books including Kingdom of the Unjust: Behind the U.S.-Saudi Connection.
David Swanson, director of World Beyond War, author of books including War Is A Lie and When the World Outlawed War.
Maria Santelli, executive director of Center on Conscience and War, founding director of the New Mexico GI Rights Hotline.
Jarrod Grammel, conscientious objector.
Nolan Fontaine, conscientious objector.
Reiner Braun, peace activist based in Germany, co-president International Peace Bureau, Executive Director of the Germany office of the International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms.
Sponsored by World Beyond War, and Center on Conscience and War, with thanks to Busboys and Poets.
Website: http://worldbeyondwar.org/100DC
Charlottesville to vote on resolution urging Congress to fund human and environmental needs, not more militarism
On Monday, March 20, 2017, please attend the 7 p.m. Charlottesville City Council Meeting (at City Hall, 605 E. Main Street, on the Downtown Mall near the pavillion). On the agenda is a vote on a resolution to urge Congress to fund human and environmental needs, not more militarism. If you'd like to speak for 3 minutes in support of this resolution, sign up here: http://bit.ly/cvillespeech
To let all City Council Members know you support the resolution, email council@charlottesville.org
Bring your voices to be heard.
Bring your signs to be seen.
Bring your hands to clap.
Join us to speak.
Join us to listen.
And, join us to celebrate.
Endorsed by Charlottesville Veterans For Peace, Charlottesville Amnesty International, World Beyond War, Just World Books, Charlottesville Center for Peace and Justice, the Piedmont Group of the Sierra Club, Candidate for Commonwealth's Attorney Jeff Fogel, Charlottesville Democratic Socialists of America, Indivisible Charlottesville, heARTful Action, Together Cville.
Ask more organizations of all kinds to endorse by emailing david [AT] davidswanson.org.
March 11, 2017
Upcoming Event in Cambridge, Mass.
U.S. Never-Ending War in the Time of Trump and How to Stop It
David Swanson is an author, activist, journalist, and radio host. He is director of WorldBeyondWar.org and campaign coordinator for RootsAction.org. Swanson's books include War Is A Lie. He blogs at DavidSwanson.org and WarIsACrime.org. He hosts Talk Nation Radio. He is a 2015, 2016, 2017 Nobel Peace Prize Nominee.
Presentation by David Swanson followed by discussion and book signing.
Thursday, April 13, 7:00 PM
Friends Meeting at Cambridge
5 Longfellow Park
Cambridge, MA 02138
(Suggested donation $5.00)
Sponsor: United for Justice with Peace
info@justicewithpeace.org justicewithpeace.org
March 7, 2017
Is Advocating Humane Policies Inhumane?
Until I remember that I, too, am a human being, I have been with increasing frequency drawn to the conclusion that human beings have evolved with such an obsession with other individual humans that they simply cannot attribute proper importance to far-reaching policies.
If you want to excite a crowd, you don't tell them that virtually every official in Washington is in complete and harmonious agreement on massive military spending, more nuclear weapons, occupying Afghanistan, bombing Iraqis, bombing Syrians, bombing the hell out of Yemenis, and drone murdering at will. That's about as interesting as subsidizing fossil fuels and rendering the earth uninhabitable. Who cares!
If you want some sign of life out of an audience, you tell them that a particular politician is an idiot or a clown or a racist or a sadist or a misunderstood saint. Now, that has value. That has meaning.
Virtually every U.S. citizen, as far as I can tell, would choose a republic over a democracy, a dictatorship over a republic, and a dictator who gives intelligent humanitarian speeches while enacting horribly destructive policies over a dictator who sounds like a jerk or a moron while enacting less destructive policies.
Sure, we may be headed right for the iceberg, but the Captain sure is witty!
In fact, the actual captain of the Titanic is still remembered for his personality more than his captaining. Woodrow Wilson is in our history books for things he said, while what he did gets very little mention. Barack Obama will be written up as a president who spoke against nuclear madness, even though (1) he didn't, and (2) he worked to create more nukes, including smaller, more "usable" nukes.
The corrosive impact of personality may be more lasting than many imagine. I supposed that there would be at least three upsides to a president Trump: no TPP, less hostility toward Russia, and the return to activism of those who opposed wars as long as Bush was president. Not only have the Democrats pushed Trump into hosility toward the demonized Vladimir Putin, but the return of the anti-Republican-war activists is beginning to look over-anticipated.
