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Jill Stein Needs Your Help, Running Green, Running for Peace

26 Jun

URGENT!  PLEASE FORWARD WIDELY!

FROM: David Swanson, Medea Benjamin, Leah Bolger, Bruce Gagnon, Chris Hedges, George Martin and Kevin Zeese

Dear Friends in the Peace Movement,

We can’t afford to let this opportunity slip by. By taking action over the next five days the peace community has a chance to inject a compelling and courageous peace advocate into the 2012 presidential campaign, to have a voice in the national debate over war, militarism, and military spending.

You know what is going to happen if we leave this election up to the two major party candidates. President Obama will defend his troop surges, his excessive Pentagon budgets, his preparations for war with Iran,  his escalation of the drone wars, his crackdowns on whistleblowers, his indefinite detention policy, and his new role as manager of the White House assassination list. Mitt Romney will not question these policies, but will promise to pursue them with even more enthusiasm. In debates and interviews, the American people will have the Big Lie drilled into their consciousness: that our nation must accept escalating military engagement and must visit worldwide violence against all who defy the U.S. government. Continue reading →

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America’s Shameful Human Rights Record – NYTimes.com

25 Jun

Revelations that top officials are targeting people to be assassinated abroad, including American citizens, are only the most recent, disturbing proof of how far our nation’s violation of human rights has extended. This development began after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and has been sanctioned and escalated by bipartisan executive and legislative actions, without dissent from the general public. As a result, our country can no longer speak with moral authority on these critical issues.

While the country has made mistakes in the past, the widespread abuse of human rights over the last decade has been a dramatic change from the past. With leadership from the United States, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted in 1948 as “the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.” This was a bold and clear commitment that power would no longer serve as a cover to oppress or injure people, and it established equal rights of all people to life, liberty, security of person, equal protection of the law and freedom from torture, arbitrary detention or forced exile.

The declaration has been invoked by human rights activists and the international community to replace most of the world’s dictatorships with democracies and to promote the rule of law in domestic and global affairs. It is disturbing that, instead of strengthening these principles, our government’s counterterrorism policies are now clearly violating at least 10 of the declaration’s 30 articles, including the prohibition against “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”

via America’s Shameful Human Rights Record – NYTimes.com, written by President Jimmy Carter.

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Drone Warfare…Medea Benjamin’s new book reviewed by Lynn Feinerman | Tikkun Magazine

18 Jun

Illuminating the pivotal reason why her articulate book is so very timely, and so very much needed, she informs us that drones themselves are not silent like the press. They are not voiceless. They have a vocal advocacy group in Congress: The Congressional Unmanned Systems Caucus. Yes, these machines have their own Congressional caucus!

“It seems that, like corporations, robots are people too…” quips Medea Benjamin. That quip cuts deeply, to the underlying reality of our nation: Dwight D. Eisenhower cautioned us about it. He warned us back in the ’50′s that the US was not disarming after World War II. We chose instead to militarize in order to jump start a lagging post-war economy, sucking our taxes into obscene military budgets, with rampant corporate profiteering from “endless war” manufacture, and with a Congress and Executive branch going right along with the program.

The US is hooked on war. Its so-called “economy” is so tied into the vicious cycle of ravaging the world for oil, feeding the war machine with that oil and our taxes, then going out to ravage again for oil, that the problems of any number of innocent civilians it harms don’t really amount to a hill of beans in most media …as Bogart said in CASABLANCA.

via Drone Warfare…Medea Benjamin’s new book reviewed by Lynn Feinerman | Tikkun Magazine.

A Practical or Coalition Strategy for “Truth and Traditions” Party as Paleocon Greens

5 Jun

By Charlie Keil

There is NO split in the Republican Party unless there is a real T for Truth Party that old-fashioned, paleo-conservatives can vote for happily with confidence and in good conserving conscience. By Traditions, plural, we mean the diversity of eco-moralities that once upon a time (pick your pre-industrial era) kept all of us in some kind of balance with “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.” If there is no real TnT Party most of those Ron Paul teaparty voters stay trapped inside the Republican Party at election time. You can guess who will win big in 2012, a divided but ‘big tent’ Republican Party. Same party that elected colorful women to governorships in New Mexico and North Carolina. Continue reading →

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The Blog Formerly Known as All Things Counter Terrorism

27 May

This is from a series of posts dealing with the plight of children of parents in jihadi organizations and who do not themselves have jihadi values.

