Who Really Left the Knapsacks with those Bombs in Boston?
By Dave LIndorff
I have written a lengthy piece about all the bizarre aspects of the Tsarnaev brothers’ alleged bombing of the Boston Marathon, including questions about where the elder Tsarnaev brother, Tarmelan, who was delivering pizzas, and whose wife was slaving away at a low-paid home health aid job, got the money to buy his fancy clothes and Mercedes Benz, why the Marathon finish line area was crawling with black-jacketed mercenaries from the Craft International Security rent-a-soldier agency, and how the police and federal agencies and National Guard managed to lock down a city of a million in a few hours’ time without any advance planning.
Dallas Morning News Claims Bush Never Lied
George W. Bush should be given an indictment, not a library. An online email action is letting the Department of Justice know the facts about the former president. And the People's Response to the George W. Bush Library and Policy Institute is filling the streets of Dallas with protesters this week as five current or former presidents join in a celebration of Dubya's national service. I'll certainly be there.
I wish I were kidding about the following. The Dallas Morning News is refusing to take good money to publish the ad below because it suggests former president Bush lied about Iraq.
Of course it would be shocking to suggest that Bush might have lied. Who ever heard of such a thing?
Campaign promises don't count, of course. Bush discarded those by the dozen, but who doesn't? And when he said he'd fire whoever leaked Valerie Plame's name and then didn't, that's more of a technicality than a lie. And when he claimed in his 2007 State of the Union to have prevented four terrorist plots and none of them were real, that was more of a poetic license than a lie. Also when he said he hadn't been warned about Hurricane Katrina and then we saw that video of him being warned, there was no proof he actually understood what was being said to him. Oh, and when he promised never to spy without a warrant and then got caught, that was sort of a willful falsehood for our own good, not a lie at all. And when he said he didn't torture and then confessed to torturing, that was the fault of pesky journalists; Bush himself never intended to admit to torturing if he hadn't been pestered about it!
But if we can remember all of these near-lies these several years later, it does seem possible that Bush had a little trouble with the truth. Let's look at Iraq, just to be sure.
On January 31, 2003, Bush met with Tony Blair in the White House and proposed all sorts of harebrained schemes to try to start a war in Iraq. They understood that Iraq was no threat. Bush promised an all-out effort to get U.N. approval for an attack. Then the two of them walked right out to the White House Press Corpse (sic) and proclaimed their intention to avoid war if at all possible, warned of the threat from Iraq, and claimed to already have U.N. approval for war if needed. I'll grant you that looks like a lie, but if none of the reporters there that day are bothered by it (not a one of them has ever complained), why should we be? Maybe Bush meant that he'd try to avoid war for 60 more seconds. That could have been true. Later that day when he had the NSA start spying on other nations' U.N. delegations, maybe he was trying to determine the best Christmas presents to send them. Hey, it's possible.
In 1999 Bush told his biographer Mickey Herskowitz that he wanted to start a war with Iraq. But that could have been just a random fleeting whimsy. Maybe you had to be there to catch the humor. Also in 1999 at a primary debate in New Hampshire, Bush said he'd "take out" Saddam Hussein. "I'm surprised he's still there," he said. But Bush did get the nomination, so we're probably misunderstanding him somehow.
When Bush moved to the White House he must have learned what was what. In 1995 Saddam Hussein's son-in-law had informed the U.S. and the British that all biological, chemical, missile, and nuclear weapons had been destroyed under his direct supervision. After U.N. inspectors left Iraq in 1998, the lead inspector said they'd come to the same conclusion. In 2002 the Defense Intelligence Agency agreed. Also in 2002 CIA Director George Tenet told Bush that Iraq's Foreign Minister Naji Sabri -- a CIA informer -- agreed with the U.N. and the D.I.A., as did Iraq's intelligence chief. So, still in 2002, the CIA sent 30 Iraqi-Americans to visit Iraqi weapons scientists, but the mission was a failure: they came back with the same definitive conclusion as the U.N., the D.I.A., and Sabri.
