Abolish War?
An advocacy for young people is planned to meet in Manhattan every Sunday at 2-3 p.m.
For youths: 1-212-686-1069 or 1-646-599-8404
––
Wadlowz@aol.com
Arms Trade Text
February 14
World Citizens Call For Renewed Efforts to Stop the Trans-Frontier Flow of Small Arms
Rene Wadlow*
In a 14 February message addressed to Ambassador Roberto G. Mortan, Chairman of the Preparatory Commission for the 2-27 July 2012 UN conference to draft a Global Arms Trade Treaty, Rene Wadlow, President of the Association of World Citizens, welcomed the aims of the Arms Trade Treaty, indicated the long-standing concern of the Association of World Citizens (AWC) for effective control of the sale or transfer of arms, and encouraged speedy efforts in light of the new, dangerous flows of arms from Libya toward Mali and from Iraq toward Syria.
In the message, the AWC welcomed the important aims of such a treaty as outlined in the Chairman’s Draft Paper of 3 March 2010: “ The Arms Trade Treaty will contribute to international and regional peace, security and stability by preventing international transfers of conventional arms that contribute to or facilitate: human suffering, serious violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law, violations of UN Security Council sanctions and arms embargoes and other international obligations, armed conflict, the displacement of people, organized crime, terrorist acts and thereby undermining peace, reconciliation, safety, security, stability and sustainable social and economic development.”
Wadlow recalled the long-standing efforts of AWC for such aims. In an August 2000 Statement to the UN Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights, the AWC had stressed “that small arms and light weapons are the most frequently used weapons in the majority of armed conflicts. The easy availability, proliferation and hardly regulated diffusion of small arms is directly related to violations of the right to life. ...”
Governments in the UN have so far only been willing to consider what is called “illicit” small arms trade...This concern with illicit trade has led to the UN General Assembly adopting the UN Protocol against the illicit Manufacturing of and Trafficking in Firearms, Their Components and Ammunition, known as the Firearms Protocol for short. The Protocol entered into force in 2005, and some 60 States are party to it at present. It stipulates measures that include the criminalization of the illicit manufacturing and trafficking in firearms and the strengthening of capacities to detect and investigate illicit transfers in the context of organized crime.
However, the Protocol does not cover government to government sale of arms, which, in fact, is the bulk of arms sales and transfers. The great majority of small arms are transferred legally before they are diverted to unauthorized groups.
The Association of World Citizens message cited two current examples of arms first sold on a government to government basis and that are now being used in civil conflicts: the flow of arms from Libya toward Mali and the Tuareg rebels there and the flow of US arms first sent to arm the newly created Iraqi Army and Police which are now being sent to opposition forces in Syria.
Therefore, the Association of World Citizens calls upon the Preparatory Committee... to set in motion the preparation of a much more comprehensive Arms Trade Treaty which covers government to government sales and transfers of arms and munitions. Such a treaty should spell out clearly that arms transfers must not occur when there is a real risk that such arms can be used in local conflicts to kill civilians and to commit human rights abuses.
* Rene Wadlow, President and Representative to the United Nations, Geneva, Association of World Citizens
––
aawolf@hastingsgroup.com
February 14
REPORT: IOWA CONSUMER’S ANNUAL UTILITY BILLS COULD CLIMB OVER $800
IF LEGISLATURE PERMITS UNFAIR NUCLEAR REACTOR FINANCING METHOD
Cooper: Example of 4 Southern States Proves That “Robbing” Ratepayers Before Power is Produced Leads to More Expensive Reactors, Higher Than Necessary Rates for Consumers...
DES MOINES, IA – February 14, 2012 – A leading U.S. expert on nuclear reactor financing is warning that a bill pending in the Iowa Senate to allow MidAmerican to charge in advance for the construction of new nuclear reactors could lead to significantly more expensive utility bills for state consumers, up to $70 higher a month ($840 per year).
In a report titled “Nuclear Socialism Comes to the Heartland of America: Early Cost Recovery for New Nuclear Reactors in Iowa and The Return of Electricity Rate Shock,” analyst Mark Cooper shows how the examples of four Southeastern U.S. states – North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida and Georgia – have led to major harms to consumers when “early cost recovery” or “construction work in progress” (CWIP) is used to finance nuclear reactors. If the Iowa Senate measure becomes law, Iowa would become only the fifth state in the U.S. to impose such confiscatory, anti-consumer special interest legislation at the request of the nuclear power industry. ...
The Cooper report notes: “In addition to the dismal economics of nuclear power, the primary reason that the practice is limited to a very few states is that advanced cost recovery is fundamentally flawed, placing ratepayers at extraordinary risk for an excessive and unnecessary cost burden that runs into the billions of dollars...
Mark Cooper is senior fellow for economic analysis, Institute for Energy and the Environment, Vermont Law School, and author of “Policy Challenges of Nuclear Reactor Construction, Cost Escalation and Crowding Out Alternatives” (2009).
Commenting on his report, Cooper said: “Past experience and current developments in the few Southeastern U.S. states that have allowed advanced cost recovery for nuclear reactors indicate that removing consumer protections will impose significant costs on Iowa ratepayers and expose them to extraordinarily dangerous risks. The push for early cost recovery for construction of nuclear reactors in Iowa and elsewhere is driven by one basic truth about new nuclear reactors: They are totally uneconomic. The markets won’t touch these projects so the industry’s only alternative is to enlist state lawmakers to leave consumers holding the bag.”...
As the IUB staff pointed out, ‘HF 561 would shift nearly all of the construction, licensing, and permitting risk associated with one or more nuclear plants from the company to its customers.’ The ratepayers would be stuck paying for the most expensive power generation and would assume 100 percent of the risk associated with unproven, uncertified, modular nuclear technology.”...
The Cooper report also points out:
* New nuclear reactors cannot compete with a large number of alternatives resources that are widely available to meet consumer needs for electricity.
* They are so risky, they cannot raise capital in normal financial markets.
* In order to build new nuclear reactors, the utilities are demanding the suspension of the regulatory rules and financial market mechanisms that protect ratepayers and balance the interests of consumers and utility shareholders.
–––2.16.12
David Swanson <david@davidswanson.org>
February 13
A One Percenter Puts Over $200 Million into the Peace Movement
By David Swanson
I'll tell you who did this below. First read part his rather unusual letter:
"I have transferred to you as trustees $231 million in bonds, the revenue of which is to be administered by you to hasten the abolition of international war, the foulest blot upon our civilization. Although we no longer eat our fellow men nor torture prisoners, nor sack cities killing their inhabitants, we still kill each other in war like barbarians. Only wild beasts are excusable for doing that in this, the Twenty First Century of the Christian era, for the crime of war is inherent, since it decides not in favor of the right, but always of the strong. The nation is criminal which refuses arbitration and drives its adversary to a tribunal which knows nothing of righteous judgment. . . .
"I hope the trustees will begin by pressing forward upon this line, testing it thoroughly and doubting not.
"The judge who presides over a cause in which he is interested dies in infamy if discovered. The citizen who constitutes himself a judge in his own cause as against his fellow-citizen, and presumes to attack him, is a law-breaker and as such disgraced. So should a nation be held as disgraced which insists upon sitting in judgment in its own cause in case of an international dispute. . . .
"Lines of future action cannot be wisely laid down. Many may have to be tried, and having full confidence in my trustees, I leave them the widest discretion as to the measures and policy they shall from time to time adopt, only premising that the one end they shall keep unceasingly in view until it is attained is the speedy abolition of international war between so-called civilized nations.
"When civilized nations enter into such treaties as named, and war is discarded as disgraceful to civilized men, as personal war (duelling) and man selling and buying (slavery) have been discarded . . . the trustees will please then consider what is the next most degrading remaining evil or evils whose banishment – or what new elevating element or elements if introduced or fostered, or both combined – would most advance the progress, elevation and happiness of humanity, and so on from century to century without end, my Trustees of each age shall determine how they can best aid humanity in its upward march to higher and higher stages of development unceasingly. . . ."
You may have guessed the trick here. I've edited this letter slightly. I've changed the century. I've omitted references to President Taft. I've rewritten "man" as "humanity." This letter is 102 years old, having been written by Andrew Carnegie in 1910. I changed his $10 million into $231 million to keep up with inflation. Little did he know that we would bring back torture and the sacking of cities. Little did he imagine that we would find corrupt judges perfectly acceptable. And – to our credit, this time – little did he imagine that we would come to question the distinction between civilized and barbarian nations, and the hypocrisy that would propose the banning of war among white people.
But most of all, little did Carnegie imagine that we would give up. His Endowment for Peace, and many other groups, some of them even more generously funded, pushed for peace right up through the Second World War. In 1928, in fact, they created what Carnegie was after, a treaty among the wealthy nations of the world banning war. It's still on the books and on the U.S. State Department's website. War has been illegal since 1928. That story is told here: http://davidswanson.org/outlawry
But by 1942 and up through today the movement to rid us of our greatest evil has been radically diminished. The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace still exists, although as a peace activist I've never had any contact with it, and its website makes clear that it has added all sorts of other projects to its agenda prior to, rather than after, abolishing war.
Could a one percenter invest in a serious peace movement now, before it's too late? Of course they could. They dump vastly greater sums into election campaigns every couple of years, with the outcome guaranteed to be this war-supporting candidate or that war-supporting candidate.
We've lost the will to peace, and –- equally fundamentally –- we've lost the capacity to shame our robber barons into giving a little bit back.
David Swanson is the author of "When the World Outlawed War," "War Is A Lie" and "Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union."
––
BUT: But we must not neglect to factor into our advocacy that our imperative should always highlight the human need to create a world governed internationally according to a writ of enforceable world law made and agreed to by all nations.
–––2.15.12
NO WAY TO RUN A WORLD!
The Economist February 11, page 11
“How to set Syria free
“Getting rid of Bashar Assad requires a united opposition, the creation of a safe haven and Western resolve
“IN HOMS they are burying their dead under cover of darkness, for fear that the mourners themselves will become the next victims. Syrian government forces are setting out to strike the city’s makeshift clinics, where the floor is already slick with blood. The rebels in Homs have guns, but they are no match for the army’s tanks. And yet the butchery seems only to fire the conviction among the city’s inhabitants that state violence must not prevail against the popular will.
“The outside world, to its shame, has shown no such resolve. A vote on February 4th, in the UN Security Council, condemning Syria’s president, Bashar Assad, and calling on him to hand powers to his deputy, was defeated thanks to vetoes from Russia and China...Earlier a ramshackle mission to Syria by the Arab League had ended in bickering. Division has eviscerated international co-operation just when the turmoil whipped up by the Arab spring makes it essential.
“The people of Syria deserve better. With the number of dead rapidly climbing above 7,000, the world has a responsibility to act. ...A lengthy civil war in Syria would feed mayhem and religious strife in an unstable part of the world.
“So shifting Mr Assad from power as fast as possible is essential. ...
“Bombing and other sorts of hand-wringing
“As tyrants go, Mr Assad has two advantages...One is his willingness to do whatever it takes to put down the rebellion...
“His second advantage is others’ lack of unity – not only at the UN and in the Arab League, but also among Syria’s opposition...
“The most direct answer is to even up the fight by flooding Syria with arms...
“The time may come when supplying weapons to the opposition makes sense. But such a policy would not suddenly turn the opposition into a fighting force. And a country awash with weapons would be plagued by the very violence that the world was seeking to avoid...
“Far better to attack Mr Assad’s regime where it is vulnerable – by peeling away his support, both at home among Syria’s minorities and abroad, especially in Russia, its chief defender on the UN Security Council...
"Stand up as one
“ ...Turkey, with the blessing of NATO and the Arab League, should create and defend a safe haven in north-western Syria. ...”
––2.14.12
As the print advocates in 1970 of a governed world, World Peace News – a World Government Report heartily welcomes latecomers.
As an advocacy, World Peace News switches from the suggested advocacy to emphasis on the crucial difference between sovereign world government and world government.
––
Citizens For
Legitimate
Government
A multi-partisan activist group established to expose and resist US imperialism, corpora-terrorism, and the New World Order
US to build two new nuclear reactors in Georgia ...The US government has [insanely] licensed a utility company to build two new nuclear reactors in the south-eastern state of Georgia. The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Thursday authorized Southern Co. and its partners to build the new reactors in Waynesboro, Ga., about 275 Kilometers east of Atlanta, at a plant that already has two operating reactors. Federal regulators voted 4-1 to approve the construction of the nuclear plants, expected to cost 14 billion dollars.
From “CLG News” 11 Feb. http://www.legitgov.org
––
Previous news item on the new Vogtle reactors
landerson@hastingsgroup.com
February 8
NRC LICENSE FOR NEW VOGTLE REACTORS WILL BE OPPOSED IN FEDERAL COURT, SUSPENSION OF CONSTRUCTION AT GEORGIA SITE TO BE SOUGHT
9 Groups Contend That NRC Is Failing to Fully Consider Fukushima Lessons Before Issuing a Final License to Construct and Operate Two New Nuclear Reactors,
WASHINGTON, D.C.//NEWS ADVISORY///With the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) expected to consider as early as Thursday whether to issue the final license for two new reactors at the site of the currently operating Vogtle nuclear power plant in Georgia, nine national, state and regional groups will ask the NRC to delay its decision until the groups can file a challenge in federal court.
In the major legal challenge that will be filed within a matter of days, the organizations will maintain that the NRC is violating federal law by issuing the license without considering the important lessons of the catastrophic Fukushima accident in Japan regarding ways the Vogtle operation should be modified to protect public safety and the environment. They will ask federal judges to order the NRC to prepare a new environmental impact statement (EIS) for the proposed Vogtle reactors that explains how cooling systems for the reactors and spent fuel storage pools will be upgraded to protect against earthquakes, flooding and prolonged loss of electric power to the site. According to the groups, the EIS should also detail how emergency equipment and plans for the nuclear plant will be revised to account for accidents affecting multiple reactors on the Vogtle site, as happened at Fukushima.
As part of the action, the organizations will also challenge the validity of the Westinghouse-Toshiba AP1000 design, on which the new Vogtle reactors are based.
The organizations are preparing to file their lawsuit next week in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. ...
The nine organizations taking the legal action are: Friends of the Earth, the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League, Center for a Sustainable Coast, Citizens Allied for Safe Energy, Georgia Women’s Action for New Directions, North Carolina Waste Awareness and Reduction Network, Nuclear Information and Resource Service and Nuclear Watch South.
Although Southern Co. has already commenced construction activities at the Vogtle site, the license would allow Southern to complete construction of the containment, reactor cooling systems, spent fuel storage pools, and other major reactor components.
