By David Swanson
Remarks prepared for event with comedian Lee Camp, Charlottesville, Va., February 21, 2015, event postponed by snow storm. When it’s rescheduled I’ll say something completely unrelated.
This is the serious part of tonight’s event, except that Lee often deals with very serious topics. So what I mean is: this is the unfunny part of tonight’s event, except that I’m going to talk about the United States government. One of my favorite things that Mark Twain
Why did the peace movement grow large around 2003-2006 and shrink around 2008-2010? Military spending, troop levels abroad, and number of wars engaged in can explain the growth but not the shrinkage. Those factors hardly changed between the high point and the low point of peace activism.
Was pulling troops out of Iraq and sending them in huge numbers into Afghanistan a move the public favored? There’s not much evidence for the second half of that, and it was never a demand of the peace movement
It's the Blind Partisanship Read More »
This cable was submitted as evidence by the prosecution in the trial of Jeffrey Sterling, a trial in which Sterling was convicted on entirely circumstantial evidence of leaking to a reporter that the CIA had given nuclear weapons part plans (with flaws added) to Iran. The cable makes crystal clear that the CIA proposed to do the same with Iraq.
There are only two nations beginning with a vowel and containing in adjectival form five letters: IRAQI and OMANI. The United States has neither worried
U.S. Government Tried to Give Nuclear Plans to Iraq and Nobody Cares Read More »
A scholarly study has found that the U.S. public believes that whenever the U.S. government proposes a war, it has already exhausted all other possibilities. When a sample group was asked if they supported a particular war, and a second group was asked if they supported that particular war after being told that all alternatives were no good, and a third group was asked if they supported that war even though there were good alternatives, the first two groups registered the same level of support,
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By Joan Brunwasser, OpEdNews
President Obama has been credited with “ending” and “drawing down” this war [in Afghanistan] not only while expanding it to triple the size but also for a longer period of time than various other major wars combined.The catch is that this war is not over or ending. This year was more deadly than any of the previous 12. War is optional, that it is not imposed on us, that we have the responsibility to scale it back or to end it.
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My
Search for “Malaysian Airlines Flight 17” on the New York Times website and you’ll find a page promoting three articles from July, two hyping the idea that Russia did it and one just focused on the horror of it.
Below that you’ll find 109 articles arranged from newest to oldest. The newest is from December 10th and consists of
Putin Shot Down a Plane! Putin Shot Down a … What? Never Mind Read More »
CONTENTS
Introduction 9
What Is Hidden
Letter From Happy Town 11
Society as a Failed Experiment
Table of Contents of Killing Is Not a Way of Life Read More »
Here in Virginia, U.S.A., I’m aware that the native people were murdered, driven out, and moved westward. But my personal connection to that crime is weak, and frankly I’m too busy trying to rein in my government’s current abuses to focus on the distant past. Pocahontas is a cartoon, the Redskins a football team, and remaining Native Americans almost invisible. Protests of the European occupation of Virginia are virtually unheard of.
But what if it had just happened a moment ago,
Having been on the road, I have two brilliant insights to report.
1. No matter what sort of fascist state were ever established in this part of the world, Amtrak would never get the trains to run on time.
2. Respecting people and giving them credit for being smarter than the television depicts them is vastly easier when you stay home.
The well-known line is that people get the governments they deserve. Of course nobody should be abused the way the U.S. and many other governments abuse them,
The World Gets the Wars Americans Deserve Read More »
