David Swanson
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Articles by David Swanson
November 21, 2009
I had to read a lot of books about the current war and occupation in Iraq before I found one that's laugh out-loud hilarious.
November 18, 2009
I've been reading a brand new book called "The Battle of the Story of the Battle of Seattle," which is in large part an analysis of what worked in the protesting of the World Trade Organization 10 years ago. Why is it, I wonder, that activists were able to shut down the center of this major city in Washington state, but for years we have been unable to shut down the center of Washington, D.C., in opposition to wars.
November 17, 2009
"If a majority of workers want a union, they should get a union. It's that simple. We need to stand up to the business lobby and pass the Employee Free Choice Act. That's why I've been fighting for it in the Senate and that's why I'll make it the law of the land when I'm president of the United States." --Barack Obama
November 17, 2009
Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and the corporate "mainstream" media make quite a pair. We're hearing a very "balanced" debate over whether KSM should be tried in New York City, and whether the most insane objections to that proposal are really insane or not. But what are we not hearing?
November 15, 2009
And, like you, I think President Barack Obama has way, way, way too much power. But, unlike you, I'm not principally to blame for that.
November 13, 2009
Even on its own terms defending the wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan and Iraq as validated by experts is a miserable failure.
November 12, 2009
If you have an interest in grassroots organizing, international alliance building, the peace movement, the labor movement, the conversion of the U.S. economy from weapons to human needs, the preservation of life on earth (come on, admit it), the weaponization of space, or the autobiographical insights of smart and determined people, then I cannot more strongly recommend that you get a copy of "Come Together Right Now: Organizing Stories from a Fading Empire," by my friend and ally Bruce Gagnon.
November 12, 2009
The Congressional Progressive Caucus has 82 members, 81 in the House and 1 in the Senate, but has taken the anti-progressive onslaught of recent years lying down.
November 10, 2009
The United States of America owes much of the hope it has right now of remaining what John Adams called "a nation of laws, not men" to Italian law enforcement. Were it not for the fact that Italian prosecutors, unlike their American counterparts, answer to the law rather than a president, the enforcement of laws against a massive crime spree by U.S. officials (and their Italian accomplices) would not have begun.
November 07, 2009
Around the United States, peace groups are engaged in effective campaigns against proposed new military installations, local funding of weapons companies, and the routine destruction of the environment and of workers' health by such companies. Activists are building better media outlets, educating young people, educating old people, keeping military testing and recruiting out of schools, and discouraging the Army from building real-weapon video arcades in shopping malls. But when it comes to stopping our wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, our citizens are less clear how to go about it.
November 02, 2009
Room needs to be created for other types of speech. We must be able to criticize and even legally prevent incitement of political violence, while at the same time examining what has made some people susceptible to that kind of talk, and while simultaneously speaking honestly about the failings of the people being targeted.
November 01, 2009
Imagine public elections in which 2 percent are allowed to vote and Diebold gets to nominate the candidates. Or public parks with guest lists of 2 percent of the public, and private prisons for anyone else who tries to enter. Or how about public schools serving 2 percent of children with fully televised lessons broken up by commercials promoting illiteracy? Welcome to the world of the robust public option.
October 30, 2009
The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers
October 29, 2009
An amendment allowing states to create state-level single-payer healthcare has been stripped out of the House healthcare bill, after having passed in committee back in July by a vote of 27 to 19.
October 28, 2009
ADD YOUR NAME TO THOSE OF 83 HUMAN RIGHTS GROUPS AND LEADERS
October 27, 2009
The absence of a civilized healthcare system in the United States, almost alone among wealthy nations, results in tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths every year. But if something is to be done soon to save lives it is not going to be done in Washington, D.C. It is going to be done in Sacramento, Harrisburg, Columbus, Springfield, Augusta, Denver.
October 27, 2009
It matters because there is a more destructive force in our communications system than a transparently rightwing buffoons gallery. That destructive force is the persistent myth of "objective" "viewpoint-free" reporting.
October 22, 2009
Why is it that every time we elect "peace" candidates we defund the peace movement, stop calling for an end to wars, and limit our demands exclusively to opposing war escalations?