The organizations charge that these major structures could change substantially if they are redesigned to take the lessons of the Fukushima accident into account, and therefore continued construction of the new Vogtle reactors could be wasting money and resources. And if the license is disapproved in the lawsuit or Fukushima-related retrofits make the project too expensive to finish, utility ratepayers in Georgia are likely to be stuck with the expense of a large and useless concrete mausoleum, similar to many other abandoned reactor projects across the U.S.
Separately, Southern Alliance for Clean Energy has sued the Department of Energy for failing to disclose key information about the terms of DOE’s $8.3 billion loan guarantee for the new Vogtle reactors, especially the risk posed to U.S. taxpayers should the estimated $14 billion project default. The organizations remain very concerned that utility customers and taxpayers have been forced to put more “skin in the game” than Southern Co. and its utility partners and shareholders. With prices of natural gas very low, even the CEO of Exelon has said publicly that he wouldn’t build a nuclear plant today.
–– 2.13.12
Clear Need for World Government?
“QUOTATION OF THE DAY
“‘I, personally, expect full-fledged war. This is like the previews before a film.’
“MARIAM AL-SADIQ AL-MAHDI, an opposition politician in Khartoum, Sudan’s capital, on tension between Sudan and South Sudan. [A10]”
New York Times, Feb. 11, A2.
––
“SUDANS’ OIL FEUD
RISKS SHATTERING
A FRAGILE PEACE
“PROXY FIGHTS FLARE UP
“Vague Accord Seeks to
Stave Off Slide to an
All-Out Conflict
“By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
“KHARTOUM, Sudan – Sudan and the breakaway nation of South Sudan have been locked in an exceedingly dangerous game of brinkmanship over billions of gallons of oil, seizing tankers, shutting down wells and imperiling the tenuous, American-backed peace that has held – just barely – between the two countries after decades of war.
“Not for years have north-south relations been so poisonous with a proxy war between the two nations fueling rebel groups and sometimes even flaring into direct Sudan-South Sudan clashes. The jagged, disputed frontier separating Sudan from its newly independent neighbor is now probably the most incendiary fault line in Africa, with two big armies that fought each other for generations massing on either side.
“After emergency talks to prevent a full-fledged conflict, the two sides agreed to a vague non-aggression pact late on Friday, yielding to intense pressure from the African Union, the United States and China– a major oil partner for both sides – to move beyond the language and tactics of mutual destruction. But few analysts see any easy solutions to the heated push and pull over oil and it is not clear how the nonaggression pact will be any different from previous security deals that have led nowhere. ...
Page 1 news story in Feb. 11 New York Times.
––
“Confused Nuclear Cleanup
“The Japanese government has started to hand out an initial $13 billion in contracts meant to rehabilitate the more than 8,000-square-mile region most exposed to radioactive fallout from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactors. But contractors’ knowledge of decontamination is sparse, and it is far from clear if their untried methods will prove effective. PAGE B1.”
NYT Feb. 11, A2.
––
Lucia Gerdes <lucia@alchemy.us.com>
February 10
Nobel Peace Prize Winners to Presidents Obama and Medvedev: Prevent Nuclear War
More than 100 leading nongovernmental organizations and prominent individuals from around the world – including four Nobel Peace Laureates and one Nobel Peace Prize-Winning organization – have signed an open letter to Presidents Obama and Medvedev calling on them to address “the increasingly sharp divisions and distrust between the United States and Russia over U.S. and NATO deployment of missile defenses in Europe and the hardening of positions on both sides.” This situation, the signatories caution, “could lead to the targeting of missile defense sites by Russians and the abrogation of the New START agreement.” The result could be a fully renewed nuclear arms race and a growing threat of nuclear war. ...
Lucia Gerdes
On Behalf of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation
–
Open Letter to Presidents Obama and Medvedev: Prevent Nuclear War
Washington, DC / Moscow — February 5, 2012 marks the first anniversary of the entry into force of the New START agreement between the United States and Russia, which lowers the number of deployed strategic nuclear weapons and delivery vehicles held by each country. A new open letter sent today to Presidents Obama and Medvedev, signed by major nongovernmental organizations and prominent individuals from around the world, expresses concerns that this not be the last anniversary of the treaty.
The letter includes the signatures of four Nobel Prize-winning individuals and one Nobel Prize-winning organization.
While U.S. and world media focus their attention on the potential for development of nuclear weapons in Iran, conflicts over U.S. and NATO deployment of missile defenses in Europe have quietly been escalating without public attention. This letter addresses the increasingly sharp divisions and distrust between the United States and Russia over U.S. and NATO deployment of missile defenses in Europe and the hardening of positions on both sides. This could lead to the targeting of missile defense sites by Russians and the abrogation of the New START agreement.
Warning of the potential consequences of continued conflict over this issue, the open letter states, “A Russian withdrawal from New START would likely precipitate a fully-renewed nuclear arms race and thus completely reverse movement toward a world without nuclear weapons. Many of the signatories of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) would also regard the collapse of the New START process as an explicit violation of the NPT; this could lead to the collapse of the NPT and extensive nuclear proliferation.”
Adding to the threats posed by this situation, the open letter emphasizes that “both the U.S. and Russia still maintain strategic war plans that include large nuclear strike options, with hundreds of preplanned targets that clearly include cities in each other’s nation. Both nations keep a total of at least 1,700 strategic nuclear weapons mounted on launch-ready ballistic missiles, which can carry out these strike options with only a few minutes’ warning.”
The open letter is being released just weeks after the highly respected Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has moved the hands of its 'doomsday clock' from six to five minutes to midnight. Signatories of this open letter demand “that differences of opinion over missile defense must not be allowed to de-rail progress to zero nuclear weapons, or worse, to put that progress into reverse and instead reinstate Cold War security postures.”
The Nuclear Age Peace Foundation was founded in 1982 to initiate and support worldwide efforts to abolish nuclear weapons, to strengthen international law and institutions, and to inspire and empower a new generation of peace leaders. The Foundation is comprised of individuals and organizations worldwide who realize the imperative for peace in the Nuclear Age. ... The open letter, with all signatories, is available to view online at www.wagingpeace.org/goto/nato.
–––2.11.12
Wadlowz@aol.com
February 9
World Citizens urge greater NGO participation in Syria-Arab League Observer Mission
Rene Wadlow*
In a 9 February 2012 message to the Secretary of the League of Arab States, Ambassador Nabil el-Araby, the Association of World Citizens proposed a renewal of the Arab League Observer Mission with the inclusion of a greater number of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) observers and a broadened mandate to go beyond fact finding and to play an active conflict-resolution role at the local level. There is some hope that such measures could be undertaken to halt the downward spiral of violence and killing.
The Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, who met with the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on 7 February in Damascus said that “Syria is informing the Arab League that it is interested in the League’s Observer Mission continuing its work and being increased in terms of quality.
After the Russian and Chinese vetoes of a UN Security Council resolution on Syria on Saturday 4 February, there seems to be little direct role for United Nations’ efforts. The USA, UK, Belgium, France, Spain, Italy and the Arab Gulf States (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates) have withdrawn their Ambassadors and much of their diplomatic staff for consultation but without breaking diplomatic relations.
The confrontation in Syria between the government and the opposition has grown increasingly violent, each side believing that the 11-month conflict will only be resolved through force of arms. The regime is bent on exploiting the society’s divisions, and the opposition is incapable of providing an alternative. Thus the only external presence is that of the Arab League Observer Mission. Although the Observer Mission is no longer active, the observers, some 100 persons, are still present.
After a good deal of behind-the scenes-negotiations and due in part to the more dynamic leadership of the new Secretary-General of the Arab League, Nabil el-Arabi, a former Egyptian Ambassador to the United Nations, an observer mission from the Arab League was sent to Syria on 26 December 2011 with the agreement of the Syrian Government led by President Bashar al-Assad. This was the first observer mission undertaken by the Arab League. As the head of the Observer Mission, General al-Dabi wrote in his report “Some of the observers, unfortunately, believed that their journey to Syria was for amusement and were therefore surprised by the reality of the situation. They did not expect to be assigned to teams or to have to remain at stations outside the capital or to face the difficulties that they encountered.”
Such observer missions have been undertaken elsewhere both by the UN and by non-governmental organizations (NGOs). There is a good study of the experiences and aims of NGO observer missions which can serve as guideline for observation work.
The Arab League Observer Mission had two tasks, basically to evaluate the situation in the light of a rather general agreement signed between the Syrian Government and the Arab League to withdraw heavy military weapons from the cities, to start a dialogue with the opposition movements and to release detainees. The second aim was to reduce the killing by the moral presence of the observers. The UN has estimated that some 5,400 people have been killed since the March 2011 start of public demonstrations of opposition.
In practice, it is not heavy military weapons which have done most of the killing but rather a wide use of snipers shooting at demonstrations as well as soldiers and security police shooting at crowds. There have also been Government troops killed, again mostly by snipers. Armed attacks on Government forces may grow as there are now defectors from the Syrian Army who take their weapons with them.
The Government has called for negotiations, as President al-Assad did on 20 June, but none have taken place. Some opposition figures have stated that negotiations can only take place after al-Assd steps down.
Obviously, there needs to be a national dialog within Syria. Civil society participation — religious, education, labor, women, cultural and media — is crucial to build public support for a real national dialog and to broaden constituencies for peace. A national dialog is merely the beginning of a deep reordering of the political and economic structures and relationships among elements of the society. There is a need for continual adjustments to adapt to new developments. There also needs to be quick post-agreement benefits to give people a stake in the readjustment process and to reduce the capacity of spoilers. A real national dialog could set out a framework for reforms which have been promised in the past but which never came to birth. As a result, sentiments have hardened, and trust has been lost.
Currently, the situation seems to have reached a stalemate when neither the Government nor the protesters can resolve the crisis on their own terms. As Peter Harling of the International Crisis Group wrote “Everybody is waiting for Godot. Whether it’s a military coup, the president finally becoming the leader they hoped him to be at the outset, the international community doing something, economic collapse – everybody is desperate for something.”
On 29 April 2011, the UN Human Rights Council voted in a Special Session to send a human rights observer-fact-finding mission to Syria. However, the human rights mission has not been allowed to enter Syria. Thus there was a feeling within the diplomatic community that there should be an “all-Arab” solution, and the Arab League responded.
The Arab League Observer Mission of originally some 160 people is led by General Mohammed Ahmed Mustafa al-Dabi, the former head of military intelligence of Sudan and a power in the military-security force group which runs North Sudan. He is well known for his activities against the opposition in Darfur. Most of the Observer Mission personnel are military officers and League of Arab States Secretariat who had been at its headquarters in Cairo. There were a small number of members drawn from Arab NGOs. (The professions of all the members have not been listed. The rank of the military officers is given but not the professions of civilians. Representatives of the two Arab human rights NGOs are listed with the name of their NGO). At least 11 of the observers have been injured in fighting although neither Government nor opposition take blame for attacking the observers.
On Sunday, 22 January, the Observer Mission took the initiative to propose to the officials of the Arab League a plan for a solution to the Syrian conflict — a proposal made public by the rotating President of the Arab League, Cheikh Hamad Ben Jassem al-Thani, Prime Minister of Qatar who also serves as its Foreign Minister. The proposal, largely modelled on the agreement signed in November by President Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen was that President al-Assad resign, giving his authority to his vice-president who would create a unity government of transition to be followed by presidential and parliamentary elections.
The Syrian Government, through its Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem, immediately rejected the proposal saying that it was outside the mandate of the Observer Mission and it was “an attack on its national sovereignty and a flagrant interference in internal affairs.”
The Arab League then proposed that the Syrian situation be re-presented to the UN Security Council where it has been discussed before. Both China and Russia wish to avoid a repeat of the Libya experience where they voted for limited UN action to protect the population only to find that the limited action turned into a NATO-led attack to change the government. Therefore China and Russia will block anything that might justify a military intervention into Syria. The Russian Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov has called upon both the Government and the opposition to start negotiations in good faith and indicated that Russia would be willing to facilitate such negotiations
Thus, in a 25 January 2012 message to the Arab League Secretary-General, the Association of World Citizens proposed the replacement of the Saudi and Gulf State Observers who had been withdrawn by Arab-speaking NGO representatives who would have a double mission of observation and local conflict resolution and reconciliation tasks. The World Citizen message noted that “we do not underestimate the difficulties of the situation or the difficulties of building such a core of over 50 NGO observers in a short time. Nevertheless, we believe that the League of Arab States Observer Mission is the only intergovernmental instrument in place and that its effectiveness will be increased by the energy and devotion of civil society members.” The 19 February Appeal stressed the dangers of the current situation and the importance of the Arab League Observer Mission to which NGOs could contribute.
*Rene Wadlow, President and Representative to the United Nations, Geneva, Association of World Citizens
–––2.10.12
EarthstarRadio@aol.com
February 8
EARTH FEDERATION NEWS & VIEWS
Conflict between Israel and Iran leading to war?
Why we need world federal government
The headlines these days make it clear that the conflict between Israel and Iran may move beyond economic sanctions against Iran. Israel has stated it may attack Iranian nuclear facilities. Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has warned that any attack would be met with retaliation.
Without world federal government in place, an attack and invasion may soon be in the making creating a nightmare for hundreds upon thousands of innocent citizens particularly in Iran, but also possibly in Israel if the conflict spills over to the broader Middle East.
Ayatollah Khamenei is quoted as saying that "...any attack would be 10 times worse for the interests of the United States." The US has provided Israel with money and weapons, and Congress under the influence of the Israeli Lobby has voiced full support for Israel's threats against Iran if the Iranian government refuses to bow to Israeli demands to cease their nuclear program.
Israel has nuclear weapons. What's wrong with this picture?
A world federal government would analyze the conflict from the point of view of the world public interest rather than narrow national self-interest.
The (World) Federation would likely note that Israel maintains almost 200 nuclear weapons. Iran has none. Iran is concerned that Israel will attack its nuclear facilities, as it did Iraq's and Syria's with impunity. Israel fears that eventually Iran will obtain nukes.
Under a World Federal Government neither nation would need, or be allowed to possess, weapons of mass destruction since under a world union there would be no need for such horrible weapons.
Much like California does not need nuclear missiles to protect itself from Texas, as part of a world federal union Israel would not need these terrible weapons to protect itself from Iran, or any other nation. Similarly, Iran would have no need to seek nukes for its defense.
In a democratic world federation there would be nonviolent alternatives to war. Both parties would take their dispute to mediators for resolution, and if that fails they could turn to a World Court (such as the World Court's Bench for International Conflicts in the Earth Constitution).
Another nonviolent alternative to war, not traditionally considered, might be to take such a dispute to a (World) Federation's (democratically elected) World Parliament. The Parliament's members are to consider first and foremost solutions which benefit the world public interest – that is, the common good.
