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A Living Wage Revolution

By David Swanson

April 22, 2006 — The first sentence of the top article in the only daily newspaper in Charlottesville, Virginia, today contains a remarkable analysis of the living wage movement: “The president of the University of Virginia on Friday acknowledged that students fighting for better pay for university workers have a valid case for change, calling the debate “revolutionary” in its shifting of the poverty burden from government to the private sector.”
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Congressional Hearing on Iraq Planned

By David Swanson

Congresswomen Lynn Woolsey and Barbara Lee will host a hearing on the Iraq War next Thursday, April 27, 8:30-11 a.m., in 2325 Rayburn House Office Building (with an overflow room planned for anyone wanting to attend who can’t fit in). The two Co-Chairs of the Congressional Progressive Caucus are continuing to do what the “leadership” of both parties does not, respond to the demands of the majority of Americans, who disapprove of current policy.

Woolsey and Lee read more

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Iranian Irony

By David Swanson

“When it came to pinning the terrorist label on the Saddam Government,” Dilip Hiro wrote in 2004 (“Secrets and Lies,” p. 381), “all the Bush administration had to do was point a finger at the Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO, People’s Mujahedin). An anticlerical Iranian group opposed to the regime in Tehran, the MKO, placed on the State Department’s list of terrorist organizations in 1997, had located its headquarters in Baghdad since read more

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Iran Through the Media

By David Swanson

An AP article on Tuesday begins: “President Bush bats away talk of bombing Iran’s disputed nuclear sites as ‘wild speculation.’ But plodding diplomacy hasn’t borne fruit so far, and the administration is facing a hard truth: There may be no way to stop Iran from getting the bomb.”

Here we have encapsulated the most warmongering position to be found in the U.S. media. The reporter who wrote this, Anne Gearan, believes that Bush is lying when he read more

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Impeach John Casteen

By David Swanson

Presidents and Prime Ministers who most deserve to be ridden out of office on a rail: George W. Bush, Tony Blair, and John Casteen.

John Who?

John Casteen is the President of the University of Virginia. For years now, he’s been sitting on over a billion dollars while paying employees poverty wages. This past weekend he had 17 students arrested and hauled off to jail for sitting in to protest this injustice and to demand a living wage for workers at the University.

Rather read more

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May Day, Memo Day, Mission Accomplished Day

By David Swanson

The first of May is May Day, the real labor day, the commemoration of the Haymarket Massacre and the fight for an 8-hour day in Chicago – an American holiday celebrated everywhere except America. But the first of May is two other things as well in more recent but already fading history.

This May first will be the three-year anniversary of a flight-suited George W. Bush waddling across an aircraft carrier in San Diego harbor and declaring “Mission Accomplished” in read more

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How to Talk About Iran

By David Swanson

John Aravosis suggests some talking points on Iran, but I’d like to suggest some changes in bold.

George Bush has decided to use Iran as a foil to help his sagging poll numbers and to help Republicans in the fall congressional elections. I’m going to discuss why this is true, and what the Dems should do about it.

Iran is ten years away from developing nukes.

I’ll say it again, TEN YEARS away. And that’s not according to some peacenik liberal, it’s according read more

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Stop the Next War Now

By David Swanson

Now might be the time to read, if you haven’t already, “Stop the Next War Now: Effective Responses to Violence and Terrorism,” an amazing book edited by CODE PINK cofounders Medea Benjamin and Jodie Evans, which includes a forward by Alice Walker and an introduction by Arundhati Roy.

While this book was published last year, its title and theme take on a new urgency with each new revelation that our read more

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What Bush Did Wrong

By David Swanson

Bush authorized the leaking of selected portions of classified documents, selected in such a way as to constitute a lie. He painted a picture of a nuclear threat that he knew did not exist, and used it to scare people into supporting an illegal war, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people.

Of course, the leaking itself was illegal. Of course, Bush’s past promises to fire leakers were lies, and his eagerness to investigate other leaks that he didn’t read more

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Public Energy Is Misdirected

By David Swanson

What would happen if politically active progressive Americans suddenly stopped devoting their energies to drafting better sound bites, and instead directed all that time and passion into a serious and strategic campaign of civil disobedience?

I know, I know, we’re constantly told that we’re being out-framed and out-messaged. Horse shit. We’re smarter than they are, wittier, pithier, more attuned to the perspectives of those we’re speaking to. But we don’t read more

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