June 2011

King George III Won: Happy Fourth of July!

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The Declaration of Independence is best remembered as a declaration of war, a war declared on the grounds that we wanted our own flag. The sheer stupidity and anachronism of the idea serves to discourage any thoughts about why Canada didn’t need a bloody war, whether the U.S. war benefitted people outside the new aristocracy to whom power was transferred, what bothered Frederick Douglas so much about a day celebrating “independence,” or what the Declaration of Independence actually read more

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Memoirs of Torturers

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On September 18, 2009, seven former heads of the CIA publicly told President Barack Obama not to prosecute CIA torturers. On April 16, 2009, Obama had already publicly told Attorney General Eric Holder not to prosecute CIA torturers. On September 18th, Holder publicly reassured the CIA.

The coast was clear. The books started flowing. George W. Bush and John Yoo put their books out in 2010, Donald Rumsfeld in 2011, and Dick Cheney’s also later this summer.

Just as the torture techniques read more

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When the Public Rises, We'll Want an Ally in Congress

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For the majority of people in the United States — a majority does not vote, a majority believes the government is broken, a majority thinks our public policy is headed in the wrong direction — the fact that we call this place a democracy is apparently outweighed by the fact that our national government almost never does what a majority of us want done. Some of the things we don’t want done include the destruction of the planet’s environment, the mass slaughter of war, read more

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Freedom Riding to Gaza

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Fifty years ago, freedom riders traveled by bus into the U.S. South.  Now American freedom riders are joining their allies from around the world on a flotilla bound for Gaza.  The U.S. ship is called The Audacity of Hope.
 
The heroes on this ship have pledged to sail unarmed and to refuse to use violence. The Israeli military, which continues to illegally blockade Gaza, causing endless suffering to the Gazan people, has pledged to use violent force to prevent the read more

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War is a Lie – New UK Review

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From Socialist Worker

Dave Crouch looks at War is a Lie by David Swanson, a new book about the stories our rulers tell to sell their imperial projects

Does this sound familiar? A dictator is massacring his own people. He is a threat not only to the region, but also to us here in Britain.

He has weapons of mass destruction.

Something must be done—urgently. While we hesitate, children are dying. People are being hideously tortured. They are defenceless. They are pleading for us to act.

We have the technology to ensure read more

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Afghanistan Withdrawal: Obama Lied

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The United States has about 200,000 military personnel in Afghanistan, half of them troops, half of them contractors.

President Barack Obama put over two-thirds of that number there, first with a big escalation in 2009 that everyone refuses to pay the slightest attention to, then with a second escalation in 2010.

Obama made promises he is now breaking.

“After 18 months, our troops will begin to come home … [O]ur troop commitment in Afghanistan cannot be open-ended – because the nation that read more

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How the Mayors Debated and Passed an Antiwar Resolution

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The U.S. Conference of Mayors has just done something it hasn’t done since Vietnam, passing a resolution that supports efforts to speed up the ending of our current wars and calls on the President and Congress to “bring these war dollars home to meet vital human needs.”

Here’s a page that organized this: http://www.wardollarshome.org

Activist groups are already taking the opportunity read more

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US Mayors Say: Bring War Money Home!

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The U.S. Conference of Mayors has just done something it hasn’t done since Vietnam, passing a resolution that supports efforts to speed up the ending of our current wars and calls on the President and Congress to “bring these war dollars home to meet vital human needs.”

Ask Congress and the President to listen.

Events are snowballing. The President is about to announce whether he will violate his commitment to a significant withdrawal from Afghanistan in July. The House of Representatives read more

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