The global democratic Federal government described here makes going to war unnecessary, and indeed, illegal.
When war becomes a world crime
Under a well-written world constitution, starting or engaging in war is against the law. Possessing or acquiring nuclear weapons also becomes against the law. With this new global governing structure, laws would be enforceable, not merely empty words as is currently the case.
Any national leaders or generals who started a war, or maintained nuclear weapons would be treated as common criminals, and would be held individually accountable. World police would arrest them, and they would be prosecuted for world crimes.
State-sponsored terrorism considered a world crime
War crime prosecutions in an Israel/Iran war could include leaders of the United States for providing weapons and money to Israel. Such support could be consider state-sponsored terrorism. If evidence was provided that secret covert operations were also employed causing death or destruction such as in false flag operations, the operatives and those who ordered such actions could be considered world criminals and be prosecuted accordingly.
United Nations not equipped to deal with the Iranian/Israeli conflict
Because the rule of sovereignty for each nation is written in the UN Charter, the UN has no authority to prevent either Iran or Israel from going to war, or even for possessing nuclear weapons.
If the US is involved, the UN's hands are completely tied because the US has the power of the veto in the UN – an ultimate means to avoid prosecution for world crimes.
In the present conflict it appears that the US is an ally of Israel, and Iran may have China or Russia on its side. Because of the undemocratic powers of these powerful nations, they go unrestrained on the global stage. Their veto power in the UN Security Council can prevent any action which might prevent war.
Will war soon be the outcome? Will hundreds upon thousands of innocent civilians, families, women and children become war victims as occurred in the invasion of Iraq? Another avoidable catastrophe simply because the nations refuse to unite and to federate?
Roger Kotila
Editor, Earth Federation News & Views
––2.9.12
The quotation below is the last paragraph of "The Betrayal of the Nobel Peace Prize" By David Swanson (see below).
"The move comes after persistent complaints by Norwegian peace researcher Fredrik Heffermehl, who claims the original purpose of the prize was to diminish the role of military power in international relations. 'Nobel called it a prize for the champions of peace,' Heffermehl [said] … 'And it's indisputable that he had in mind the peace movement, the movement which is actively pursuing a new global order ... where nations safely can drop national armaments.' … 'Do you see Obama as a promoter of abolishing the military as a tool of international affairs?' Heffermehl asked rhetorically."
––
“Prof. Joseph Preston Baratta Ph.D.” <josephbaratta@mac.com>
February 4
World Federalists
Winston Churchill:
“Unless some effective World Super-Government can be set up and brought quickly into action, the prospects for peace and human progress are dark and doubtful.” Address at United Europe Committee meeting, Albert Hall, 14 May 1947. Europe Unite, p. 85.
Albert Einstein:
“The only way to think of human destiny today is in political terms.” Common Cause, 2 (July 1948): 45.
Mikhail Gorbachev:
“What is emerging is a more complex global structure of international relations. An awareness of the need for some kind of global government is gaining ground, one in which all members of the world community would take part. Events should not be allowed to develop spontaneously. There must be an adequate response to global changes and challenges.” “The River of Time and the Imperative of Action,” Address at Westminster College, Fulton, MO, 6 May 1992.
Gorbachev:
"Being in favor of demilitarizing international relations, we want political and legal methods to prevail in solving whatever problems may arise. Our ideal is a world community of states which are based on the rule of law and which subordinates their foreign policy activities to law.” Address before the 43 Session of the General Assembly, New York, 7 December 1988, A/43/PV.72.
Victor Hugo:
“I represent a party which does not yet exist: the party of revolution, civilization. This party will make the twentieth century. There will issue from it, first, the United States of Europe, and then the United States of the World.” Words found scrawled among Hugo’s MSS. In memory of him, they were written on the wall of the room in the Place des Vosges where he died.
Jawaharlal Nehru:
“I have no doubt in my mind that world government must and will come, for there is no other remedy for the world’s sickness. The machinery for it is not difficult to devise. It can be an extension of the federal principle, a growth of the idea underlying the United Nations, giving each national unit freedom to fashion its destiny according to its genius, but subject always to the basic covenant of the world government.” Radio address, 4 April 1948.
M.K. (Mahatma) Gandhi:
“I do want to think in terms of the whole world. My patriotism includes the good of mankind in general.… Isolated independence is not the goal of world states.… The better mind of the world desires today not absolutely independent states, but a federation of friendly, interdependent states.” Quoted by Nehru, Discovery of India, 1946.
Rousseau:
As far as I know, Rousseau could not be quoted as favoring world government. He was quite critical of Henri IV's Grand Design, as the duc du Sully presented it, for it amounted to only an "armed league" under France's domination. His attitude was the same for the project of the abbé de Saint-Pierre.
Socrates:
What quotation from him could possible be stretched to imply world union? Even Plato thought only as widely as a Greek polis. The Stoics enlarged Greek conceptions to the cosmopolis.
Zeno of Citium:
"I am not an Athenian or a Corinthian, but a citizen of the world."
Diogenes of Sinope:
"I am a citizen of the world."
H.G. Wells:
“A federation of all humanity, together with a sufficient measure of social justice to ensure health, education, and a rough equality of opportunity, would mean such a release and increase of human energy as to open a new phase in human history.”
The Outline of History, 1920, Chapter 41: “Man’s Coming of Age. The Probable Struggle for the Unification of the World into One Community of Knowledge and Will”; Section 2: “How a Federal World Government May Come About.” (Suppressed in 1949 Postgate edition!)
Dante Aligheri:
“And everything is well and best disposed which is disposed after the prime agent, which is God. It is of the intention of God that every created thing should present the divine likeness in so far as its proper nature is capable of receiving it. Wherefore it is said, ‘Let us make man in our image and likeness.’
Therefore, the human race is well and best disposed when, to the measure of its power, it is likened to God. But the human race is most likened to God when it is most one; for it is in him alone that the absolute principle of the one exists.” De Monarchia (1310).
Immanuel Kant:
“For states in their relation to each other, there cannot be any reasonable way out of the lawless condition which entails only war except that they, like individual men, should give up their savage (lawless) freedom, adjust themselves to the constraints of public law, and thus establish a continuously growing state consisting of various nations, which will ultimately include all the nations of the world.” Perpetual Peace (1795).
Alfred Lord Tennyson:
"For I dipt into the future,
far as human eye could see,
Saw the vision of the world,
and all the wonder that would be; . . .
“Till the war-drum throbb’d no longer,
and the battle-flags were furl’d
In the Parliament of Man,
the Federation of the World.”
"Locksley Hall," Poems (1842).
Harry Truman:
“It will be just as easy for nations to get along in a republic of the world as it is for us to get along in the republic of the United States.”
Address at the University of Kansas City, 28 June 1945, two days after signing the United Nations Charter. (He said this without too much thought. Be careful not to quote this as if Truman were a closet world federalist!)
Elisabeth Mann Borgese:
Pacem in Maribus (1973). Title of book, in spirit of Pope John XXIII, Pacem in Terris (1963).
There's lots more.
Yours sincerely,
Joseph Baratta
–
On Jan 31 John O. Sutter wrote:
Debbie,
I recall when you produced a brochure/leaflet of famous sayings by what I would call mostly World Federalist "visionaries," namely persons of renown who spoke of the need for, or importance of, world government. If you go to our www.dwfed.org website, click onto "About Us," then you will find portraits and excerpts of "World Government Visionaries," a term which we had used on our letterhead for years. As our website is being upgraded, more emphasis will be given to this. Meanwhile,
a. Asimov, Çhurchill, Cronkite, Douglas, Einstein, Gorbachev, Hugo, Nehru, Rousseau, Socrates, and Wells can be found both on our letterhead and website.
b. Dante Aligheri and Immanuel Kant are also on our letterhead, but we could find no succinct quotation, and so they did not end up on our website.
c. While putting the visionaries onto our website, we added Tennyson, Truman, and Wallace, for which we had no more room on our letterhead. And, we moved Robert Muller from "World Federation Activists" on our letterhead to a visionary on our website. In retrospect, perhaps we should have kept him in the former category.
But perhaps more along the lines of what you seek, our letterheads have listed a number of "World Federation Activists," who at different times have worked actively to promote our goal, rather than just speak about it in general terms. These include:
Lawrence Abbot; Mortimer J. Adler; Keith Beggs (the knowledgeable first editor of Toward Democratic World Federation); Grenville Clark; Norman Cousins; Tom Griessemer (early Executive Director of U.W.F., originally from Germany); Max Habicht (the Swiss who helped launch U.W.F. at a meeting in Switzerland); Robert M. Hutchins; Gilbert Jonas (last of the student federalist leaders, who wrote One Shining Moment, history of the movement); Shunsaku Kato (leading Japanese world federalist); Lucio Levi; Georgia Lloyd; Cord Meyer (first president of U.W.F.); Cleo Michelsen; Vernon Nash; Emery Reves; Owen J. Roberts (U.S. Supreme Court Justice); Clarence Streit; Henry Usborne (from U.K.); E.B. White; Harris Wofford (founder of Student Federalists).
Undoubtedly, long-time World Federalists would have other names to add. And, some members of our Board of Directors (who appear both in our letterheads and on our website) could also be included.
I had hoped that our program officer(s) could have put the photo and a brief excerpt for each on our website (after the listing of members of the Board of Directors and before the list of visionaries), but they never got around to undertaking that task.
John O. Sutter josutter@juno.com
"Hearken not to the voice which petulantly tells you that the form of government recommended...is impossible to accomplish." -- James Madison, No. 14.
––2/8/12
David Swanson <david@davidswanson.org>
February 5
The Betrayal of the Nobel Peace Prize
By David Swanson
Alfred Nobel's will, written in 1895, left funding for a prize to be awarded to "the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses."
The first such prize, awarded in 1901, went to Jean Henry Dunant and Frédéric Passy, two men who held and promoted peace congresses, two peace activists, two men who were not elected officials. Nor were they war makers who had exercised restraint in some instance or other. In 1902, again, the peace prize went to two peace activists. In 1903 the prize went to a member of the British Parliament, but one who had worked for peace and not for war. In 1904, the laureate was what we would now call an NGO, but one that had worked for peace and not for war. In 1905, a woman who had played a role in the creation of the prize, an author and a peace activist, someone who indeed held and promoted peace congresses, was the first female winner. And then came 1906.
In 1906, the Nobel prize for peace was awarded to a lover of war by the name of Theodore Roosevelt. He had up to that point done, and would continue until his death to do, more to promote war than peace. Was it possible that he had nonetheless done the most or the best work for international fraternity, demilitarization, and peace congresses? Frankly, no. He was prominent. He was a president of a rising empire. Those, and his negotiating a peace between two other nations, were not sufficient qualifications. A disastrous trend had begun in the very mixed history of the peace prize.
The next year, two peace activists took the prize. The year after that two peace activists who were former government officials. The year after that two government officials. But everyone who took the prize, right up through 1913, had at least worked for peace and against war. During World War One, no prizes were awarded. And then came 1919 and a laureate remarkably similar to that of 2009.
In 1919, a prize for peace went to Woodrow Wilson who had needlessly dragged his own nation into the worst war yet seen; who had developed innovative war propaganda techniques, conscription techniques, and tools for suppressing dissent; who had used the U.S. military to brutal effect in the Caribbean and Latin America; who had agreed to a war-promoting settlement to the Great War; but who had promoted a league of nations and on whom were projected the fantasies of peace-loving but character-lacking people around the world.
From that moment to this, the Nobel peace prize has been heavily, but by no means entirely, dominated by elected officials. In 1929, for example, the winner was Frank Kellogg, the U.S. Secretary of State who had negotiated the Kellogg-Briand Pact. (Aristide Briand had already won in 1926.) But not recognized were the leaders of the peace movement that had made the Kellogg-Briand Pact happen. Kellogg had cursed peace activists in 1927, done their bidding in 1928, and would die without ever understanding them.
There were some excellent choices through the years, including some elected officials. And there were some real peace activists among the winners. The choice of Jane Addams as co-recipient in 1931 still looks like a particularly wise one, as does Norman Angell in 1933, and as do some organizations, such as the Red Cross in 1944 (and again in 1963) and the American Friends Service Committee in 1947. Why even more principled war opponents didn't qualify and why Gandhi was never deemed worthy are questions worth asking. But then came 1953.
In 1953 the prize for peace went to General George Marshall. In 1973 a co-laureate was none other than Henry Kissinger. Whatever their merits, these were major makers of war who would almost certainly have also won the Nobel War Prize, were there such a thing.
This insanity competed, however, with another trend, that of bestowing the prize on leaders who were not holders of high office, not necessarily born to wealth, and not only opponents of war but also advocates of the use of nonviolent resistance to violence and injustice. The peace prize, thus, went in 1964 to Martin Luther King, Jr., in 1976 to Betty Williams and Mairead Corrigan, in 1980 to Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, in 1983 to Lech Walesa, in 1984 to Desmond Tutu, in 1991 to Aung San Suu Kyi, in 1992 to Rigoberta Menchú Tum, etc.
Both of these paths, the Kissinger style "peace" laureate, and the MLK type, moved away, as the world did, from the holding and promotion of peace congresses on the 19th century model. But one was the path of peace activists who dedicated their careers to international fraternity and demilitarization or at the very least did not actively work against those goals. The other was the path of powerful figures and makers of war who had either shown some restraint in a particular instance or had appeared (accurately or not) to have acted on behalf of peace in a particular situation.
Honoring both nonviolent human rights advocates and mass murderers has moved the prize away from advocacy for the elimination of standing armies. There is very little room in respectable corporate-controlled discourse these days for advocating the elimination of standing armies. Many people would consider the idea insane or treasonous. But that can't change the words in Nobel's will or the early tradition of awarding the prize to true advocates of peace.
Still, the winners have all had a few things in common and to their advantage. They have all had at least some tenuous, even if inverted, relationship to peace. At least until recently. In 2006 and 2007, Muhammad Yunus and Al Gore took home peace prizes for work with at best an indirect connection to peace. (Can you even imagine Al Gore working for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses?)
From 1901 to 2008 no peace prize was given to anyone who had neither done nor even pretended to do anything significant for peace nor done any other good and significant thing that some people might believe would indirectly contribute to peace. From 1901 to 2008, no prize was given to anyone who had just been placed in a position of great power promising to expand the world's largest military, to escalate a war, and to launch strikes into other nations without any war declarations. From 1901 to 2008, no peace laureate showed up to collect the winnings and gave a speech justifying and praising war. From 1901 to 2008, no laureate gave an acceptance speech rejecting a previous laureate's speech as too peaceful. All of these streaks would end in 2009.