Where are they? Have they learned to accept all the ongoing permanent wars? Are they waiting for a new war to oppose?
I'll tell you where they are. They're lurking just around the corner. Announce a comedy performance mocking the stupidity of Donald Trump and his Russian lover, and they'll come running. They'll arrive in droves.
Talk Nation Radio: Tressie McMillan Cottom on For-Profit Colleges and the Society That Produces Them
Tressie McMillan Cottom is the author of Lower Ed: The Troubling Rise of For-Profit Colleges in the New Economy. We discuss her book.
See:
http://thenewpress.com/books/lower-ed
Total run time: 29:00
Host: David Swanson.
Producer: David Swanson.
Music by Duke Ellington.
Download from LetsTryDemocracy or Archive.
Pacifica stations can also download from Audioport.
Syndicated by Pacifica Network.
Please encourage your local radio stations to carry this program every week!
Please embed the SoundCloud audio on your own website!
Past Talk Nation Radio shows are all available free and complete at
http://TalkNationRadio.org
and at
https://soundcloud.com/davidcnswanson/tracks
March 6, 2017
Charlottesville to Vote on Opposing Trump Budget
We Did It! Now's Our Chance!
Everybody out to oppose war at the next meeting!
At the March 6, 2017, meeting of the Charlottesville City Council, (video here) three members of the council proposed to put on the agenda for a future meeting a vote on a resolution opposing the increased military spending proposed by President Donald Trump. If even just those three (Kristin Szakos, Wes Bellamy, and Bob Fenwick) vote in support of the resolution it will pass. The views of the other two City Council Members (Mike Signer and Kathy Galvin) are unknown.
March 4, 2017
A Three-Year Old's Office
Oliver, you're three. When you're older, I hope the lunatics now dumping everything into wars and environmental destruction have left you a livable world. I also hope that the word "office" means something wonderful to you -- not because I want you to be devoted to working, or working in a little room, but because I want you to remember.
March 3, 2017
I confess to meeting with the Russian ambassador in Charlottesville
In which I confess to meeting with the Russian ambassador in Charlottesville.
It was August 2014. Our secret and nefarious meeting had to be disguised as a public event.
So, the Russian Ambassador to the United States, Sergey Ivanovich Kislyak, spoke at the University of Virginia, in an event organized by the Center for Politics, which no doubt has video of the proceedings and was of course in on the conspiracy. Kislyak was once ambassador to Belgium and to NATO. He served an 8-course Russian dinner for select guests prior to the public forum in an underground lair deep inside Observatory Hill.
Kislyak spoke to a packed auditorium at UVA and took, I think, well over an hour of questions. He spoke frankly, and the questions he was asked by students, professors, and other participants were polite and for the most part far more intelligent than he would have been asked on, for example, Meet the Press.
He told the audience that Russia had known there were no WMDs in Iraq, and had known that attacking Iraq would bring "great difficulties" to that country. "And look what is happening today," he said. He made the same comment about Libya. He spoke of the U.S. and Russia working together to successfully remove chemical weapons from the Syrian government. But he warned against attacking Syria now.
There will be no new Cold War, Kislyak said, but there is now a greater divide in some ways than during the Cold War. Back then, he said, the U.S. Congress sent delegations over to meet with legislators, and the Supreme Court likewise. Now there is no contact. It's easy in the U.S. to be anti-Russian, he said, and hard to defend Russia. He complained about U.S. economic sanctions against Russia intended to "suffocate" Russian agriculture.
Asked about "annexing" Crimea, Kislyak rejected that characterization, pointed to the armed overthrow of the Ukrainian government, and insisted that Kiev must stop bombing its own people and instead talk about federalism within Ukraine.
There were remarkably few questions put to the ambassador that seemed informed by U.S. television "news." One was from a politics professor who insisted that Kislyak assign blame to Russia over Ukraine. Kislyak didn't.
I always sit in the back, thinking I might leave, but Kislyak was only taking questions from the front. So I moved up and was finally called on for the last question of the evening. For an hour and a half, Kislyak had addressed war and peace and Russian-U.S. relations, but he'd never blamed the U.S. for anything in Ukraine any more than Russia. No one had uttered the word "NATO."
So I pointed out the then upcoming NATO protests. I recalled the history of Russia being told that NATO would not expand eastward. I asked Kislyak whether NATO ought to be disbanded.
