Political Ideas

People v. U.S. Govt.

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Statistically speaking, virtually nobody in the United States of America knows that we spend more on the military than the rest of the world combined, that we could eliminate most of our military and still have the world’s largest, that over half of the money our government raises from income taxes and borrowing gets spent on the military, that our wars (outrageously costly as they may be) cost far less than the permanent non-war military budget, or that most of the financial woes of the read more

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Audio: David Swanson and Coy Barefoot on Egypt

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Charlottesville–Right Now: David Swanson joins Coy Barefoot

Charlottesville–Right Now, Interviews, National politics, New audio, News, Politics, Radio Shows, WINA Add comments

Feb 142011

2.14.11 Best-selling non-fiction author David Swanson joins Coy with an update on the revolution in Egypt. Swanson describes just how inspiring the revolution is to civil rights activists around the world. He notes the impact of non-violent training by the citizen activists in the streets of Egypt, and says that read more

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Nonviolent Activism Is Middle Eastern

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Muslims can look back to the classic nonviolent struggle against British empire waged by the Pashtuns from 1930-1934 in what is now Pakistan and Afghanistan. The leadership of Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan and the Khudai Khidmatgar movement makes every list of campaigns chronicling the development of modern nonviolent activism.

Nonviolence is also the dominant tool of resistance in the Middle East — resistance to local corruption and to foreign occupation alike. Nonviolence doesn’t make read more

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Decades in the Making: The U.S. Police State

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Andrew Kolin’s new book “State Power and Democracy: Before and During the Presidency of George W. Bush” actually begins with the war for independence and continues into the Obama years. A 231-page monotone recounting of endless facts, it doesn’t pick up with Bush the Lesser until page 137. Kolin chronicles a gradual slide into an imperial presidency that really got going after World War II. Along the way he chronicles the damage done to the forces of resistance, making read more

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He Didn't Leave Government Service, It Left Him

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Whistleblowing takes many forms but almost always involves the disillusionment of an insider with the nature of what he or she is inside. Leaking secret documents exposing dramatic crimes and abuses is one way to blow a whistle. Another, equally valuable approach, is to publish a lengthy analysis of your experiences in government service. This is what Chas Freeman has done with his new book “America’s Misadventures in the Middle East,” which he will discuss read more

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Signing Statements More Dangerous Than Guantanamo

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When George W. Bush was president, everybody to the left of Karl Rove was offended by his signing-statements in which he announced his intention to violate laws as he signed them into law. Congressman John Conyers held one of his countless and toothless hearings, heard all about it, and went home self-satisfied.

Many of us warned that if the next president did the same thing it would be considered legal, even if blatantly unconstitutional. Then Obama read more

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