The 1980 peace laureate Adolfo Pérez Esquivel has just written a letter to the 2009 laureate, President Barack Obama. The letter includes these words:
"I believe, Barack, that after following your erring way, you find yourself in a maze, unable to find the exit and you are burying yourself more and more in violence, devoured by the domination of power, and you think you possess all the power anyone could have, and that the world is at the feet of the USA. So large are the atrocities committed by different US governments in the world... It is a sad reality, but there is also the resistance of peoples who do not capitulate before the powerful. Bin Laden, alleged author of the attack of the Twin Towers, has been made the devil incarnate who terrorised [sic] the world, identified as the ‘axis of evil’ and this has served you to wage the wars that the military industrial complex needs to place its products of death…
"… I am not in any way defending bin Laden, I am against all terrorism, by both these armed groups and the terrorism of the State which your government exercises in various parts of the world, supporting dictators, imposing military bases and armed intervention, using violence to maintain yourself via terror at the hub of world power. Is there only one ‘axis of evil’? Peace is a practice of life in relations between persons and among peoples; it is a challenge to humanity's consciousness. Its path is difficult, daily and hopeful; where people build from their own lives and their own history. Peace can't be gifted, it is built. And this is what you're missing lad, courage to assume the historical responsibility with your people and with humanity. You cannot live in the labyrinth of fear and control, ignoring international treaties, pacts and protocols of governments which are signed and then transgressed once and again. How can you speak of peace if you don’t want to honour [sic] anything, except in the interests of your country? How can you talk about freedom when you keep innocent people in the prisons of Guantanamo, in the USA, in Iraq and in Afghanistan? How can you speak of human rights and the dignity of peoples when you perpetually violate them and block those who don’t share your ideology and must endure your abuses? How can you send military forces to Haiti after a devastating earthquake, instead of humanitarian aid to that suffering people? How can you speak of freedom if you massacre the peoples in the Middle East and foster endless conflict which bleeds the Palestinians and Israelis?"
Now Stockholm's County Administrative Board, which supervises foundations and trusts in the city where the Nobel Foundation is based, has formally asked that foundation to respond to allegations that the peace prize no longer reflects Nobel's will. The Associated Press reports that,
"The move comes after persistent complaints by Norwegian peace researcher Fredrik Heffermehl, who claims the original purpose of the prize was to diminish the role of military power in international relations. 'Nobel called it a prize for the champions of peace,' Heffermehl [said] … 'And it's indisputable that he had in mind the peace movement, the movement which is actively pursuing a new global order ... where nations safely can drop national armaments.' … 'Do you see Obama as a promoter of abolishing the military as a tool of international affairs?' Heffermehl asked rhetorically."
–
David Swanson is the author of "When the World Outlawed War," "War Is A Lie" and "Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union."
–––2.7.12
Sherwood Ross <sherwoodross10@gmail.com>
February 5
IS AMERICA A POLICE STATE?
By Sherwood Ross
You know you live in a police state when the president allows the military to continuously harass a prisoner against whom no crime has been proven by interrupting him every five minutes of the day to ask him, “Are you okay?” and forces him to stand to attention naked at roll call. What it can do to one man it can do to every man.
You know you live in a police state when said prisoner is barred from exercising in his cell and told where he may and may not put his hands when he goes to sleep at night. Only a police state would dictate how an individual can sleep.
You know you live in a police state when the government punishes, rather than honors, whistle-blowers who reveal its crimes such as the U.S. massacre of civilians in Baghdad that Bradley Manning exposed.
You know you live in a police state when wardens force pregnant women prisoners to deliver their babies while in chains. (Not exactly “the new birth of freedom” of which Abraham Lincoln spoke.)
You know you live in a police state when the president orders the assassination (i.e., murder) of American citizens without bothering to arrest them and bring them to trial.
You know you live in a police state when police forces across the country attack unarmed and non-violent citizen protesters with pepper spray and clubs.
You know you live in a police state when hundreds of thousands of citizens are rotting in prisons for victimless “crimes” such as smoking pot and your country leads the world in incarcerations with 2.3 million behind bars and when hundreds of thousands of these prisoners are sexually assaulted.
You know you live in a police state when working people who say overwhelmingly that they want to join a union cannot do so for fear of being fired, and in which the money earned by the poor is taken by the state and given to the rich. If the government can rob one person, it can rob every person.
You know you live in a police state when your government makes terrible, punishing wars on small countries after falsely accusing them of having a “weapon of mass destruction” while it possesses tens of thousands of them.
You know you live in a police state when the president signs into law an Act allowing him to arrest innocent citizens on his say-so and have the military imprison them indefinitely without charge, legal counsel, or trial before a jury of their peers.
You know you live in a police state when you can be barred from flying in an airliner on suspicion of “terrorism” that has not been proven and which is impossible for you to challenge.
You know you live in a police state when you are under surveillance by Federal agencies such as the FBI, Department of Homeland Security, and the Central Intelligence Agency, among others, for your political views rather than the commission of any crime against the state, and when said agencies can access your medical records, bank statements, and “private” papers, tap your telephone, question your neighbors and employer and follow you around.
You know you live in a police state when the military gets the biggest percentage of your tax dollars so that it can spend as much for war as the next 20 nations combined while claiming it is attacking other countries in the name of peace and order.
You know you live in a police state when the Pentagon has more than a trillion dollars in research projects underway to make sophisticated killing machines that will give it control of the entire planet from 2,000 military bases and outer space and to terrify the world with its arsenals of nuclear weapons and germ warfare.
You know you live in a police state when people write to you to commend you for your “courage” for writing critically against the government when, in fact, you should have every good reason to live in fear of so doing.
––2.6.12
Every person now alive stands to be a victim of war.
So what is going on globally about ending that threat to all people?
But now can people follow a humanitarian solution to the problem of war?
Along that line we read on page A4 of the New York Times of Feb. 4 the following;
“U.N. Nuclear Inspectors’ Visit to Iran Is a Failure, West Says
“By ROBERT E. WORTH
and DAVID E. SANGER
“DUBAI, United Arab Emirates – American and European officials said Friday that a mission by international nuclear inspectors to Tehran this week had failed to address their key concerns, indicating that Iran’s leaders believe they can resist pressure to open up the nation’s nuclear program.
“The assessment came as Iran’s supreme leader lashed out at the United States, vowing to retaliate against oil sanctions and threats of military action and warning that any attack ‘would be 10 times worse for the interests of the United States’ than it would be for Iran.
“While the inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency, who returned to Vienna after a three-day mission in Tehran, said nothing substantive about their trip and were planning to return to Iran later this month, diplomats briefed on the trip said that Iranian officials had not answered the questions raised in an incriminating report issued by the agency in November. ...”
–––2.5.12
Rachel Tardiff <news@meltwaterpress.com>
February 3
Susan G. Komen’s Decision to Reverse Defunding of Planned Parenthood A Clear Victory for Women’s Health
Nearly 700,000 Sign Petitions By CREDO Action, MoveOn, UltraViolet
CREDO announces $200,000 Grant to Planned Parenthood Clinics
In a stunning turnaround, Susan G. Komen for a Cure has announced it is reversing its decision to defund Planned Parenthood.
On Tuesday, CREDO, the largest corporate funder of Planned Parenthood, launched an action targeting the Komen foundation, which was signed by over 350,000 members. CREDO will also deliver a contribution of over $200,000 to support Planned Parenthood clinics nationwide.
On Wednesday, MoveOn joined with UltraViolet launched an online petition <http://pol.moveon.org/komen/?id=&t=2>, which garnered nearly 330,000 signatures, demanding that Susan G. Komen for the Cure, "Reestablish breast health funding for Planned Parenthood affiliates."
Statement released by CREDO Action
“It's time for the politically motivated witch hunt targeting Planned Parenthood to end. Komen's abrupt reversal of its decision to defund Planned Parenthood is not just a victory for women's health, but it's a clear precedent demonstrating that mainstream America won't stand by when the radical right attacks women's right to health care that includes reproductive health services. CREDO is not only the largest corporate funder of Planned Parenthood, but we are and will continue to be its fiercest defender. Every time the rightwing attacks Planned Parenthood, we will be there to defend them."
“We're proud to be delivering a $200,000 contribution to Planned Parenthood clinics nationwide. Planned Parenthood doesn't just need our support when organizations like Susan G. Komen cave to rightwing pressure and join the attack. They need our support every day, every year. That's what CREDO has done and that's what we will do. “
Becky Bond, Political Director, CREDO Action
Statement released by MoveOn
“This is a clear victory for women everywhere who depend on Planned Parenthood for critical health care services. Komen should have never put politics before women's health care in the first place. Thanks to the millions of people, including hundreds of thousands of MoveOn members, for demanding Komen do the right thing for women in the fight against breast cancer. MoveOn members will continue to watch the situation closely to ensure that Komen follows through with their commitment to fund Planned Parenthood, and never again allow anti-choice extremists to get in the way of women's health care.”
Elena Perez, Campaign Director, MoveOn
Statement released by UltraViolet
“Today is a big victory for women's health. Thanks to the hundreds of thousands of people who called on the Susan G. Komen foundation to reverse their politically motivated decision to defund Planned Parenthood, underserved women nationwide will now have access to preventative care. The Susan G. Komen foundation received a clear message that there's no tolerance in this country for playing politics with women's lives, and UltraViolet members will be watching to make sure this never happens again."
Nita Chaudhary and Shaunna Thomas, Co-Founders of UltraViolet
–
CREDO Action has 2.5 million members across the U.S. who fight for progressive change and raise money for organizations like Planned Parenthood. Since 1985, CREDO and its membership have donated over $65 million to progressive causes.
MoveOn.org gives real Americans a voice in a political process dominated by big money and armies of lobbyists. With over 5 million members across America - from carpenters to stay-at-home moms to business leaders - we work together to realize the progressive promise of our country.
UltraViolet is an online community of women and men who want to take collective action to expose and fight sexism in the public sector, private sector and the media.
–
WPN is happy to print this article because it goes toward supporting the idea of the creation of enforceable world law.
––
“John O. Sutter” <josutter@juno.com>
January 25
Subject: Print Journalism 101
Here's how to keep all that political 'news' in perspective...
1. The Wall Street Journal is read by the people who run the country.
2. The Washington Post is read by people who think they run the country.
3. The New York Times is read by people who think they should run the
country and who are very good at crossword puzzles.
4. USA Today is read by people who think they ought to run the country but
don't really understand The New York Times. They do, however, like their
statistics shown in pie charts.
5. The Los Angeles Times is read by people who wouldn't mind running the
country, if they could find the time – and if they didn't have to leave
Southern California to do it.
6. The Boston Globe is read by people whose parents used to run the country and did a poor job of it, thank you very much.
7. The New York Post is read by people who don't care who is running the
country as long as they do something really scandalous, preferably while
intoxicated..
8. The Miami Herald is read by people who are running another country, but need the baseball scores.
9. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch is read by people who want only the score of the Cardinals game. They drink Budweiser, Budweiser, and wait a minute –- what was the question?
10. The San Francisco Chronicle is read by people who aren't sure if there is a country or that anyone is running it; but if so, they oppose all that they stand for. There are occasional exceptions if the leaders are handicapped minority feminist atheist dwarfs who also happen to be illegal aliens from any other country or galaxy, provided of course, that they are not Republicans.
11. The National Enquirer is read by people trapped in line at the grocery store.
12. The Seattle Times is read by people who have recently caught a fish and need something to wrap it in.
13. Dallas Morning News is read because Texans need something to set their guns on when cleaning them.
–––2.4.12
“Lucy Webster" <lucywebster@lvistas.net>
February 1
List of Famous World Federalists
Do not forget the Japanese world federalists which has included a large Women’s movement as one of the parallel action groups alongside the Japanese Parliamentary Group for World Government. The lead figure in the Women’s group is Mme. Sumi Yukawa.
–
John O. Sutter [mailto:josutter@juno.com]
January 31
To: Esther Franklin
The World Government Visionaries are famous persons – not active World Federalists – who made statements promoting some kind of governed world. As a late-blooming World Federalist, I may have missed some, but probably the missed ones were World Federalist Activists. In any case, my message ended with a request that you and others who have been active far longer than I, to make suggestions.
While there may be a limited number of feminine "visionaries," I was happy to find some among the activists who worked diligently promoting world government. Georgia Lloyd started before World War II, while Cleo, Barbara, and Lucy, who started after World War II, are recent activists still living. ....
Of course, the Campaign for World Government was founded in 1937 by Rosika Schwimmer (from Hungary) and Lola Maverick Lloyd (Georgia's mother), who might well be added. (In fact I'm sure that we once had Rosika Schwimmer on one of our lists.)
In addition to the persons listed from Japan, India, Italy, Germany, Britain, Hungary (where Reves was born), and Switzerland, we would like to find persons from other continents, as we upgrade our website. (Once I corresponded with a Brazilian world federalist leader, and Argentina had one back in the 1950s.)
So, Esther, there have been a few other world figures who might be called visionaries and dozens of other world federalist/governmental activists...
–
Esther Franklin wrote
...Are we saying there were (are) NO Women World Government Visionaries?
–
John O. Sutter to Deb
I recall when you produced a brochure/leaflet of famous sayings by what I would call mostly World Federalist "visionaries," namely persons of renown who spoke of the need for, or importance of, world government. If you go to our www.dwfed.org website, click onto "About Us," then you will find portraits and excerpts of "World Government Visionaries," a term which we had used on our letterhead for years. As our website is being upgraded, more emphasis will be given to this. Meanwhile,
a. Asimov, Çhurchill, Cronkite, Douglas, Einstein, Gorbachev, Hugo, Nehru, Rousseau, Socrates, and Wells can be found both on our letterhead and website.
b. Dante Aligheri and Immanuel Kant are also on our letterhead ...
c. While putting the visionaries onto our website, we added Tennyson, Truman, and Wallace...
But perhaps more along the lines of what you seek, our letterheads have listed a number of "World Federation Activists," who at different times have worked actively to promote our goal, rather than just speak about it in general terms. These include:
Lawrence Abbot
Mortimer J. Adler
Keith Beggs (the knowledgeable first editor of Toward Democratic World Federation)
Grenville Clark
Norman Cousins
Tom Griessemer (early Executive Director of U.W.F., originally from Germany)
Max Habicht (the Swiss who helped launch U.W.F. at a meeting in Switzerland)
Robert M. Hutchins
Gilbert Jonas (last of the student federalist leaders, who wrote One Shining Moment, history of the movement)
Shunsaku Kato (leading Japanese world federalist)
Lucio Levi (from Italy)
Georgia Lloyd
Cord Meyer (first president of U.W.F.)
Cleo Michelsen
Robert Muller
Vernon Nash
Emery Reves (from Hungary)
Owen J. Roberts (U.S. Supreme Court Justice)
Clarence Streit
Henry Usborne (from U.K.)
