Peace and War

“How many PRT [Provincial Reconstruction Team] staff members does it take to screw in a light bulb? One to hire a contractor who fails to complete the job and two to write the press release in the dark.”

A FOB is a Forward Operating Base, and the Fobbits who live in them have their own brand of sad SNAFU humor, enough to fill many volumes and constituting, in my opinion, the silver lining of our wars. The above bit is taken from Peter Van Buren’s new book “We Meant Well.” read more

And we heard all of them from two dozen brilliant speakers during a three-day conference this past weekend.  If you missed it, the video is all online.  So is the text of many of the papers presented. Here are a few excerpts to whet your appetite:

“Let’s say we want to create 29 million jobs in 10 years. That’s 2.9 million each year. Here’s one way to do it. Take $100 billion from the Department of Defense and move it into education. That creates 1.75 million jobs read more

Remarks at MIC-50 Conference http://mic50.org

So, here we are 50 years and 8 months tomorrow from the day on which President Dwight Eisenhower, on his way out of office, warned: “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.” I don’t think we’re here to propose Eisenhower or anyone read more

By David Swanson | The Hook

• If I told you I would support women’s rights as long as I didn’t have to oppose rape, you’d think I needed lessons in both logic and basic human decency. If I said I would favor freedom as long as I didn’t have to be against slavery, you might start backing away slowly.

Yet on September 1st, in a statement that’s anything but out of the ordinary, the Daily Progress reported Charlottesville School Board Member Ned Michie’s objection to a resolution in support of events celebrating the International Day of Peace:

read more

It is difficult to watch this video without both crying and being inspired.  Ashley Joppa-Hagemann recounts her husband’s struggles before he killed himself to avoid an eighth or ninth tour in the Iraq-Afghanistan Wars. Ashley confronted Donald Rumsfeld last week over the lies that led her husband to enlist.  This led to her appearing on Democracy Now on Tuesday and being featured in Amy Goodman’s column:

“One person convinced by Rumsfeld’s rhetoric was Jared August read more

Sigmund Freud once mentioned the defense offered by a man who was accused by his neighbor of having returned a kettle in a damaged condition. In the first place, he had returned the kettle undamaged; in the second place it already had holes in it when he borrowed it; and in the third place, he had never borrowed it at all.

That man’s name?

Dick Cheney.

On “Morning Joe” on MSNBC on Thursday, the former Vice President read more

An upcoming Charlottesville conference highlights the importance of whistleblowers when addressing the corruption present in military contracting

By David Swanson, Guest Viewpoint on August 31, 2011, Cavalier Daily

Bunnatine “Bunny” Greenhouse

YOU MAY have heard something about a budget crisis in Washington this summer. Were you aware that in the midst of it the House of Representatives passed a military spending bill larger than ever before?

U.S. military spending across numerous departments has increased dramatically during the past decade and now makes up about read more

PSA:
Our current wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, and Somalia, and our smaller military operations in over 100 other countries are part of what President Eisenhower warned of 50 years ago in speaking of the Military Industrial Complex.  We spend over half our federal budget on the military.  We could cut it by 85% and still have the world’s largest.  No nation has tried anything like this before, and it’s not clear we can survive it.  We’re read more

Charlottesville Right Now (Subscribe) Charlottesville Right Now: 8-29-11 David Swanson David Swansonjoins Charlottesville Right Now to discuss excessive defense expenditures.

LISTEN

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 read more

 

The Military Industrial Complex at 50 is adding speakers and participants. 

The lowest rate for registering ends September 1st, so register now:
http://warisacrime.org/registermic

New speakers:

Robert Naiman is Policy Director at Just Foreign Policy. Mr. Naiman edits the Just Foreign Policy daily news summary and writes on U.S. foreign policy at Huffington Post. Naiman has worked as a policy analyst and researcher at the Center for Economic and Policy Research and Public Citizen’s read more

Leon Panetta, who holds the position that we used to more usefully call “Secretary of War,” makes a weak case.  Panetta considers $350 billion over 10 years, or $35 billion per year, to be serious cuts to the national security budget.  But consider the budger from which that is to be cut.  It includes, each year, about $545 billion for the “base” military budget, at least $200 billion extra each year for wars (Panetta uses Afghanistan and Libya as reasons read more

http://antiwar.com/radio

David Swanson, author of War is a Lie, discusses “The Military Industrial Complex at 50” national conference in Charlottesville, VA from September 16-18; the paltry defense spending cuts decried by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta as a “doomsday mechanism” that will endanger national security; how Swanson helped turn former Congressman Bill Delahunt against the wars; and Paul Krugman’s half-serious plan to boost the economy by preparing for an alien invasion.

read more

Former National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection, and Counter-Terrorism Richard Clarke suggests that former CIA Director George Tenet blocked the sharing of information within the government on two members of al Qaeda in the United States, information that Clarke believes could have prevented 911. The CIA admits it knew about the two future hijackers but claims the Director was not informed.

“In early 2000, a number of more junior personnel (including FBI agents on detail read more

Bunnatine (Bunny) H. Greenhouse is a former procurement executive and chief contracting officer for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. In 2004-2005 she revealed waste and fraud in secret no-bid contracts for Halliburton in Iraq. She was demoted and marginalized in retribution. In 2011 a U.S. District Court awarded her $970,000 in restitution.

Greenhouse will be speaking in Charlottesville with over 20 other speakers on the Military Industrial Complex at 50.  To attend, you need to register read more

By David Swanson with Shepherd Johnson

The U.S. military is a permanent and pervasive presence in Virginia. Were the state of Virginia to ban participation in wars of aggression, weapons sales to brutal dictatorships, and the manufacture of aggressive and illegal weapons, the Military Industrial Complex would be obliged to help itself to many billions of public dollars just to cover the cost of moving operations to the other 49 states or abroad.

The Pentagon and all of its surrounding weapons corporation read more

Two blocks from my house in a nondescript little building on the edge of our residential neighborhood is an office with a small sign reading “DVBIC of Charlottesville” which turns out to mean “Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center.”

Now, I’m in favor of caring for people with brain injuries.  Heck, I wish we had universal comprehensive health coverage like other countries do.  But it disturbs me how difficult it is in this country to get any distance away read more