In 2001, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, and others in the Bush Administration were telling the media that Saddam Hussein had no weapons. The closest connection between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden was that they had both worked with the United States. Everything changed in 2002, and not because of any evidence. In October 2002, the CIA told Bush that Hussein was unlikely to attack unless attacked first. The CIA had told Bush this four times in morning briefings since that spring. Bush immediately gave a speech in Cincinnati warning of a dire threat from Iraq. Bush's subordinates took an October 1st National Intelligence Estimate that said Hussein was unlikely to attack unless attacked and "summarized" it to say nearly the opposite in a "white paper" released to the public.
By the time Bush and Blair stood before the White House Press Corpse, they had decided on war and begun it. Troops were being deployed. Escalated bombing missions were preparing the ground. Assorted attempts to initiate all-out war had already failed or been abandoned. That Bush was interested in provoking Iraq is confirmed by extensive covert operations called DB/Anabasis reported by Michael Isikoff and David Corn in their book Hubris:
"Over an intense forty-five day period beginning in late 2001, [two CIA operatives] cooked up an audacious plan. . . . It called for installing a small army of paramilitary CIA officers on the ground inside Iraq; for elaborate schemes to penetrate Saddam's regime; recruiting disgruntled military officers with buckets of cash; for feeding the regime disinformation . . . for disrupting the regime’s finances . . . for sabotage that included blowing up railroad lines. . . . It also envisioned staging a phony incident that could be used to start a war. A small group of Iraqi exiles would be flown into Iraq by helicopter to seize an isolated military base near the Saudi border. They then would take to the airwaves and announce a coup was under way. If Saddam responded by flying troops south, his aircraft would be shot down by US fighter planes patrolling the no-fly zones established by U.N. edict after the first Persian Gulf War. A clash of this sort could be used to initiate a full-scale war. On February 16, 2002, President Bush signed covert findings authorizing the various elements of Anabasis. The leaders of the congressional intelligence committees -- including Porter Goss, a Republican, and Senator Bob Graham, a Democrat -- were briefed. 'The idea was to create an incident in which Saddam lashes out' [said CIA operative John McGuire]. If all went as planned, 'you'd have a premise for war: we've been invited in.'"
A White House staffer was instructed in 2003 to forge a letter that could be used to tie Hussein to al Qaeda as well as to forge letters smearing vocal opponents of invasion. Other information tying Hussein to al Qaeda consisted largely of claims fed to a torture victim. Evidence of biological weapons came from a German informant identified as a heavy drinker with mental breakdowns, not psychologically stable, "crazy," and "probably a fabricator." Evidence for nuclear weapons rested heavily on a forged letter, rejected as a forged letter by the CIA. There was also a claim re aluminum tubes that was rejected by the Energy Department and the State Department and even by the military until it contracted out to a couple of hacks in Central Virginia who were willing to say what was needed.
Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Jay Rockefeller concluded that "In making the case for war, the Administration repeatedly presented intelligence as fact when in reality it was unsubstantiated, contradicted, or even nonexistent."
Clearly Rockefeller is jumping to a conclusion, and the more responsible people over at the Dallas Morning News know better.
Still, if you think there might be something to all of this, I recommend reading The 35 Articles of Impeachment and the Case for Prosecuting George W. Bush.
Laws clearly violated by George W. Bush include, among many others: The U.S. Constitution Article I, Sections 8, 9, Article II, Sections 1, 3, Article VI, and the Fourth and Fifth Amendments, the prohibition on covert propaganda, Title 2 U.S. Code Section 194, Title 18 U.S. Code Sections 4, 371, 1341, 1346, 1385, 2340A, 2441, The War Powers Act, the United Nations Charter Chapter 1 Article 2 Section 3, the Kellogg-Briand Pact, the Hague Convention of 1899, Joint Resolution 114 Section 3, Additional Protocol I to Geneva Conventions, the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2008 Section 1222, the Fourth Geneva Convention, the Third Geneva Convention, the International Covenant on Human Rights Articles 7, 10, the Convention Against Torture, the Optional Protocol to the Fourth Geneva Convention on Rights of the Child, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the Voting Rights Act, and the Stored Communications Act.