Barbara Walker
Lucy Webster
E.B. White
Harris Wofford (founder of Student Federalists)
Undoubtedly, long-time World Federalists would have other names to add. ...
–
Deb Metke wrote:
... Say, do you have a good list of the more famous World Federalists? Thanks.
––2.3.12
New York Times, Feb. 1, A4
“Iran Praises
Nuclear Talks
“By RICK GLADSTONE
“...Iran’s nuclear program has become the most urgent issue confronting relations between Iran and Western Powers, who have accused Iran of working toward the capacity to build nuclear weapons. Iran’s leaders have said the nuclear program is designed to enrich uranium fuel for peaceful energy and medical purposes.
“There had been some expectation prior to the team’s visit that Iran would seek to prolong the discussions as part of what some Western diplomats have called a pattern of delaying and extending negotiations to buy time while its nuclear engineers enrich more uranium. Israel has hinted that it may preemptively attack suspected enrichment sites in Iran if it concludes that Iran has reached the capability to build nuclear weapons. ...”
Another example of the need for global government.
–––
David Swanson <david@davidswanson.org>
January 31
A Crazy Republican Attack That Obama Himself Agrees With
By DAVID SWANSON
Imagine if a bunch of the craziest war-hungry Republicans in the House filmed themselves in a nutty bat-guano video packed with lies addressed to the President of the United States. And then imagine President Barack Obama almost immediately agreeing with them. I can think of two ways in which such a series of events could go unnoticed, as it just has.
First, it could be about something insignificant. But this was about undoing the automatic cuts to the military mandated by the failure of the Supercommittee (remember, the top news story of a few months back?). The military, across various departments, swallows over half of federal discretionary spending, and there's no greater obsession in the corporate media than the great Spending vs. Cuts issue. This is NOT insignificant.
Second, it could be about something that the elites of both major parties agree on, the media therefore ignores, most Republican voters love, and Democratic voters pretend not to notice because the President is a Democrat and an election is less than a year away.
If you're guessing the second option, you are right. (Tell them what they've won, Leon!) You are now the proud owners of the most expensive military ever seen, plus coming increases that will be presented as "cuts."
When the Supercommittee failed, automatic federal budget cuts were to kick in – half to things we need and half to the bloated military. The military cuts would take us back to 2004 spending. We seem to have survived 2004 and the years preceding it OK.
The Pentagon claims to be making other cuts already, but they are "cuts" to dream budgets resulting in actual budget increases – and that's not even counting increased war spending through other departments.
House Republicans have sent President Obama this crazy video opposing military cuts and introduced legislation to slash 10% of non-military government jobs instead. In the Senate, John McCain is said to be working on a similar bill.
Meanwhile "Defense" Secretary Leon Panetta has just announced the Obama Administration's position: They will oppose the automatic cuts, or any other actual cuts, to the military. This will mean severe cuts to education, transportation, and – as President Obama indicated in his State of the Union speech–- to Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.
At last Thursday's press conference the first question following Panetta's remarks was:
"Mr. Secretary, you talked a little bit on this, but over the next 10 years, do you see any other year than this year where the actual spending will go down from year to year? And just to the American public more broadly, how do you sort of explain what appears to be contradictory, as you talk about, repeatedly, this $500 billion in cuts in a Defense Department budget that is actually going to be increasing over time?"
Panetta had no substantive answer. And he didn't need one. The media almost unanimously put out the false story that the military was undergoing serious cuts. That first year's cut, by the way, is 1%, to be followed by nine years of larger increases. ...
Others may be inclined to suggest that while Obama and Panetta are increasing the military and calling it "cuts," they are actually cutting the budget for wars. Some may have been misled by this line in the State of the Union: "Take the money we're no longer spending at war, use half of it to pay down our debt, and use the rest to do some nation-building right here at home."
But in reality, Obama and Panetta are proposing to cut the war budget by only $27 billion. Meanwhile, the $27 billion has already been spent elsewhere in the Pentagon budget. Plus military spending is on the rise in other departments. Plus any new wars and confrontations –- like in Iran or Syria – will offer the opportunity for supplemental bills. And less expensive but more secretive and equally deadly wars are underway, investment will increase in drones and special forces, and I have doubts we could rebuild our nation here at home for $13.5 billion even if we had it, while continuing to dump over $1 trillion into preparations for the crime of war year after year.
We do have the option to resist.
––
David Swanson
February 1
Cambridge, Mass., to Vote Next Monday on Resolution Opposing Iran War, Inspired by Resolution Passed in Charlottesville, Va.
In response to passage of this resolution opposing a war on Iran and excessive military spending passed in Charlottesville, Va., Cambridge, Mass., City Council will vote next Monday on the following similar resolution. If you are in or near Cambridge, please be at the meeting:
WHEREAS: The severity of the ongoing economic crisis has created budget shortfalls at all levels of government and requires us to re-examine our national spending priorities; and
WHEREAS: Every dollar spent on the military produces fewer jobs than spending the same dollar on education, healthcare, clean energy, or even tax cuts for household consumption; and
WHEREAS: U.S. military spending has approximately doubled in the past decade, in real dollars and as a percentage of federal discretionary spending, and well over half of federal discretionary spending is now spent on the military, and we are spending more money on the military now than during the Cold War, the Vietnam War, or the Korean War; and
WHEREAS: The U.S. military budget could be cut by 80% and remain the largest in the world; and
WHEREAS: The National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform proposed major reductions in military spending in both its Co-Chairs' proposal in November 2010 and its final report in December 2010; and
WHEREAS: The U.S. Conference of Mayors passed a resolution in June 2011 calling on Congress to redirect spending to domestic priorities; and
WHEREAS: The people of the United States, in numerous opinion polls, favor redirecting spending to domestic priorities and withdrawing the U.S. military from Afghanistan; and
WHEREAS: The United States has armed forces stationed at approximately 1,000 foreign bases in approximately 150 foreign countries; and
WHEREAS: The United States is the wealthiest nation on earth but trails many other nations in life expectancy, infant mortality, education level, housing, and environmental sustainability, as well as non-military aid to foreign nations; now therefore be it
RESOLVED: That Cambridge City Council go on record as calling on the U.S. Congress and. President Barack Obama to end foreign ground and drone wars, refrain from entering new military ventures in Iran, and reduce base military spending in order to meet vital human needs, promote job creation, re-train and re-employ those losing jobs in the process of conversion to non-military industries, rebuild our infrastructure, aid municipal and state governments, and develop a new economy based upon renewable, sustainable energy; and be it further
RESOLVED: That the City Clerk be and hereby is requested to forward a suitably engrossed copy of this resolution to President Barack Obama and the Massachusetts Congressional delegation on behalf of the entire City Council.
–
David Swanson is the author of "When the World Outlawed War," "War Is A Lie" and "Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union."
––2.2.12
David Swanson <david@davidswanson.org>
January 28
15 Things More Important Than Newt's Sex Life on the Moon
By DAVID SWANSON
1. A war on Iran could kill us all. President Obama said in the State of the Union: "America is determined to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, and I will take no options off the table to achieve that goal. But a peaceful resolution of this issue is still possible . . . if Iran changes course." So, unless Iran, which the Secretary of Defense says is not developing a nuclear weapon, ceases developing a nuclear weapon, we're going to war. Sound familiar? Ever seen this movie before? Actually, we've seen it in every single war ever fought by any nation. The best defense against the lies of the Department of Defense is good preparation. Read this book: http://WarIsALie.org
Use these resources: http://DontAttackIran.org...
2. Occupation of DC under threat. The Park Service plans to try to remove all tents from both DC occupations (Freedom Plaza and McPherson Square) at noon on Monday, January 30th. Be there. Be nonviolent. Be determined. Be relentless.
Rise like Lions after slumber: In unvanquishable number,
Shake your chains to earth like dew: Which in sleep had fallen on you
Ye are many – they are few
3. California could solve healthcare. California has until Tuesday and is two senators away from enacting single-payer healthcare. This is far more significant that anything that has been done at the national level for healthcare. This solves the problem in one state and creates a model for the other 49...
4. Corporate personhood is on the defensive. The Montana Supreme Court has refused to comply with Citizens United. Cities and states are taking action. Stronger bills are being introduced in Congress all the time. The latest is HJRes 100. Rallies were just held in over 100 towns and cities. Join this movement...
5. They're raising military spending and calling it "cuts." The supposed cuts in all the headlines are cuts to dream budgets, leaving actual increases. Small but real cuts would result from following the law after the Super Committee's failure (remember them?). But bills in both houses would block all actual cuts to the military, and President Obama agrees with that agenda. This will mean severe cuts to education, transportation, and – as Obama indicated in his State of the Union speech – to Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security....
6. New classic book on peace just out. An amazing new book that you will treasure has just been published. It is first-person stories of war and peace and activism from all over the world, from victims, refugees, journalists, lawyers, and participants in numerous wars. Every story is personal and moving. There is not a drop of corporate media disinterestedness in the book. You may know some of the authors and now you'll know them better. It's 600 pages but you'll be sorry when you reach the end. http://www.amazon.com/Why-Peace-Marc-Guttman/dp/0984980202
7. Guess who says the anthrax attacks were pinned on the wrong guy (again)? The Department of Justice. Anybody else, and Obama would have charged them with "espionage"....
8. We're re-occupying the Philippines, by jingo! On the plus side, we have not yet been told that this will benefit "our little brown brothers" whether they like it or not. ...
9. Prevent Fukushima in Vermont. A Fukushima-style nuclear power plant in Vermont legally must shut down, but in reality is up and running. We can close it...
10. They hate us for our bases. As in many other places around the world, in Japan and Korea, people are risking their lives to resist U.S. military base construction...
11. Torture lawyer John Yoo badly loses debate. Professor Yoo agreed to debate a sane person, with predictable but still satisfying result...
12. The State of the Union speech only sounded good if you were screaming in terror...
13. United National Antiwar Coalition Conference. Don't miss this! ...
14. Occupy Spring! The National Occupation of Washington DC starts on March 30, 2012...
15. No Immunity for Mortgage Fraudsters! The Obama Administration has been working on a mortgage fraud settlement that itself amounts to fraud, but attorneys general in several states are pushing back. Obama's speeches stress fairness and equality, but a settlement granting immunity to big banks is not fair. Robosigning and other fraudulent practices are ongoing. The White House is offering the banks a plea bargain in the middle of a crime spree. Attorneys general in Delaware, New York, Massachusetts, California, and other states are pushing in the right direction. Tell leading state attorneys general not to settle for less than an adequate settlement. ...
––
Sherwood Ross <sherwoodross10@gmail.com>
January 30
NEW AMERICAN DREAM
SCRIPT FOR FEBRUARY 2, 2012
ANOTHER WAR FOR OIL WITH IRAN?
By SHERWOOD ROSS
Over and over again in the Middle East, we see the same pattern repeating itself:
An oil-rich country takes control of its own oil fields and cuts out the Western oil companies.
What follows as the night the day, the western countries overthrow the offending government and reinstall their favorite oil companies.
This has happened in both Iran and Iraq.
Right now, the U.S. is threatening Iran with war on grounds that it is making a nuclear weapons.
To begin with, Iran is a peaceful country. It hasn’t started a war in hundreds of years. It only fought when Iraq invaded it in 1980. ...
Since Iran did not even have a nuclear facility in 1953, what could have been the excuse for the attack?
The answer is oil. Iran kicked out the British oil company it felt was cheating it out of a fair profit for the oil it was extracting and took the oil field over from the British.
The British tried to overthrow the “insolent” Iran government but failed. Iran kicked the British spies out of the country.
So Britain asked the American CIA to overthrow the government and the U.S. did, deposing Prime Minister Mossadegh and putting a king on the throne.
And guess who got the contracts? The western oil companies: Gulf, Standard Oil of New Jersey, Texaco and Mobil – got a 40 percent share of the new National Iranian Oil Company.
And what happened in Iran in 1953 was also going to happen in Iraq in 2003 – the U.S. attacked Iraq after which the western oil companies got the plum contracts.
“Prior to the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq, US and other western oil companies were all but completely shut out of Iraq’s oil market,” industry analyst Antonia Juhasz told Al Jazeera wire service. “But thanks to the invasion and occupation, the companies are now back inside Iraq and producing oil there for the first time since being forced out of the country in 1973.”
And, adds Business Week magazine, “Western producers like BP, ExxonMobil, and Shell are enjoying their best access to Iraq’s southern oil fields since 1972.” 1972 was the year Saddam Hussein nationalized Iraq’s oil fields. Another big winner of the U.S. invasion: Hunt Oil Co., of Dallas, Tex., run by Ray Hunt, President George W. Bush’s friend and fund-raiser.
Oil industry analyst Juhasz says that ExxonMobil, BP, and Shell aggressively lobbied their governments “to ensure that the invasion would result in an Iraq open to foreign oil companies” and that “they succeeded.” Sure they succeeded. Because the Pentagon works hand-in-glove with the oil industry.
So what we have here is history repeating itself. Whenever Iraq or Iran have been attacked by the U.S. in the past it’s been over oil. That’s the record. Those are facts. But if you like you can believe the U.S. and Israel are threatening to attack only because they’re trying to stop Iran from getting a nuke. That’s an echo of President
George Bush’s lie that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.
There’s an inscription from Shakespeare etched on the National Archives building in downtown Washington, D.C. It says, “What’s past is prologue.” Shakespeare was right. Better believe it. And history will repeat itself with a new U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran unless the American people rise up and declare: “No blood for oil.” I’m Sherwood Ross. Good night to every one of you – and, oh, good luck.
––
BUT: But we must not neglect to factor into our advocacy that our imperative should always highlight the human need to create a world governed internationally according to a writ of enforceable world law made and agreed to by all nations.
–––1.30.12
Democratic World Federalists <dwfed@dwfed.org>
January 27
Article forwarded by Hank Stone.
Americans Are Less Nationalistic Than Flag-Waving Politicians Think
By LAWRENCE S. WITTNER
Published on Truthout (http://www.truth-out.org) 22 January
Are American politicians out of sync with the public when it comes to foreign policy? There is considerable reason to believe so.
Throughout the scramble for the GOP presidential nomination, the major candidates have certainly been rabidly nationalistic. In a major foreign policy address on October 7, 2011, Mitt Romney proclaimed that “the twenty-first century can and must be an American Century.” Championing a vast military buildup, he argued that, to secure this “American Century,” the United States should have “the strongest military in the world.” By contrast, he assailed the “shameful” role of the United Nations and other international institutions and declared that he did not see any reason to obey them – or the international law they represented – when it did not suit the U.S. government.
