Virginia’s Fifth Congressional District had been long disgraced by the racist buffoon Democrat turned Republican Virgil Goode when Tom Perriello was elected as a non-racist buffoon Democrat in 2008. For partisans, just getting elected and doing what President Obama told him was all Perriello needed to do. For national “progressives” he was a star, which was usually explained to me in terms of how awful his district was relative to how limitedly awful he was.
But
The push to attack Iran has been on for so long that entire categories of arguments for it (such as that the Iranians are fueling the Iraqi resistance) have come and gone. At DontAttackIran.org we’ve been collecting the arguments for and against attacking Iran for years. We’ve campaigned against an attack, but never been able to claim a success, because decisions not to launch wars are never announced, because those pushing for wars never give
Why Not Attack Iran? Read More »
That sounds like a crazy question, doesn’t it? Why would President Obama denounce Martin Luther King, Jr.?
Well, the reason I ask is that he’s done it before.
Really? But surely he wouldn’t do it on such a solemn occasion?
Well, the time he did it before was in a Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech.
When President Barack Obama joined the ranks of Henry Kissinger and the other gentle souls who have received Nobel Peace Prizes, he did
Will Obama Denounce MLK as Memorial Dedicated? Read More »
On August 6, 1945, President Harry S Truman announced: “Sixteen hours ago an American airplane dropped one bomb on Hiroshima, an important Japanese Army base. That bomb had more power than 20,000 tons of T.N.T. It had more than two thousand times the blast power of the British ‘Grand Slam’ which is the largest bomb ever yet used in the history of warfare.”
When Truman lied to America that Hiroshima was a military base rather than a city full of civilians, people no
Truman Lied, Hundreds of Thousands Died Read More »
U.S. newspapers sometimes print what they call the total death count from one or more of our wars, and all the dead who are listed are Americans. They aren’t all the Americans. They don’t include contractors or suicides or various other categories of dead Americans. They certainly don’t include those who died for lack of basic needs while we dumped half of our public treasury into wars.
But they also don’t include anyone from that 95% of humanity that’s not from
Of Humans and Rights Read More »
President Obama on Monday said he would “never hesitate” to use the U.S. military “unilaterally” to defend “interests” and “values,” including “maintaining the flow of commerce.” Fear of exactly that led the founders of this republic to give Congress the exclusive power to declare war. James Madison did not believe any single individual could be trusted with such power:
“The strongest passions and most dangerous weaknesses of the
Obama on Libya: What Would MLK Say? Read More »
Many discussions of lies that launch wars quickly come around to the question “Well then why did they want the war?” There is usually more than one single motive involved, but the motives are not terribly hard to find.
Unlike many soldiers who have been lied to, most of the key war deciders, the masters of war who determine whether or not wars happen, do not in any sense have noble motives for what they do. Though noble motives can be found in the reasoning of some of those involved,
Why Wars Really Happen Read More »
The idea that wars are waged out of humanitarian concern may not at first appear even worthy of response. Wars kill humans. What can be humanitarian about that? But look at the sort of rhetoric that successfully sells new wars:
“This conflict started Aug. 2, when the dictator of Iraq invaded a small and helpless neighbor. Kuwait, a member of the Arab League and a member of the United Nations, was crushed, its people brutalized. Five months ago, Saddam Hussein started this cruel war against
Humanitarian War vs. Humanity Read More »
In this age of supposedly fighting against rulers and on behalf of oppressed peoples, the Vietnam War offers an interesting case in which the U.S. policy was to avoid overthrowing the enemy government but to work hard to kill its people. To overthrow the government in Hanoi, it was feared, would draw China or Russia into the war, something the United States hoped to avoid. But destroying the nation ruled by Hanoi was expected to cause it to submit to U.S. rule.
The Afghanistan War, already the
The Worst Thing Ever Invented Read More »
By David Swanson
“And the bewildered herd is still believing
Everything we’ve been told from our birth
Hell they won’t lie to me
Not on my own damn TV
But how much is a liar’s word worth
And what happened to peace on earth”
–Willie Nelson
When President Barack Obama joined the ranks of Henry Kissinger and the other gentle souls who have received Nobel Peace Prizes, he did something that I don’t think anyone else had previously done in a Peace Prize acceptance
Be the Peace You Want to See on Earth Read More »