But who's counting?
Drones, Sanctions and the Prison Industrial Complex
By Brian Terrell
In the final weeks of a six month prison sentence for protesting remote control murder by drones, specifically from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri, I can only reflect on my time of captivity in light of the crimes that brought me here. In these ominous times, it is America’s officials and judges and not the anarchists who exhibit the most flagrant contempt for the rule of law and it is due to the malfeasance of these that I owe the distinction of this sabbatical.
As I share in the perspectives gained from residing in the federal prison camp in Yankton, South Dakota, it is important to disclose that as a political prisoner sent up on trumped misdemeanor charges for a few months, my situation is not the same as my fellow inmates! All nonviolent “offenders”, most by far are prisoners of the war on drugs and most are serving sentences of many years. I also try to avoid the temptation to exaggerate the hardships and privations I’ve suffered here. Certainly, doing time in a minimum security camp is easier time than in most other kinds of jails. If basic necessities are barely met, they are met. I am in good company and time is passing with little drama and without fear. For me, these months have been more a test of patience than of courage.
Still, this is a hard place to be in many ways and it would be wrong to minimize what people suffer here. Among these are the basic humiliation of being numbered and then counted at intervals through the day, frequent shakedowns, random frisks (stranger’s fingers fumbling with a lacerated heart, Solzhenitsyn remembered) and strip searches, separation from family and friends, severely limited visits, intercepted mail and interrupted phone calls, incessant noise and overcrowding, petty rules arbitrarily enforced.
The regime here is one of omnipresent and unrelieved bureaucracy. What I am experiencing over a few months as inconvenience and minor irritation, cumulative over years can amount to a crushing and ruinous burden.
“A concentration camp is the complete obliteration of privacy,” wrote Czech novelist Milan Kundera. It is “a world in which people live crammed together constantly, night and day. Brutality and violence are secondary, and not the least indispensible characteristics.”
At Yankton and in camps and prisons like it, the federal government has achieved the complete obliteration of privacy as the drug war has increased America’s already bloated prison population sevenfold over the last twenty years. No country locks up more of its citizens for so long sentences as the United States and it can be said, too, that the government is taking strides to extend the obliteration of privacy to the general population.
What the government has not been able to accomplish by locking up suspected drug users and dealers by the thousands is any reduction in addiction or in the sale and use of illegal drugs. There is little doubt that jailing drug related “criminals” causes more and not less drug use and crime and yet the so-called criminal justice system is expending an increasingly greater fortune in human and material resources on prisons, contrary to the ends of public safety or rehabilitation.
Before he retired, President Eisenhower warned of the emergence of a self-perpetuating “military industrial complex” producing weapons and provoking conflict for the sake of ensuring a market for more weapons. Likewise, America is increasingly in the grip of what some call a “prison industrial complex,” building and filling prisons for the purpose of ensuring fodder for more prisons.
The United States government does not run its foreign policy on any more enlightened or humane premise than it does its prisons.
The refrain “we are creating enemies faster than we are killing (or capturing) them” is a bit of truth that gets leaked to the media occasionally in recent years. Sometimes the sentiment is voiced by even the most senior military commanders and applied variously to any of several strategies, including night raids in Afghanistan, check points in Iraq, the prison at Guantánamo, and drone attacks in Yemen and Pakistan.
As with prisons, United States military and diplomatic policies run contrary to their stated objectives of peace and public safety and yet they persist with little question. Prisons and the military, America’s dominant institutions, exist not to bring healing to domestic ills or relief for foreign threats but to exacerbate and manipulate them for the profit of the wealthiest few, at great cost and peril for the rest of us.