Romney’s newly-anointed top competitor, Rick Santorum, says nothing about the United Nations, international cooperation, or international law in the “10 Steps to Promote Our Interests Around the World” posted on his campaign website. Instead, he argues that the United States is “intrinsically better prepared to lead than any other nation.” He adds: “I truly do believe that we are ‘the last best hope of earth,’” but, alas, under President
Obama, “we have been weak where we should have been strong and we have been appeasing of evil.” Naturally, then, Americans should be “increasing our military preparedness.”
By contrast, polls show that most Americans favor a more cooperative world order based on international law, a stronger United Nations, and a less dominant role for the United States in world affairs.
In a World Public Opinion poll of sixteen nations in 2009, 69 percent of Americans supported the view that nations are obliged to abide by international law even when doing so is at odds with their national interest. Furthermore, a 2010 poll by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs found 82 percent of Americans favored ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (rejected by the GOP dominated Senate in 1999), 70 percent favored participation in the International Criminal Court (rejected by President George W. Bush), and 67 percent backed a new international treaty to combat climate change. In December 2008, a World Public Opinion poll found that 77 percent of Americans backed an international treaty abolishing nuclear weapons.
Furthermore, most Americans favor expanding the role of the United Nations in world affairs. Polling in 2010 by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs that majorities of Americans favored creating a standing UN peacekeeping force (64 percent), giving the United Nations the authority to enter countries to investigate human rights violations (72 percent), creating an international marshals service with the power to arrest leaders responsible for genocide (73 percent), and empowering the United Nations to regulate the international arms trade (55 percent).
Overall, as public opinion studies show, Americans want a smaller – rather than a larger – global footprint for their nation. According to a 2010 poll by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, only 8 percent favored the United States playing the role of the preeminent world leader, while 71 percent favored a cooperative approach. Gallup polls have turned up similar results. In 2011, Gallup reported that only 16 percent of Americans endorsed the option of the United States playing “the leading role” in world affairs. According to Gallup, 32 percent of Americans favored “a minor role” or “no role” at all for the United States, while 50 percent wanted the United States to “take a major role, but not the leading one.”
Much of this opposition to U.S. dominance in the world is undoubtedly based on distaste for the overseas U.S. military intervention of the past decade. In recent years, polls have found substantial public opposition to the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2010, a poll by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs found that 79 percent of Americans agreed with the statement that “the U.S. is playing the role of world policeman more than it should.”
Of course, during the frenzy of an election campaign, it is tempting to whip up nationalist sentiment through high-flying rhetoric about an “American Century” and America’s allegedly unique virtue. How many times have we heard, in these circumstances, that America is the greatest nation in the history of the world? But, in the end, Americans might prove more committed to an internationalist policy than this year’s flag-waving politicians think.
––
BUT: But we must not neglect to factor into our advocacy that our imperative should always highlight the human need to create a world governed internationally according to a writ of enforceable world law made and agreed to by all nations.
–––1.29.12
David Swanson <david@davidswanson.org>
January 26
Panetta: Military Spending Is Going Up
By DAVID SWANSON
On Thursday, Leon Panetta held a press conference announcing what he called "cuts" to military spending. The first question following his remarks pointed out that the "cuts" are to dream budgets, while the actual spending will be increased over Panetta's 10-year plan. Is there any year, the reporter asked, out of the 10 years in question, other than the first one, 2013, in which spending will actually decrease at all. Panetta replied that he was proposing really truly to cut the projected dream budgets that he had hoped for. In other words, he did not answer the question.
Now, there are additional minor cuts "on the table" as the saying goes, cuts that Panetta has described as disastrous, cuts that would take U.S. military spending back to about 2007 levels, cut nowhere close to what a majority of the country favors. (How we survived 2007 and all the years preceding it has never been explained.) Earlier this week, Republican members of the House Armed Services Committee sent President Obama a video denouncing these cuts. They are, of course, the cuts mandated by the legislation that created the Super Committee, which failed, resulting in supposedly automatic cuts.
The video ... is itself packed with lies. It falsely claims that cuts have already been made. It uses dollar figures derived from lumping 10 years of budgets together to make cuts sound 10 times larger. It pretends the automatic cuts would all be to the military, whereas many could be to the State Department and other subsidiary arms of the military. These Republicans propose slashing 10% of non-military government jobs and describe this as saving jobs, even though non-military spending produces more jobs for the same dollars than military spending does. And of course there is no mention in this video or in any official discussion of exactly how outrageously huge the U.S. military has become. But a crazy video, and a bill to go with it, can not only pass the House and make its way into the Senate (Senator John McCain is already working on companion legislation), but the President is already in agreement with this bill's primary purpose of undoing any actual cuts to the military. The history of lame duck officials, by the way, is that of becoming less, not more, representative of the public will. Caveat emptor!
In 2004, three times in three debates Senator John McCain proposed cutting military spending and Obama avoided the topic. Candidate Obama proposed significantly enlarging the largest military the world had ever seen. And he has done so. He now proposes not to cut it while pretending to cut it. The best bit of rhetoric in this week's State of the Union address was this:
"Take the money we're no longer spending at war, use half of it to pay down our debt, and use the rest to do some nation-building right here at home."
On Thursday, Panetta put that in real dollar terms. Setting aside any possible supplemental spending bills, and ignoring increased war participation by the CIA, the State Department, etc., and apart from the much larger "non-war" military spending that continues to inch upward, not downward, Panetta claimed that, if Congress would agree, we would spend $88 billion on wars next year, instead of $115 billion this year. That $115 billion is fairly typical of the past decade, in which we have spent between $100 billion and $200 billion on wars each year (not counting veterans care, fuel price impacts, lost opportunities, debt interest, etc.) I suspect it also does not include Libya. So, we're saving $27 billion, maybe. Take half of that for debt, and we've got $13.5 billion with which to do our nation-building right here at home. Let's be generous and round it up to $100 billion. That's still in comparison with an overall war and "security" budget of well over $1 trillion annually. And $13.5 billion is less than a quarter of the $60 billion Panetta now claims he will save purely through "increased efficiency." (Granted, that actually could be done in the Pentagon if it were not, you know, the Pentagon.)
The talk of cuts serves more than a political purpose for Panetta and Obama. It also serves to justify actual cuts to services for troops and veterans even while increasing spending on weapons and occupying new nations. Also announced on Thursday, Obama is working on re-occupying the Philippines. To his credit, there has been no mention of the benefits to "our little brown brothers." There will be an increased Asian presence, Panetta said. The Marines will maintain their Pacific presence, he noted in particular, horribly smashing the hopes of the entire population of Okinawa. There will be no cuts to bombers. We will have a "posture forward" and be able to "penetrate defenses" strengthening "the ability to project power in denied areas," also known as other people's countries. But healthcare fees and deductibles for troops and veterans will have to go up, Panetta said.
The second question asked at Panetta's press conference (how did actual reporters get in there?) was why a tiny reduction following a massive increase in troops in Afghanistan was really sufficient. Panetta was unable to explain. Can you?
–
David Swanson is the author of "When the World Outlawed War," "War Is A Lie" and "Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union."
––
Ali Goldstein <Ali .Goldstein@wfp.org>
January 26
WFP HONOURS ARCHBISHOP EMERITUS DESMOND TUTU AS CHAMPION AGAINST HUNGER
DAVOS – The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) is honouring Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu of South Africa as a Global Champion in the Battle against Hunger in recognition of his long-time advocacy on behalf of the world’s most vulnerable people. WFP will present an award to Archbishop Emeritus Tutu during a dinner at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland later today.
“Throughout his life, Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu has been a voice for the hungry, the poor and the vulnerable,” said WFP Executive Director, Josette Sheeran, “ I can think of no more worthy individual as a recipient of this honour, than a man who has confronted tyranny and defended the weak and the hungry, armed with nothing but the strength of his faith and the unwavering belief in upholding the rights of the oppressed.”
A Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and life-long activist, Archbishop Emeritus Tutu has been a staunch advocate for universal human rights, including the right to food, as well as the rights to clean water, shelter, hygiene, sanitation and health care.
“There are some problems so big and so entrenched it is easy to believe they will never be solved. Hunger is one of these problems,” said Archbishop Emeritus Tutu last year. “Yet a lifetime of experience has taught me that there is no problem so great it cannot be solved, no injustice so deeply entrenched it cannot be overcome. And that includes hunger.”
Archbishop Emeritus Tutu is the fourth recipient of WFP’s Global Champion Against Hunger award. Recent recipients include Kofi Annan, the former UN Secretary-General; King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, of Saudia Arabia; and Peter Bakker, former CEO of global logistics company TNT and WFP Ambassador Against Hunger.
Representatives of governments, non-profit organizations and corporations will attend the dinner at which Archbishop Emeritus Tutu will be presented with his award. The World Economic Forum is an opportunity for WFP to engage with the world’s political, economic and business leaders to discuss their role in supporting efforts to alleviate global hunger, the world’s greatest solvable problem. During the dinner, WFP will also launch its commemoration of 50 years as the UN’s frontline agency in the fight against hunger.
––1.28.12
No Way to Run the World
“AS TENSIONS RISE,
EGYPT BARS EXIT
OF SIX AMERICANS
“ONE IS SON OF OFFICIAL
“Washington Threatens
to Withhold Annual
Aid to Military
“By STEVEN LEE MYERS
and DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
“WASHINGTON – Building tensions between the United States and Egypt flashed into the open Thursday when Cairo confirmed that it had barred at least a half dozen Americans from leaving the country and the Obama administration threatened explicitly to withhold its annal aid to the Egyptian military. ...”
Lead story in the New York Times of Jan 27.
––
From a President Barack Obama fundraiser –
“We need our best and brightest to gravitate toward careers in these fields (science and research), not in financial speculation and bubbles. This country should not be known for bad debt and quick profits. We should be known for creating and selling products all around the world that are stamped with three proud words: ‘Made in America.’”...
––
“Citizens for Global Solutions, Amanda B.” <outreach@globalsolutions.org>
Thanks and Another Q&A with the White House
January 25, 2012
Citizens for Global Solutions
Thanks to everyone who participated in the White House Tweet-Up during and after the State of the Union last night! Your support is what made this event such a success... ...
I’m sure you were just as disappointed as we were that President Obama barely scratched the surface on global challenges, devoting only 13% of his address to international affairs. His limited remarks on our strong military relationship with Israel, the assassination of Osama Bin Laden, and keeping all options on the table when dealing with Iran left a lot to be desired.
But you have another opportunity to tell the White House what challenges facing the world concern you the most. This Friday, Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications and Speechwriting Ben Rhodes will be taking your questions on Twitter from 11 am -12 pm EST. If you’re concerned about climate change and the environment, join the conversation with Heather Zichal, Deputy Assistant to the President for Energy & Climate Change and Dan Utech, Deputy Director of Energy Policy on Friday from 2-3 pm EST. Tweet questions using #WHChat and follow the conversation on @WHLive or post your questions to @CGS_DC on Twitter or the CGS Facebook page and Julia S. and Julia B. will ask your questions. For more information, go to the White House website.
On Monday, President Obama will be answering questions live on Google+ Hangout. From now until January 28 at 12 am EST, you can submit your questions on the White House You Tube channel and vote for your favorites to get an answer from the President on the issues that you care about. You could be one of the lucky few participants chosen to join the Google+ Hangout to ask your question to President Obama live!
With one powerful voice, we can tell the White House that we need international cooperation to ensure not only our own success, but shared prosperity for the world.
Thanks for all you do,
Amanda B.
Advocacy Manager
Citizens for Global Solutions
––1.27.12
GOP primaries as seen in Europe
January 24
Fellow Concerned Voters,
Is it possible that Western European observers are more cognizant than many of the American voters of Iowa, South Carolina, et al? Thanks to PHB for passing on these observations.
John O. Sutter
–
The following is from “The Week,” a weekly journal that is neither liberal nor conservative. It quoted several respected foreign newspapers regarding US GOP politics:
THE GERMAN PRESS
The Republican presidential contest in America is a “freak show,” said Marc Pitzke in the German Der Spiegel. The candidates vie with one another to spew the most outrageous hard-right positions, denying evolution while endorsing torture and joking about electrocuting illegal immigrants. How did a major party in the world’s sole superpower become a “club of liars, debtors, betrayers, adulterers, exaggerators, hypocrites, and ignoramuses?” These know-nothings are enabled by a U.S. press that has been “neutered by the demands of political correctness” so that it can’t say what’s obvious: These people are daft! Instead, it “proclaims one clown after the next to be the new front-runner.” The current favorite, Newt Gingrich, is actually considered an intellectual merely because he can create sentences with multiple clauses. Scarcely a one has even the most basic grasp of foreign policy. One said Africa is a country, another that the Taliban rule in Libya. Collectively, “they expose a political, economic, geographic, and historical ignorance that makes George W. Bush look like a scholar.”
THE FRENCH PRESS
That’s the scariest part, said Lorraine Millot in the Paris Liberation. The only GOP candidate who knows a thing about diplomacy, Jon Huntsman, is dead last in most polls. The others “careen to extreme positions that include starting new wars and abandoning old allies.” And that’s when they even have a position. Herman Cain, now thankfully out of the race, was the front-runner even though he couldn’t find a single coherent word to say about President Obama’s policy on Libya. He even boasted of knowing little about foreign countries. And yet it was his adultery, not his astounding ignorance that brought him down.
THE BRITISH PRESS
There’s a simple explanation for this bizarre phenomenon, said Max Hastings in the London Daily Mail. In the “lunatic, gun-toting badlands of America’s Hicks-ville, Tea Party country,” it’s considered suspiciously elitist to show any interest in modern science or the world beyond America’s borders. “Say what you like about British politics, no MP of any party would dare to offer themselves as town dog-catcher while knowing as little about the world as the Republican presidential candidates.” We take public service seriously. Yet we in Britain, and everyone in the rest of the world, will suffer if “one of the lunatics” vying for the nomination makes it to the White House.
“The American political system has seldom, if ever, looked so inadequate.”
Don’t worry, said Matthew Norman in the London Independent. The fact that Gingrich is the latest threat to Mitt Romney’s inevitability just “confirms how inevitable” Romney’s nomination is. The thrice-married, ethically challenged Gingrich is unlikable in the extreme. Which means the nominee will be Romney, “the slimiest, phoniest opportunist to run for president since...well, ever.” So sit back and enjoy this circus passing for a presidential election. It can’t possibly end in a GOP victory. Can it?
––
David Swanson <david@davidswanson.org>
January 24
Japanese Delegation Wants the U.S. Out of Okinawa
By DAVID SWANSON
A 24-member delegation from Japan is in Washington, D.C., this week opposing the presence and new construction of U.S. military bases in Okinawa. Participating are members of the Japanese House of Councilors, of the Okinawa Prefectural Assembly, and of city governments in Okinawa, as well as leading protest organizers and the heads of several important organizations opposed to the ongoing U.S. military occupation of Okinawa.