October 22, 2009
The US Chamber of Commerce blew a mere $39 million on lobbying in Washington in the past three months. Lobbying for the promotion of global warming, the denial of healthcare, the further deregulation (if possible) of the financial "industry", blockage of the right to unionize, the lowering and elimination of minimum wage laws, maintenance of tax breaks for shipping jobs overseas, and protection of the "right" of corporations to bribe politicians. Money well spent: all minority positions, all adhered to by our government.
October 21, 2009
Most city council members take oaths to defend the Constitution. The Constitution makes the rights and standards in its amendments and in international treaties the supreme law of the land. Our nation has a rich tradition of local governments lobbying state and national governments through the passage of resolutions. Under Clause 3, Rule XII, Section 819, of the Rules of the U.S. House of Representatives local governments may petition Congress. Under the First Amendment, we all can.
October 20, 2009
Pulling pranks on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is just too easy. The Yes Men held a press conference this week pretending to speak for the chamber and fooled the journalists in the room, because "We are no longer going to promote the destruction of the earth's climate" is such a compelling position that it's very tempting to imagine that any human being could adopt it.
October 15, 2009
Presidential power has been on a pathway of expansion beyond what the Constitution outlined, and what a government of, by, and for the people requires, since George Washington was president. That expansion, which hit the highway after World War II, got a turbo boost during the co-presidency of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.
October 09, 2009
Congressman David Obey (D., Wis.) is the Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee. He's in charge of spending our money. And until this week, he has always maintained that spending hundreds of billions of our dollars on wars was something he just had no choice about. Two years ago, 183,000 people watched this Youtube video, which was also shown on tv news shows, of Obey screaming at a military mother and denouncing "idiot liberals" for suggesting that Congress use the power of the purse to end wars. Liberals debated other liberals on the question of whether we really were idiots. Now Obey has taken a step in the direction of joining us.
October 05, 2009
U.S. Park Policeman (USPP) who shall remain nameless on Monday, October 5, 2009: Next!
Me: Is that me?
October 03, 2009
Who actually does: the media, weapons companies, the permanent government, presidents (including simply by decreeing a "war on terror", through misspending, lying, simply acting, signing treaties), political parties, culture (the one Biden lives in, in which Israel's sovereign right to attack Iran is uncontroversial), soldiers who obey illegal orders and the culture that leads kids to that place.
October 02, 2009
On Thursday, 22 Democratic congress members introduced a bill to deny funding to any escalation of war in Afghanistan, and 60 Democratic senators voted that Congress should not even speak to a general about that war until after the president has decided whether to escalate it. These two actions come out of very different understandings of war powers.
September 28, 2009
First let's put the crusade to defund ACORN in context.
September 25, 2009
While 50 ACORN members were in the Illinois Republican Party headquarters, the phone rang, and an ACORN member answered it "ACORN, Can I help you?"
September 24, 2009
There is strong evidence that John Conyers, Patrick Leahy, and most of the rest of us are in love with torture-lawyer Jay Bybee. I'm not talking about sexual love and wouldn't, because people's lives are lost to such bread-and-circuses journalism every day. I'm talking deep personal devotion.
September 22, 2009
Eight years of slaughter, and not so much as a hint at what a "victory" would look like. It's gotten to the point where even polls by Fox News show a majority of Americans against escalating the war in Afghanistan, and polls by more honest organizations show a majority wanting to bring home the troops that are there now.
September 21, 2009
This past Saturday, I joined in a protest at a former president's house, took part in a four-hour progressive politics forum in an enormous theater packed with an enthusiastic crowd, and spoke at a fundraiser for GI resistance in a giant gay cathedral, all in the heart of the hinterlands: Dallas, Texas.
September 16, 2009
The U.S. Department of Justice says that alcohol plays a pivotal role in two-thirds of all cases of violence against an intimate (a spouse, boyfriend, girlfriend), and blames alcohol for contributing to 100,000 sexual assaults against young people every year. That's right, alcohol hurts more people than al Qaeda.
September 15, 2009
"Virtual JFK" actually consists of a review of the evidence from Kennedy's actions before he died and of the situation that confronted Lyndon Johnson as president, thereby making the case that had Kennedy lived we would not have seen a full-scale war in Vietnam.