One of many discouraging moments of the presidential campaign that ended just before I surrendered to authorities here in November, was in a debate where Mr. Obama stated that Americans need to “decide for themselves” whose sanctions against Iran would be “more crippling,” his or Mr. Romney’s. This was an obscene and unacceptable choice.
Sanctions are portrayed as a diplomatic alternative to war but in their application can be as lethal, warfare by another name. Sanctions that extend beyond trade in armaments to include embargoes on food, medicine, educational materials, and other necessities of life can constitute weapons of mass destruction in themselves.
It is often said that such comprehensive and indiscriminant sanctions make prisons of the countries targeted with them. While the regime of sanctions against inmates here at Yankton is less severe than the brutal conditions I witnessed in Iraq in 1998 or that the United States imposes on the people of Iran or Gaza (by proxy), the comparison is apt. Sanctions and prisons are both about imposing economic and social isolation and both can raise levels of tension and fear when applied without conscience.
Meaningful employment, decent housing, support of loved ones, education and self-respect would be helpful responses to the scourge of addiction and the crimes that ensue from it. Providing these for people at risk would be a priority for a responsible society but all these are robbed from inmates in federal prisons. Threats of war and terrorism are provoked by sanctions and invasions and can be countered only by addressing root causes.
“What father,” Jesus asked, “would give a stone to a child who asks for bread?” We know the answer and it is to our shame.
“The choice is no longer between violence and non-violence,” said Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. As resources dwindle, the climate warms and nuclear arms proliferate, even more clearly now than in King’s time, “the choice is between non-violence and non-existence.”
The quality of life and the very existence of all of us depends on the security and well being of each person, especially of those we label criminal or enemy. The admonition from the Hebrew book of Proverbs to give food to our enemies when they are hungry and drink to them when they are thirsty, echoed in the Sermon on the Mount and the universal Golden Rule to treat others as we would be treated is no romantic, unobtainable dream. “Love is the only solution” to the human predicament, said Dorothy Day. Love in our time has become a hard, pragmatic, gritty requisite for survival.
Brian Terrell, a Catholic Worker and Co-Coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence will be released from prison on May 24, 2013. After that he can be reached at brian@vcnv.org.
Creating a Real Department of “Defense”
By Leah Bolger, CDR, USN (Ret)
On the first Earth Day in 1970, the U.S. military was fully engaged in the Vietnam war, a war that killed or wounded millions of people, laid waste to wide swaths of Vietnamese countryside using Agent Orange, caused untold suffering by people who were guilty of nothing, and cost the U.S. taxpayers $738 billion. Today, 43 years later, the U.S. continues to spend more on war and the military than the rest of the world combined, is responsible for the deaths and injuries of millions of people, poisons the Earth using Depleted Uranium weapons, and has caused untold suffering by people who were guilty of nothing. Additionally, the U.S. military is the biggest consumer of fossil fuels in the world, burning 300,000 barrels of oil per day at a cost of more than $30 million in fuel per day. In the pursuit of imperialistic and aggressive military policies, the government of the United States has violated the UN Charter, the Geneva Conventions and the U.S. Constitution while squandering trillions of U.S. taxpayer dollars, money that could have been used to eradicate hunger, house the homeless, provide comprehensive health care, educate millions, create jobs, or a myriad other programs which would benefit humanity. To add salt to the wound, our military’s gross consumption of fossil fuels has contributed enormously to the problem of greenhouse gases and climate change.
In the past 43 years since the first Earth Day, these militaristic and war-mongering policies have been conducted by both the Republican and Democratic parties. Despite quantitative evidence that shows that the American people want their tax dollars spent on health care and education, neither party listens. Every year the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago conducts a poll to survey Americans opinions about where their tax dollars should be spent. Every year, the American people put human needs programs ahead of defense spending, which they say should be cut.
On this Earth Day 2013, the Green Shadow Cabinet (GSC) is launched. The people who make up the GSC are concerned citizens who believe that the American people deserve much better than what our two-party system is providing, and as a body, the GSC will be advocating for programs and policies which benefit people and address their priorities.