The famously stingy U.S. tax payer, frequently seen bitterly protesting outrageously wasteful spending of a few million dollars, is paying billions of dollars to maintain and expand some 90 military bases in Japan (and to make those who profit from such business filthy rich). Thirty-four of those bases, containing 74% of their total land area, are in Okinawa, which itself contains only 0.6% of Japanese land. Okinawa is dominated by U.S. military bases and has been for 67 years since the U.S. forcibly appropriated much of the best land.
The people of Okinawa tell pollsters year after year that they oppose the bases. Year after year they elect government officials who oppose the bases. Year after year they march, sit-in, protest, and demand to be heard. Year after year, the national Japanese government confronts the issue and fails to take any decisive steps to resolve it. Year after year, the people of the United States remain blissfully unaware that, as in so many other places around the world, our military occupation of Okinawa is ruining people's lives.
Members of the delegation spoke at Busboys and Poets in Washington, D.C., Monday night. Toshio Ikemiyagi thanked people who came to hear them and pointed out that we all looked healthy and alert. That, he said, is because you have all had sleep. You've been able to sleep at night without deafening jet noise, he said. Ikemiyagi is the lead attorney on a lawsuit challenging the Kadena Air Base's noise pollution. He played us a video on Monday of what it is like. For the people who live there, he said, the war that ended 67 years ago has never ended.
Keiko Itokazu, a Member of the Japanese National Diet... said the Okinawan people had been heartbroken since having been unable to protect a 12-year-old girl from gang rape by U.S. troops in 1995. The Status of Forces Agreement between the United States and Japan gives U.S. troops immunity from Japanese prosecution. Between 1979 and 2008, U.S. forces in Okinawa caused 1,439 accidents (487 of them airplane related), and 5,584 criminal cases (559 of them involving violent crimes). The list includes fatal driving incidents, residential break-ins, taxi robberies, sexual violence, and other serious crimes against local citizens. ...
Our military is trying to build yet more bases in Okinawa. Why, you ask? Word around town is that even the Pentagon thinks it serves no purpose, but the Marine Corps likes to hold onto anything it's got. The Marines have even named one of their bases in Okinawa for Smedley Butler, the author of "War Is A Racket," and a man whom the Marines once imprisoned at Quantico for having spoken badly of Benito Mussolini. Don't look for logic. Look for petty rivalry and power, combined with unaccountability and we the people missing in action. ...
The Japanese delegation is meeting with Congress Members, including Senator Jim Webb on Wednesday, urging them to close and consolidate bases. I once accompanied a group of Italians on almost identical visits to Congress. The people of Vicenza, Italy, oppose the bases the U.S. military and the national Italian government impose on them, just as the people of Okinawa do. The congress members and staffers we met with at that time gave not the slightest damn for human rights or the environment or popular opinion. I don't think any of the Japanese delegates expect to encounter such humanity this week either. Their hope is to highlight the financial costs to the United States of the occupation of Japan. My hope is that we can help them by telling our misrepresentatives that we agree with the members of the delegation. If you're inclined to help, please call your rep and two senators with that message.
Specifically, the delegation is asking for the closure of the U.S. Marine Corps' Futenma Air Station; cancellation of plans to construct a new Marine Corps air base at Cape Henoko; reduction of unbearable noise caused by air operations at Kadena Air Base; withdrawal of any proposal to integrate Futenma's helicopter squadrons into Kadena's operations; an end to the construction of six new helipads in the Yanbaru forest in northern Okinawa; and revision of the U.S.-Japan Status of Forces Agreement to allow fair prosecutions of crimes.
Ultimately, however, the members of the delegation want the bases all to be closed. And they do not want them relocated to Guam or Australia or anywhere else, except perhaps to the United States. Itokazu suggested that the U.S. government could save money and produce jobs by bringing bases home. But, of course, we don't want a military occupation any more than Japan does, and the same money would produce more jobs if spent on a non-military industry.
Base opponents in Okinawa work with others in Korea, Guam, and Hawaii, and with former residents of Diego Garcia, as well as others around the world. An international conference called "Dialogue Under Occupation" was held in Okinawa last summer. In fact, people are working extremely hard in cities around the world to shut down or prevent the construction of giant military bases that we in the United States pay for and are endangered by but have very little awareness of. ...
Ikemiyagi (leader of the nonviolent resistance in Henoko) says democracy requires U.S. withdrawal from Okinawa. As with the location of nuclear power plants in Japan, he says, the Japanese government wants the military bases out of sight. If Tokyo wants bases, he says, then put them in Tokyo. The people of Okinawa have had enough.
Haven't we all?
David Swanson is the author of "When the World Outlawed War," "War Is A Lie" and "Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union."
–––1.26.12
“OBAMA SETS GOAL
OF ECONOMY BUILT
FOR THE LONG RUN
“Characterizes His Vision as an America
‘Where Everyone Gets a Fair Shot’
“By HELENE COOPER
“WASHINGTON – President Obama pledged onTuesday night to use government power to balance the scale between America’s rich and the rest of the public, trying to present an election-year choice between continued leadership toward an economy ‘built to last’ and what he called irresponsible policies of the past that caused an economic collapse. ...”
Lead story in New York Times of Jan. 25.
WPN applauds the emphasis on equal opportunity and fairness for all but regrets the usual statements on the “exceptionalism of Americans” and the military which sometimes don’t make friends abroad, ease international relations or open the path to cooperation to a united world of enforceable law.
––
“Romney Unleashes Attack
With Gingrich Sole Target
“Gingrich ‘Super PAC’
Gets Cash Infusion
of $5 Million
“By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE
“A wealthy backer of Newt Gingrich will inject $5 million into a ‘super PAC’ supporting his presidential bid, two people with knowledge of the contribution said on Monday providing a major boost to Mr. Gingrich as he seeks to fend off aggressive attacks from Mitt Romney, his main Republican rival. ...”
–
“Sharp Exchanges –
Ex-Speaker Sees
Desperate Ploy
“By JEFF ZELENY
and JIM RUTENBERG
“TAMPA, Fla. –Mitt Romney leveled a searing attack against Newt Gingrich’s character and raised pointed questions about his ability to lead during a debate here Monday evening, taking urgent steps to slow Mr. Gingrich’s rising momentum in the fight for theRepublican presidential nomination. ...”
Lead front page news stories in New York Times of Jan. 24.
––1.25.12
“Arthur Kanegis” <arthur@futurewave.org>
January 23
You Tube videos to get people thinking about Global Government
Love seeing Rob’s work and that of so many others! Some of you also know about my work as a filmmaker to find a great story that will propel concepts of global governance into the popular culture. When Troy suggested that I make a movie about his dad, I read Garry’s book My Country is the World – and found it a very cinematic.
While many people have talked about World Governance some day, Garry Davis, as an actor, had the nerve to act – creating a microcosm of a World Government that actually issues World Passports and more. While stamped by almost every nation on earth, at least on occasion, (on many other occasions refused) they are even more importantly a symbol of our Unity, a great prop for Garry’s life-long production of World Citizen #1 on the World Stage. Take a look at our short film that won Best Global Documentary in the NY International film Festival at www.onefilms.com.
Even if you watched our short in the past, check out the new ending with Garry talking directly to the camera about his vision: Garry’s view is that World governance starts from the bottom up, not the top down. He bypasses the whole dysfunctional nation-state system and instead goes back to the source of sovereignty, the people themselves. His goal, and the goal is to inspire the general public to build an interactive system of governance based on the open-source and Wikipedia models – a people-powered planet.
Then click on the www.onefilms.com/YouTube and take a look at our other videos. We are working to create a funny and entertaining movie of this inspiring story.
We are also in the process of finishing up a new You Tube video, which takes a fun and dramatic look at Garry on the line talking to the Occupy movement, developing great rapport with many young people there.
Arthur Kanegis One Films LLC
––
David Swanson <david@davidswanson.org>
January 20
Lucid Derangement
By David Swanson
One would think that if condemned to lose sanity it would be preferable not to be aware of what was happening. On the contrary, as in lucid dreaming, there is something empowering and even comforting in lucid derangement, particularly national as opposed to personal derangement.
We may be in the advanced stages of going loony as a society and a polity, and yet expanding one's awareness of how this process is proceeding is a form of enlightenment, even if the enlightenment is offered with some defeatist shading.
"The United States of Fear" is a collection of Tom Engelhardt's writings from his TomDispatch blog. It turns our world inside out any number of times, allowing us to glimpse with startling clarity the horrifying world outside our cave without ever quite persuading us that the real world can be real if it isn't on television, and not infrequently building into the presentation the understanding that there is no cure for what ails us.
Here's an example. According to Engelhardt we dwell in a "Postlegal America":
"Is the Libyan war legal? Was Osama bin Laden's killing legal? Is it legal for the president of the United States to target an American citizen for assassination? Were those 'enhanced interrogation techniques' legal? . . . [Such questions] are irrelevant. Think of them as twentieth century questions that don't begin to come to grips with twenty-first-century American realities. In fact, I think of them, and the very idea of a nation based on the rule of law, as symptoms of nostalgia for a long-lost republic."
This formulation crystallizes our understanding that we are not dealing here with something in the way of the peaks of corruption seen in past cycles. There is something new and different about an age in which our leading criminals go on book tours while people scream for the blood of our leading whistleblowers, an age in which blanket immunity shields those guilty of the largest crimes from either prosecution or public identification, an age in which Ed Meese's contention (that anyone among the peasants who is accused of a minor crime is by definition guilty) walks hand-in-hand with Richard Nixon's explanation (that if a president does it then it is not a crime). But Engelhardt's formulation simultaneously belittles and discourages efforts to undo this development. Who wants to be irrelevant, to fail to come to grips with the proper century, to suffer from nostalgia? Well, I do, of course. I want to join Martin King's International Association for the Advancement of Creative Maladjustment. I don't want to adjust to Postlegal Land.
In addition, according to Engelhardt, we have entered the Soviet Era in America:
"It gives you chills to run across Communist Party general secretary Mikhail Gorbachev at a Politburo meeting in October 1985, almost six years after Soviet troops first flooded into Afghanistan, reading letters aloud to his colleagues from embittered Soviet citizens. . . . Or, in November 1986, insisting to those same colleagues that the Afghan War must be ended in a year, 'at maximum, two.' . . . Or what about Marshal Sergei Akhromeyev . . . 'There is no single piece of land in this country that has not been occupied by a Soviet soldier. Nevertheless, the majority of the territory remains in the hands of the rebels.'"
Not only has the United States transformed itself into the Soviet Union as the new occupier of Afghanistan whistling past the imperial graveyard, but we have accomplished this in the most Hopeful manner without really changing anything other than creating a collective fantasy called Change:
"In the midst of the Great Recession, under a new president with supposedly far fewer illusions about American omnipotence and power, war policy continued to expand in just about every way."
Engelhardt's book takes us through the dark Bush-Cheney era and on through the sunkissed dawn of Obama's codification and entrenchment of Bush-Cheney crimes as the new normalcy. Engelhardt starts with the Cheney-run empowerment of the members of the Project for the New American Century:
"This may, in fact, be the first example in history of a think tank coming to power and actually putting its blue-sky suggestions into operation as government policy, or perhaps it’s the only example so far of a government in waiting masquerading as a think tank."
The agenda of that think tank is still the agenda of the White House and Pentagon. What has changed? In Engelhardt's telling, we've gone from a government of fanatical pro-war visionaries to one with no vision at all, just momentum. Oh, and, as Engelhardt points out, the U.S. corporate media has stopped seriously covering the deaths of U.S. men and women in war. That's a change. And the world's biggest ever embassy in Iraq from the Bush era is now being duplicated in Pakistan -- with Hopey Changey drapes no doubt.
Another change that Engelhardt draws out and focuses our eyes and ears on is what might be called the logorrhea of the lieutenants. "There's a history still to be written," writes Engelhardt as he publishes the first draft, "about how our highest military commanders came to never shut up." Military propaganda targeting our own people is a daily diet now. And while the generals are talking, our economy is imploding, our infrastructure crumbling. We know this is happening, but we don't usually contemplate the scale of it or push to do something about it. We're too fascinated by all the medals on the generals' uniforms. And we're not the only ones. "I have no greater job," Engelhardt quotes Obama saying, "nothing gives me more honor than serving as your commander in chief." Engelhardt comments in typical fashion:
"As ever, all of this was overlooked. Nowhere did a single commentator wonder, for instance, whether an American president was really supposed to feel that being commander in chief offered greater 'honor' than being president of a nation of citizens. In another age, such a statement would have registered as, at best, bizarre."
Like the Italian cruise ship captain who accidentally "tripped" and fell into a lifeboat and abandoned his floating city to its fate, the power madness Engelhardt depicts is framed in his book as the flailings of a beast in decline:
"The proximate cause of Washington's defeat is a collapse of its imperial position in a region that, ever since President Jimmy Carter proclaimed his Carter Doctrine in 1980, has been considered the crucible of global power. Today, 'people power' has shaken the pillars of the American position in the Middle East, while – despite the staggering levels of military might the Pentagon still has embedded in the area – the Obama administration has found itself standing helplessly and in grim confusion."
Now Engelhardt comes around to the possibility that indeed something can be done, at least by foreigners: "Never in memory," Engelhardt writes in the excitement of last year's Arab Spring, "have so many unjust or simply despicable rulers felt quite so helpless, despite being armed to the teeth – in the presence of unarmed humanity. There has to be joy and hope in that alone."
If "The United States of Fear" helps the United States set aside the fear, there is no limit to what unarmed humanity can do, even here, even acting on its nostalgia for the never-quite-existent age of equality before the law.
–
David Swanson is the author of "When the World Outlawed War," "War Is A Lie" and "Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union."
–––1.24.12
Deb <dmetke@gmail.com>
January 16
I like both Chris’ and Troy’s ideas, but I also think we should start doing mass blitzes on Facebook and email to let everybody know that time is really becoming of the essence, as we now seen hundreds of methane plumes arising from the Arctic, bees disappearing at a now critical level, Fukushima spewing radiation around the world, etc.
We don’t have to have every technical detail of DWF in place, but our fellow earthlings had better be exposed to thinking outside the box. Voting for reps at a world level is something that can at least make them think they can have a say in all this, even though all the kinks haven’t been worked out yet. And maybe one of them will find some answer we haven’t thought of yet.
My point is to just start taking it and running with it on as mass a scale as we can. With the internet we can move pretty fast.
Debbie Metke
–
Bob Flax <bflax@saybrook.edu>
January 22
Debbie,
I have 2 more Board surveys to get back and then I plan to compile all the ideas into a 3-Year Strategic Plan which I will propose to the Board. Most likely it will include a committee to spearhead the kinds of outreach efforts you mention here. Let me know if you would like to be a lead person on that.
