Race Relations

Yes, yes, poverty exists, just as war does, and the two feed off each other. When I titled a book "War Is A Lie" I meant that the justifications offered for wars were false and that the idea that we must always have wars is false. Our government doesn't market new poverty campaigns in the same way it does wars. It markets campaigns to dismantle healthcare and pension systems or to eliminate foreign aid or to restrict organizing rights. But our culture pushes the false notion that poverty must always be with us.

One of the oldest excuses for war is that the enemy is irredeemably evil. He worships the wrong god, has the wrong skin and language, commits atrocities, and cannot be reasoned with. The long-standing tradition of making war on foreigners and converting those not killed to the proper religion "for their own good" is similar to the current practice of killing hated foreigners for the stated reason that their governments ignore women's rights. From among the rights of women encompassed by such an approach, one is missing: the right to life, as women's groups in Afghanistan have tried to explain to those who use their plight to justify the war. The believed evil of our opponents allows us to avoid counting the non-American women or men or children killed.

By David Swanson

Much of this country believes that ACORN, the now defunct Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, supported prostitution, engaged in voter fraud, and caused the subprime lending crisis. Some people are aware that these lies have been more solidly disproven than Saddam Hussein's friendship with Al Qaeda. The Government Accountability Office has now joined a former Massachusetts attorney general, a federal court ruling, and the Congressional Research Service in finding no wrongdoing by ACORN. But I suspect that only a very tiny percentage of Americans has any idea what ACORN was or why we need it.

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Here's video.

By David Swanson

This article helps explain why I spend so much time trying to lobby other people's Congress Members, hoping that perhaps I share the same century with them. If you can return the favor and are inspired by this article to give Virgil Goode a call, here's his number: (202) 225-4711.

See quote from my old reporting below:

Former prosecutor said to lie about confession
BY FRANK GREEN, Media General News Service, Wednesday, December 13, 2006

Here's an article about yesterday's jury award of $2.25 million to Earl Washington, whom the state of Virginia came within days of killing for a crime he had been clumsily and obviously framed for. Washington is mentally retarded, poor, and black. White cops in Culpeper, Virginia, interrogated him and fed him information about the crime. They did not take notes for much of this interrogation, and then claimed that Washington knew things that only the killer could have known. But during the sections where they did take notes, they fed him information, and generally when they didn't, he got things wrong. He was guessing and trying to please them, but he still usually got things wrong. Will the state of Virginia rethink its rule barring admittance of exculpating evidence found later (such as DNA)? Or will it, as the Innocence Project is urging, require the videotaping of all interrogations? Time will tell. This was certainly a long time coming.

By David Swanson

A march had been planned for February 28, the eve of the scheduled March 1 evictions of Hurricane Katrina victims. FEMA moved the evictions to March 15, so activists have moved the march to March 14. A press conference on Capitol Hill will be followed by a march through Washington, D.C., past FEMA, past the Department of Homeland Security, and to the White House, where a permit has been obtained to rally in Lafayette Square Park until midnight. If Bush does not meet the marchers' demands, however, many plan not to leave.