Green Shadow Defense policies will include immediate withdrawal from Afghanistan, a closure of all foreign bases, a cessation of combat drone attacks and a cut of 50% to the Pentagon budget. There will be a strict adherence to international law, and military force will only be used in situations of legitimate self-defense. The U.S. will not participate in illegal wars of aggression, thus saving the lives of innocent people, and saving the U.S. taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars to be reallocated for programs of social uplift.
“A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.” Martin Luther King, Jr.
Leah Bolger is a retired U.S. Naval commander who served 20 years on active duty (1980-2000). She served tours in Iceland, Bermuda, Japan and Tunisia and earned her masters degree in National Security and Strategic Affairs from the Naval War College in 1994. In 1997 she served as a Military Fellow for the Security Studies Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 2012 she was elected as the first female president of Veterans For Peace, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization. She serves as the Green Shadow Cabinet Secretary of Defense. Her Twitter is @leahbolger.
Arrests at Federal Courthouse in NYC as Hunger Strike at Guantanamo Widens
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http://witnesstorture.org/
Climate of Fear Spreads to Newark as NBA Star Shaq O'Neal Censors Mumia Film
By Linn Washington, Jr.
Was it simply a “cold business decision” or a callous act of censorship?
This is the question swirling around legendary pro-basketball player Shaquille O’Neal who put a power move on Stephen Vittoria blocking this respected filmmaker’s showing of his latest documentary at the movie complex O’Neal co-owns in downtown Newark, NJ, the city where both of these men were born.
Federal Judge Orders Release of Names of SOA/ WHINSEC Graduates
Oakland, CA – On April 22, 2013, United States District Judge Phyllis J. Hamilton from the Northern District of California has ruled against the Obama Administration’s secrecy around the multi-million dollar, U.S. taxpayer-funded Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (SOA/WHINSEC) military training school, and has ordered that access to who trains and teaches at the school be restored. Human rights activists had taken the U.S. government to court over its refusal to release the information, and won.
Read the court ruling here: SOAW.org/judgment
SOA Watch compiled the names, course, rank, country of origin, and dates attended from 1946 to 2004 for every soldier and instructor at the School of the Americas, which was renamed to the Western Hemisphere Institute in 2001. After researchers exposed cases of known human rights abusers attending the WHINSEC (despite claims that the "new" school was committed to human rights), and shared this research with Congressional decision-makers, the Department of Defense (DOD) refused to disclose any future information about students or teachers at the WHINSEC.
In 2010 Secretary of Defense Robert Gates ignored the public's right to know and determined that it is “in the national interest” to deny human rights organizations and the public access to any more information.
The school made headlines in 1996 when the Pentagon released training manuals used at the school that advocated torture, extortion and execution. Hundreds of SOA alumni have been implicated in human rights abuses and the formation of death squads, 11 Latin American military dictators, including Manuel Noriega of Panama, Hugo Banzer of Bolivia, General Rios Montt of Guatemala, attended the school. SOA graduates led the 2002 coup in Venezuela, and the 2009 coup in Honduras, and continue to be involved in repression campaigns in Colombia, Honduras, and Mexico.
“The decision by the court is victory for transparency and human rights, and against government secrecy,” said SOA Watch founder Father Roy Bourgeois.
The release of the names is essential for Congress to make decisions about foreign military training. After the upholding of the value of transparency, and the public's right to know, over the Obama Administration’s secrecy, human rights organizations will use this ruling to further expose the negative impact of the SOA/ WHINSEC in Latin America.
SOA Watch is an independent organization that seeks to close the SOA/WHINSEC through vigils and fasts, demonstrations and nonviolent protest, as well as media and legislative work. This November 22-24, SOA Watch will hold its annual vigil at the gates of the SOA in Fort Benning, Georgia. SOA Watch is working on a campaign to call attention to the continued human rights abuses associated with the SOA/ WHINSEC and demand that the school will be shut down.