Bob
Robert L. Flax, Ph.D.
Faculty, Saybrook University
Board Member, Democratic World Federalists
––
info <info@progessiveavenues.org>
January 22
What Planet Do These GOP ... Live On?
Barry Willdorf (attorney and author): “Watching the Republican debates is like going to a Klan rally without the sheets.”
By LUKE HIKEN and MARTI HIKEN
Watching the Republican candidates describe the various methods by which they would destroy the U.S. government is certainly an illuminating exercise, regardless of which clown leads the pack. It is one thing for the Koch Brothers, Sam Walton, or others of their ilk to suggest that the government and public would be better off if corporations were not taxed at all; such a comment is obviously self-serving nonsense. Indeed, if they had their way, they would do away with any limits whatsoever on their power, wealth or authority.
Yet, for electoral candidates, who are confronted with the economic crises facing this nation and the world, who are witnessing the worst depression in 65 years, and who are faced with unparalleled unemployment and financial stagnation – for those candidates to parrot the wish-list of corporate billionaires as if their recommendations are anything but ludicrous is simply mind-boggling.
If you were to put the entire Republican Party in one room together it would not be possible to assemble a single intelligent brain from the entire lot. Do they really believe the garbage and pap they utter in the media? Take some examples of their proposals:
1) Stop funding education. Why teach children subjects such as literature, humanities, art or other disciplines that they will not be able to use when they graduate and go to work for slave wages at businesses and mega corporations?
2) Cut Welfare, Social Security and Medicare. These “socialistic” programs cater to laziness and constitute unwarranted charity.
3) Continue to fight imperial wars throughout the Middle East – only escalate those battles with the use of nuclear weapons. Expand U.S. hegemony throughout the world to bring democracy to the “savages” and “fools” of other nations.
4) Get rid of those pesky unions that require corporate billionaires to pay ugly, unfair expenses like the minimum wage, and prevent bosses from firing any employees they want to get rid of for any reason.
5) Deregulate the entire economy, so that corporations can pillage without fear of fines or limitations concerning the destruction of the environment or the unlimited expansion of their economic empires.
6) Outlaw abortion. An unborn fetus has more rights than the woman carrying the child.
7) Oppose any form of single-payer or universal health care. Simply let the sick, old and disabled die, as an indication of God’s will.
8) Religious fanaticism is a virtue; it is patriotic and appropriate. Being Christian is a mandatory prerequisite to being “religious.”
The list of atrocities and absurdities is endless and unfathomable. An intelligent enemy of the U.S. would sit back and take whatever steps it could to ensure that Republicans win the next election. Nothing could do more to destroy this nation than to support the various proposals spewing forth from the mouths of these candidates.
What is perhaps even more tragic than that prospect, however, is the fact the Obama, and the Democrats appear to be uniting around the very programs set forth above. There is no sane party for rational Americans to support. If it were possible to find someplace to flee to that would be safe from attack by the U.S. within a few short years, Americans would leave in droves. Compared to the Republican agenda, Alice in Wonderland doesn’t seem like a child’s fable at all.
–––1.23.12
David Swanson <david@davidswanson.org>
January 21
How Newt Gingrich Saved the Military Industrial Complex
By DAVID SWANSON
The idea of economic conversion, of retooling and retraining pieces of the military industrial complex to build what other wealthy nations have (infrastructure, energy, education, etc.) converged with the end of the Cold War two decades back. It was time for a peace dividend as well as a little sanity in public spending. Among the cosponsors of a bill to begin economic conversion in the late 1980s was a guy by the name of Leon Panetta.
Standing in the way was Congressman Newt Gingrich (Republican, Lockheed Martin).
As Mary Beth Sullivan recounts ( http://MIC50.org ),
"On the first day of the opening of the 101st Congress, Speaker [Jim] Wright convened a meeting of members who had proposed economic conversion legislation, and their aids. The purpose was to ensure that all proposals be joined into one, and that this legislation be given priority. To dramatize the importance of this bill, it would be given number H.R. 101."
Seymour Melman, a leading proponent of the bill recounts what happened:
"Supporters of such an initiative did not reckon with the enormous power of those opposed to any such move toward economic conversion. In the weeks that followed, these vested interests waged a concerted and aggressive campaign in Congress and the national media to bring down Jim Wright over allegations of financial misconduct."
"The allegations," Sullivan writes, "had little substance, but Newt Gingrich, representing a headquarters district of Lockheed Martin, led the Republican attack. Sadly, they won. According to Melman, 'Their media campaign drowned out any further discussion of economic conversion … A historic opportunity had been destroyed."
The military industrial complex survived and thrived and is growing even to this moment with plans to grow on into the foreseeable future, even as we're falsely told it's being cut back. Our nation trails others in the areas of education, health, retirement security, life expectancy, infant mortality, environmental sustainability, poverty, and –in so far as anyone has measured it – happiness. Instead we have a military that costs as much as the rest of the world's put together, and much of the rest of the world's is purchased from our weapons makers. We have aircraft carriers, bombs, missiles, helicopters, bases, drones, and billionaires to make up for our crappy schools and lousy trains.
While I understand how exciting Newt Gingrich's sex life may be, there may be other things he has to answer for as well.
––
David Swanson <david@davidswanson.org>
January 21
Be stashed, bloated military
By DAVID SWANSON
The best book I've read in a very long time is a new one: "The End of War" by John Horgan. Its conclusions will be vigorously resisted by many and yet, in a certain light, considered perfectly obvious to some others. The central conclusion – that ending the institution of war is entirely up to us to choose – was, arguably, reached by (among many others before and since) John Paul Sartre sitting in a café utilizing exactly no research.
Horgan is a writer for "Scientific American," and approaches the question of whether war can be ended as a scientist. It's all about research. He concludes that war can be ended, has in various times and places been ended, and is in the process (an entirely reversible process) of being ended on the earth right now.
The war abolitionists of the 1920s Outlawry movement would have loved this book, would have seen it as a proper extension of the ongoing campaign to rid the world of war. But it is a different book from theirs. It does not preach the immorality of war. That idea, although proved truer than ever by the two world wars, failed to prevent the two world wars. When an idea's time has come and also gone, it becomes necessary to prove to people that the idea wasn't rendered impossible or naïve by "human nature" or grand forces of history or any other specter. Horgan, in exactly the approach required, preaches the scientific observation of the success (albeit incomplete as yet) of preaching the immorality of war.
The evidence, Horgan argues, shows that war is a cultural contagion, a meme that serves its own ends, not ours (except for certain profiteers perhaps). Wars happen because of their cultural acceptance and are avoided by their cultural rejection. Wars are not created by genes or avoided by eugenics or oxytocin, driven by an ever-present minority of sociopaths or avoided by controlling them, made inevitable by resource scarcity or inequality or prevented by prosperity and shared wealth, or determined by the weaponry available. All such factors, Horgan finds, can play parts in wars, but the decisive factor is a militaristic culture, a culture that glorifies war or even just accepts it, a culture that fails to renounce war as something as barbaric as cannibalism. War spreads as other memes spread, culturally. The abolition of war does the same.
Those who believe that war is in our genes or mandated by overpopulation or for whatever other reason simply unavoidable or even desirable will not be attracted to Horgan's book. But they should read it. It is written for them and carefully argued and documented. Those who, in contrast, believe it is as obvious as breathing air that we can choose to end war tomorrow will find a little sad comedy in the fact that the way we get people to choose to end a long-established institution is by rigorously persuading them that such choices have been made before and are already well underway. Yet, that is exactly what people need to hear, especially those who are on the edge between "War is in DNA" and "War is over if you want it." Most human cultures never produced nuclear bombs or genetically engineered corn or Youtube. Many cultures have produced peace. But what if they hadn't? How in the world would that prevent us from producing it?
Evidence of lethal group violence does not go back through our species' millions of years but only through the past 10,000 to 13,000. Even chimpanzees' supposed innate war spirit is not established. We are not the only primates who seem able to learn either war or peace. Annual war-related casualties have dropped more than ten-fold since the first half of the twentieth century. Democracy is no guarantee of peace, but it is allowing people to say no to war. Of course, democracy is not all or nothing. Some democracies, like ours in the United States, can be very weak, and weaker still on the question of war. What allows nations' leaders to take countries into war, Horgan shows, is not people's aggressiveness but their docility, their obedience, their willingness to follow and even to believe what authorities tell them.
Mistaken theories about the causes of war create the self-fulfilling expectation that war will always be with us. Predicting that climate change will produce world war may actually fail to inspire people to buy solar panels, inspiring them instead to support military spending and to stock up at home on guns and emergency supplies.
I wish Horgan had looked more at the motivations of those in power who choose war, some of whom do profit from it in various ways. I also think he understates the importance of the military industrial complex, whose influence Eisenhower accurately predicted would be total and even spiritual. It's harder to work for the abolition of war when the war industry is behind your job. I think this book could benefit from recognition of the U.N. Charter's limitations as compared with the Kellogg-Briand Pact, in its acceptance of wars that are either "defensive" or authorized by the United Nations. I think Horgan's view of the Arab Spring and the Libyan War is confused, as he thinks in terms of intervention in countries where the United States had already long been intervened, and he frames the choices as war or nothing. I think the final chapter on free will is rather silly, confusing the philosophical point of physical determinism with how things look from our perspective, a confusion that David Hume straightened out quite a while ago.
But Horgan makes a key point in that last chapter, pointing to a study that found that when people were exposed to the idea that they had no free will they behaved less morally, choosing to behave badly, of course, with the very same free will they nonetheless maintained. Being free to choose, we can in fact choose things that most of us never dare imagine. Here's John Horgan's perfect prescription:
"We could start by slashing our bloated military, abolishing arms sales to other countries, and getting rid of our nuclear arsenal. These steps, rather than empty rhetoric, will encourage other countries to demilitarize as well."
Or as Jean Paul Sartre put it – (Look, ma, no research!) – "To say that the for-itself has to be what it is, to say that it is what it is not while not being what it is, to say that in it existence precedes and conditions essence or inversely according to Hegel, that for it 'Wesen ist was gewesen ist' – all this is to say one and the same thing: to be aware that man is free."
–
David Swanson is the author of "When the World Outlawed War," "War Is A Lie" and "Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union."
–––1.22.12
Planning Wins
Against Nincompoops
POPULATION
CONNECTION
Earlier today (January 20), the Obama administration announced that it would not change a proposed rule issued this past summer to guarantee that contraceptives be covered by all insurance plans without co-pays. This puts us on a path to near universal coverage of birth control.
Since the rule was first proposed, opponents of birth control have mounted a noisy campaign to either lift the rule completely or allow a wide range of employers to “opt-out” of the coverage. Today, the White House and the Department of Health and Human Services said no to those requests. This means that millions of American women will have access to affordable contraceptives.
Starting later this year, new health insurance plans will be required to fully cover the cost of a wide range of contraceptives — all without co-pays. In a minor concession, the administration will allow some organizations additional time to comply.
This is an extraordinary advance for women and families across the country, and has the potential to dramatically impact the rate of unplanned pregnancy in the United States. Please take just a moment to thank both President Obama and Secretary Sebelius for taking a stand in support of family planning and against reactionary ideology.
––
Democratic World Federalists <dwfed@dwfed.org
IRAQ: Campaign for Freedom of the Press
January 20
Fellow concerned citizens,
FYI, John O. Sutter
DEMOCRATIC WORLD FEDERALISTS
Working for a Democratic World Federation
55 New Montgomery St. #225, San Francisco, CA 94105-3421
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Terry Rockefeller <terrykayrockefeller@gmail.com>
Dear UFPJ Activists,
On January 30th the Iraqi Federal Court in Baghdad will hear a case that could determine the role of a free press in Iraq for the immediate future. A petition being circulated inside and outside of Iraq by Iraqi independent journalists and human rights activists would help enact and enforce world law. Distribute widely to your colleagues!
http://www.ahewar.org/camp/i.asp?id=334
Terry Rockefeller
CAMPAIGN TO SUPPORT FREEDOM OF THE PRESS AND FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION IN IRAQ
The Iraqi Civil Society Solidarity Initiative (ICSSI) urges you to support the lawsuit before the Iraqi Federal Court to abolish the so-called "Journalists' Rights Law" recently passed by the Iraqi parliament. This law explicitly violates articles 13, 14, 38 and 46 of the Iraqi Constitution, which protect freedom of the press and freedom of expression. The law is incompatible with Iraq's international obligations, under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, both signed by the Iraqi State. It especially fails to respect Article 19 of the Universal Declaration, which says: "Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers."
The law also compromises the constitutionally guaranteed principle of equal citizenship, by conferring illegal and illegitimate benefits and privileges on journalists. Moreover it describes the role of the journalist as working to promote the acts of government authorities, thereby totally undermining public confidence in the media.
A lawsuit to repeal the "Journalists' Rights Law" has been organized by The Society for Defending Press Freedom, an Iraqi Non-governmental Organisation, and is supported by many Iraqi journalists and media activists. We are collecting signatures from supporters both inside and outside of Iraq to present to Mr. Midhat Almahmud, Chairman of the Iraqi Federal Supreme Court, urging him to compel the Iraqi parliament to undertake the procedures necessary to end these violations of the Iraqi Constitution and international law.
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David Swanson <david@davidswanson.org>
January 19
Constitutional Amendment to Create Public Financing Introduced by Kucinich
By DAVID SWANSON
I recently recommended a comprehensive Constitutional amendment addressing the corruption of our elections.
The largest piece of it, largely inspired by an amendment drafted by Russell Simmons, had not been introduced in Congress . . . until now.
Congressman Dennis Kucinich has just introduced HJRes100 which proposes this Constitutional Amendment:
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• Section 1. All campaigns for President and Members of the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate shall be financed entirely with public funds. No contributions shall be permitted to any candidate for Federal office from any other source, including the candidate.
• Section 2. No expenditures shall be permitted in support of any candidate for Federal office, or in opposition to any candidate for Federal office, from any other source, including the candidate. Nothing in this Section shall be construed to abridge the freedom of the press.
• Section 3. The Congress shall, by statute, provide limitations on the amounts and timing of the expenditures of such public funds.
• Section 4. The Congress shall, by statute, provide criminal penalties for any violation of this Article.
• Section 5. The Congress shall have the power to implement and enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
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This does not state that corporations are not people or bribery is not speech or the moon is not made of cheese, but it proceeds accordingly and handles the corruption of our elections as effectively as anything I've seen. No amendment is completely comprehensive, but no completely comprehensive amendment is likely to get passed (or even read). I also doubt very much that Congress will ever advance any such amendment, at least until there is a serious threat from two-thirds of the