Some may be reading this post wondering why I or they should care if children of militants are dehumanized and labeled, when bin Laden’s and others’ actions have killed or orphaned the children of their fellow countrymen. It is understandable to question why we should care when bin Laden and others have not only harmed so many in their attacks, but are also responsible for putting their own children, family and friends in harm’s way.

But just because something is understandable doesn’t mean it is right. Surely we need to show moral fortitude and do what is right regardless of the actions of the others. And the right thing to do is not to label children and in doing so to dehumanize them. It only reinforces the stereotype of hatred these children have been raised on, and makes it all the harder for them to walk away.

Perhaps you are thinking “but so few of them do walk away?” Here I’d like to share some knowledge I have only gained since putting myself out there and engaging in dialogue. Although there seems to be a widespread assumption that children wish to follow in their parents footsteps and that most have done so, this is not the case. I had for a long time been unaware of this and made the above assumption. But I’ve come to learn that the majority of children born into the Arab-Afghan jihadist milieu and that surrounding al Qaeda more generally have, wherever they could, tried to escape that life and chosen not to follow in their parent’s footsteps. This is particularly true for the children of the first, second and third generation mujahideen and bin Laden’s children.

via The Blog Formerly Known as All Things Counter Terrorism.

Don’t Buy the Spin: How Cutting the Pentagon’s Budget Could Boost the Economy | The Nation

13 May

However, the crucial question is not how many jobs are created by spending, for example, $1 billion on the military. Rather, it is whether spending that $1 billion creates more or fewer jobs when compared with spending $1 billion on alternative public purposes, such as education, healthcare and the green economy—or having consumers spend that same amount of money in any way they choose.

In fact, compared with these alternative uses, spending on the military is a poor source of job creation. As we see in the graph (right), $1 billion in spending on the military will generate about 11,200 jobs within the US economy. That same $1 billion would create 16,800 jobs through clean energy investments, 17,200 jobs within the healthcare sector or 26,700 jobs through support of education. That is, investments in clean energy, healthcare and education will produce between 50 and 140 percent more jobs than if the same money were spent by the Pentagon. Just giving the money to households to consume as they choose would generate 15,100 jobs, 35 percent more than military spending.

via Don’t Buy the Spin: How Cutting the Pentagon’s Budget Could Boost the Economy | The Nation.

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The Human Cost of Ideology – NYTimes.com

11 May

For more than a year, House Republicans have energetically worked to demolish vital social programs that have made this country both stronger and fairer over the last half-century. At the same time, they have insisted on preserving bloated military spending and unjustifiably low tax rates for the rich. That effort reached a nadir on Thursday when the House voted to prevent $55 billion in automatic cuts imposed on the Pentagon as part of last year’s debt-ceiling deal, choosing instead to make all those cuts, and much more, from domestic programs.

If this bill were enacted, estimates suggest that nearly two million Americans would lose food stamps and 44 million others would find them reduced. The bill would eliminate a program that allows disabled older people to live at home and out of institutions. It cuts money that helps low-income families buy health insurance. At the same time, the House bill actually adds more than $8 billion to the Pentagon budget.

via The Human Cost of Ideology – NYTimes.com.

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Liberty, lost among the weeds

2 May

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Ex-CIA Interrogator: Obama’s War on Terror Is Less Ethical Than Bush’s – Global – The Atlantic Wire

1 May

The former head of the CIA’s Clandestine Service Jose Rodriguez says President Obama is waging the nation’s war against radical Islam in a far more brutal manner than his predecessor President George W. Bush.

“We don’t capture anybody any more,” Rodriguez told 60 Minutes’ Lesley Stahl on Sunday. “Their default option of this Administration has been to … take no prisoners … How could it be more ethical to kill people rather than capture them? I never understood that one.”

via Ex-CIA Interrogator: Obama's War on Terror Is Less Ethical Than Bush's – Global – The Atlantic Wire.

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Coca-Cola and Pepsi Drop ALEC | The Nation

5 Apr

Coca-Cola and PepsiCo have both dropped their memberships in the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the shadowy, ideologically conservative organization behind “Stand Your Ground” and other controversial state laws, including a ban on living wages, school and prison privatization, and disenfranchising voter ID requirements. ALEC links corporations with friendly state lawmakers and drafts model legislation to be pushed in state legislatures. “Stand Your Ground” and its implication in the shooting death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin have pushed ALEC and its member corporations, including not only Coca-Cola and Pepsi, but also Wal-Mart, ExxonMobil, FedEx, Johnson & Johnson, and others, into the spotlight.

via Coca-Cola and Pepsi Drop ALEC | The Nation.

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