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TSA postpones new knife rule
Proving once again that a bumbling bureaucracy is responsive as long as The Right People are squawking, the TSA has decided to delay implementation of the new rule about knives.
Have no fear, though. You, the Little People, still don’t mean anything.
Terrorists "R" Us
Terrorists "R" Us
by Stephen Lendman
State-sponsored terrorism defines US policy. Doublespeak duplicity conceals it. Doublethink manipulates public opinion to ignore inconvenient truths.
Howard Zinn once asked: "How can you make war on terrorism if war is terrorism?" Waging war on terrorism "gives government a perpetual war and a perpetual atmosphere of repression."
Targeting Iran
Targeting Iran
by Stephen Lendman
Hostile US/Israeli rhetoric is longstanding. Obama and Netanyahu consider Iran an existential threat. Claiming it turns truth on its head.
Syria News Apr 23
Syrian Army Surrounds Strategic Town of Qusayr - Al Akhbar English
Assad says Qusayr now 'main battle': Lebanon ex-MP - AFP
New Syrian border front line opens up between rebels and Hezbollah - The Times
Watchdog: Hezbollah leads fight in Syria’s Qusayr - Alarabiya.net English
Hezbollah Says Rebel Threat Creates a ‘Moral’ Duty to Defend Lebanese in Syria - Bloomberg
Two armed Hizballah brigades fighting for Assad near Homs - DEBKAfile
Hezbollah declares war on Syrian people, SNC chief says - Alarabiya.net English
FSA offers truce to Hezbollah - NOW
In Jordan, tensions rise between Syrian refugees and host community - The Washington Post
Iraq makes contingency plans for Syria dam collapse - NOW
Arab League rejects UN chief's call to end Syria arms supplies - AFP
VIDEO: Al-Manar Camera in al-Qusayr Shoots Syrian Army Progress - Al- Manar
VIDEO: FSA firing their missiles into Lebanon - YouTube
VIDEO: Lebanese Sheikh Assir urging people to join the fight in Syria against the regime - YouTube
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Syria War: Hundreds Feared Dead In Damascus Fighting - huffingtonpost.com
The Syrian army gives a very different account of the killings in Damascus - guardian.co.uk
Syria says two Aleppo bishops kidnapped by rebels - Yahoo!7
In Syria, kidnappings on the rise as lawlessness spreads - The Washington Post
Syria opposition entrusts Sabra as interim leader until elections - Middle East Online
Syrian rebels seek control over oilfields - FT.com
Syrian rebel oil sales at least a month off - Yahoo! News
VIDEO: Chechen Terrorists Kidnap Civilians in Aleppo - English Subtitles - LiveLeak.com
VIDEO: Jabhat al-Nusra now dispersing protestors with machine gun fire - YouTube
To contact Bartolo email peaceloversingle@gmail.com
Boston Bombing Suspect Charged
Boston Bombing Suspect Charged
by Stephen Lendman
Unequivocal, verifiable evidence is absent. Reports are largely hearsay. Some later contradict earlier ones. Dzhokkar Tsarnaev faces unsubstantiated charges. America operates that way.
Authorities claim both brothers used pressure cookers packed with metal and ball bearings rigged to explode. How they fit in their back packs wasn't explained. Ones they wore weren't large enough.
Something's Rotten in Boston: Who'se investigating the FBI investigators?
By Dave Lindorff
I’m not a conspiracy-minded person, but something definitely stinks about this whole Boston Marathon bombing story.
A Tale of Two Tragedies
By Mike Ferner
On April 15, 29 year-old Krystle Campbell, Lu Lingzi, 23 and Martin Richard, 8, left home to watch runners cross the finish line in the Boston Marathon. They and their families thought they would return that day as always. But they never did. As the world now knows, Krystle, Lu and Martin were killed and 170 other people were shattered by bombs that day.
Why I Went to Jeju
Time for a Department of Peace
By David Swanson
I'm honored to have accepted the position of Secretary of Peace in the newly formed Green Shadow Cabinet. Of course, I cannot contrast my positions with those of the actual Secretary of Peace, as the United States has no such position.
There is a Secretary of War, although that title was changed to Secretary of Defense 66 years ago. It was changed the same year George Orwell wrote his masterpiece, 1984, in which he suggested that language is sometimes used as a disguise. In fact, ever since the War Department became the Defense Department, its business has had less than ever to do with defense and more than ever to do with promoting the use of war-making as an instrument of national policy. President Dwight Eisenhower observed and warned of this worsening situation 52 years ago in one of the most prescient but least heeded (even by Eisenhower) warnings since Cassandra told the Trojans to be wary of giant horses.
There is a Secretary of State, but the State Department has come to work arm-in-arm with the Defense Department, marketing weaponry to foreign governments, building coalitions for wars, imposing deadly sanctions as preludes to wars, presenting bogus arguments for wars at the United Nations, and holding the world's governments accountable for human rights abuses based less on the extent of the abuses than on the governments' relationships with the Pentagon. Saudi Arabia and Bahrain and Israel don't have greater civil liberties and popular democratic rule than Iran; the State Department just acts as if they do.
Our entire government claims to be for peace, but it has become common to state one's support for peace, and then qualify it with the assurance that one is not against any wars. This is usually meant to convey understanding or affection for members of the U.S. military. But you can respect people while condemning what they do. If our understanding and affection are broadened to include Afghans and Pakistanis and Yemenis, then we are obliged to oppose what the War Department is doing to them. Supporting "peace on earth" in December, or peace in our hearts, or peace through war is not enough. We need to be working for peace -- the absence of war -- year round.
We invest roughly a trillion dollars in war preparations every year, roughly half of federal discretionary spending, roughly half of world military spending. With no credible enemy in sight, and with no beneficial war observable in our history, great quantities of fear-mongering and much beautification of history are required to get us to tolerate this. The Pentagon is investing $65 million of our money in a Vietnam Commemoration Project aimed at making that war look less horrible than it was.
A University of Massachusetts study found that investment in education or infrastructure or green energy or even in tax cuts for working people produces significantly more jobs than does the same investment in the military. As tiny and much-exaggerated cuts to the military may soon actually materialize, we should take the opportunity to begin a conversion process. We can retool and retrain and convert from a war industry to a peace industry without anyone having to suffer in the process, and with money to spare.
And if we take away the idea of justifiable killing in war, and if we continue to eliminate the death penalty from additional states, we may begin to move our culture in a direction that helps bring our epidemic of violence at home under control as well. That could be a project for a Department of Peace. It's not that some other department couldn't do it. But thus far, none is.
David Swanson's books include "War Is A Lie." He blogs at http://davidswanson.org andhttp://warisacrime.org and works for http://rootsaction.org. He hosts Talk Nation Radio. Follow him on Twitter:@davidcnswanson and FaceBook.
| David Swanson | Secretary of Peace | Foreign Affairs |
| Leah Bolger | Secretary of Defense | Foreign Affairs |
| Ann Wright | Secretary of State | Foreign Affairs |
| Harvey Wasserman | Secretary of Energy | Ecology |
| Bruce Gagnon | Secretary of Space | Ecology |
| George Paz Martin | Peace Ambassador | Foreign Affairs |
| David McReynolds | Peace Advisor to the President | Foreign Affairs |
| Daniel Shea | Veteran's Affairs: Chemical Exposure | General Welfare |
America's War on Islam 2.0
America's War on Islam 2.0
by Stephen Lendman
Waging war at home or abroad requires enemies. America creates them when none exist. Imperial strategy demands them.
Post-9/11, Muslims were targeted for political advantage. Post-Boston bombings, America's war on Islam continues.
Hagel in Israel
Hagel in Israel
by Stephen Lendman
On April 20, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel began a weeklong Middle East trip.
Planned stops include Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the United Arab Republic (UAE).
Syria News Apr 22
Kerry announces $123M in more nonlethal aid to Syrian rebels - Fox News
VIDEO: Kerry: Aid Boost for Syria Opposition - YouTube
Kerry: 11 Nations to Direct Syria Aid Through FSA General - VOA
Syria: Fabius-Hague letter on lifting arms embargo - Brussels blog
Syrian opposition coalition says rejects ''all forms of terrorism'' - Reuters
Syria opposition chief re-files resignation, coalition member says - ArabNews
Lavrov slams Friends of Syria, lays bare differences with Turkey - todayszaman
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Syria army closes in on Qusayr near Lebanon, provides Hezbollah aerial shield - AFP
Syrian rebels intensify rocket attacks into Lebanon - Yahoo! News
Troops storm flashpoint town near Damascus, NGO says - NOW
Syrian Pro-Government Hackers Take Their Fight to CBS '60 MINUTES" and Twitter - AllThingsD
Jordan Arrests 8 Syrian Refugees in Troubled Camp - ABC News
Jordan creates obstacle for Syrian refugees trying to return home: official - PressTV
VIDEO: Jordanian security forces attack Zaatari refugee camp - LiveLeak.com
VIDEO: Syrian Rebel Confesses to Receiving Military Training in Jordan - LiveLeak.com
VIDEO: Message from the Taliban in Syria: We Shall Fight the Nations of Infidelity - YouTube
VIDEO: Chechenyan in Syria threatening to behead civilians - LiveLeak.com
To contact Bartolo email peaceloversingle@gmail.com
Boston offers grim preview of coming attractions: Police State on Display
By Dave Lindorff
The Boston Marathon bombing has already demonstrated the best and the worst of America for all the world to see.
Guantanamo + Silence = Death Camp
by Debra Sweet Does visible resistance against Guantánamo still matter? Jill McLaughlin, member of the World Can't Wait Steering Committee says yes emphically.
TSA’s Pistole on invasive patdowns and nude scanners
An admirably persistent reporter from WeAreChange.org (not mainstream media, of course) questioned TSA Administrator John Pistole the other day about the strip-search scanners and his euphemistically termed “enhanced patdowns.” Pistole is his usual weaselly self, dancing around questions, faux-caring, and lying. Here's the video.
Federal judge rules in favor of Bush Center protestors, calls Dallas’ picketing ordinance ‘unconstitutionally vague’
From Dallas Morning News:
Late Friday, six activists won their battle with the city of Dallas over their plans to protest next week’s opening of the George W. Bush Presidential Center on the SMU campus.
In his 12-page ruling, U.S. District Judge Jorge A. Solis ruled that protestors can stage their rally at the SMU-owned Expressway Tower, where the university gave them the OK to gather. He also voided, at least temporarily, the city’s ordinance that bans “the carrying of signs on, over, or near freeways.” Solis said it’s “unconstitutionally vague” and therefore unenforceable.
“How ’bout that,” says Hadi Jawad, one of the organizers of The People’s Response, which will feature marches, demonstrations and rallies throughout the week. Jawad wasn’t aware the judge had granted the temporary restraining order until contacted by The Dallas Morning News Friday evening.
“As an activist, I learned early on you fight, you lose, you fight, you lose, you fight, you lose, you fight, you lose, you fight, you lose and then you win one,” said Jawad. “And then you fight, you lose, you fight, you lose all over again. But this is a good day for Dallas and the citizens of Dallas and the Constitution. It’s a fantastic feeling.”
Anatomy of a False Flag
Anatomy of a False Flag
by Stephen Lendman
False flags are an American tradition. They go way back. The Boston bombings appear the latest. More on that below.
Notable earlier false flags or incidents approximating them include:
Venezuela's Maduro Inaugurated
Venezuela's Maduro Inaugurated
by Stephen Lendman
Latin American and other heads of state attended Maduro's inaugural ceremony. Earlier he accused opposition forces of triggering post-election violence.
"We have stopped a coup in its first stage," he said. "They are beaten, but they are coming back with a new attack." On Thursday, he flew to Lima.