September 12, 2009
Separating the Midwestern state of Ohio, where soda's called "pop" and workers are sometimes allowed to unionize, from my East Coast home state of Virginia, where a governor perched on a diseased branch of my own family tree gave the nation its first right-to-work-for-less law, is nothing other than the beautiful and brutal mountains of West Virginia. As you climb those mountains headed west two things plummet to the valleys below: the employment rate and the price of housing.
September 07, 2009
I'm a progressive and you're a progressive, but I'm starting to find reason to hope as you're coming off a giant sugar high and plunging into the deep despair of one betrayed and scorned. What gives?
September 04, 2009
I got pulled over for speeding in Texas yesterday and the officer looked like the kind of guy who dreamed about using his taser. So when he asked for my license and registration, I slowly got them out and handed them over.
August 29, 2009
Hurricane Katrina is not as sexy as torture, but has killed more people and ruined more lives, and -- like many non-natural disasters in recent years -- has a chief culprit who has now settled in at 10141 Daria Place, Dallas, Texas, where he clears very little brush and where -- to my knowledge -- not a single politician or journalist or author has sought his wisdom on the affairs of the past seven months. George W. Bush, who should face nonviolent protest every minute of his life while he remains at liberty, knowingly abandoned an American city and nearby towns to a predictable and predicted natural disaster four years ago this week, and for years refused to repair the damage.
August 29, 2009
The New Press has just published seven of the torture memos with a 40-page introduction by David Cole and a 3-page forward by Phillipe Sands. For those who prefer books to lengthy PDFs or printouts thereof, this is a real service. If we were a literate society, a book like this would put a number of important people behind bars. In the type of society we actually are, only photographs and videos can possibly have that impact, which is why we may never see those.
August 28, 2009
Attorney General Eric Holder is addressing a war crime without addressing the wars, and is focusing on the lowest ranking participants in that crime without addressing its status as official policy established by higher ups and openly confessed to by a former president and vice president. This is bad applism, the same approach that has held a handful of recruits responsible for Abu Ghraib, claiming to thereby remove bad apples from a good system. But Congress' and the public's approach to the horrors of the past eight years is driven by our own bad applism, by our belief that the departure of Bush and Cheney in itself significantly repaired a system of government that is rotten to the core.
August 28, 2009
It seems almost trivial to accuse someone who launched an illegal war that has killed over a million people of torture. But if we are going to prosecute the lowest ranked torturers, it makes sense to look up the chain of command.
August 23, 2009
We've grown accustomed to recognizing astroturfing on the right. But what about astroturfing on the left? How do we feel about that? Here's an example.
August 19, 2009
Michael Vick, the football player who's all over the news, should have tortured humans instead of dogs. Then we would have been told to overlook it for the sake of moving forward.
August 18, 2009
Cultures isolated from modernity have tended not to engage in anything resembling what we call work. When we began inventing modern time-saving devices and increasing productivity in our factories (and, yes, exploiting other peoples to do the factory work) we were always told we'd be able to work less -- often by people who clearly imagined there were limits to human greed and cruelty.
August 06, 2009
Drafted in preparation for panel discussion at Veterans for Peace national convention August 7, 2009, on topic of "Holding the Architects of Illegal Wars and War Crimes Accountable."
July 31, 2009
The U.S. House of Representatives has committed to bringing single-payer healthcare to a vote following summer recess. Stranger things have happened, greater obstacles have been overcome, than what would be involved in winning that vote, winning in the Senate, and compelling the president to sign the bill. We have a moral responsibility to put everything we have into trying; and even a near-victory will advance the cause.
July 31, 2009
Progressive Democrats of America has turned five. I've written before about what PDA has accomplished. On Thursday night it celebrated the five-year mark with a party at the end of a long day of rallying, lobbying, and strategizing on Capitol Hill. The party was fittingly held at Busboys and Poets restaurant, whose owner Andy Shallal has been a big supporter and participant in PDA.
July 30, 2009
One week ago, we eagerly anticipated a crucial vote on single-payer Medicare for All ( H.R.676 ) in the House Energy & Commerce Committee, sponsored by Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY). But then seven BlueDogs waged a highly-publicized war against a "robust public option" and the vote was delayed for a full week.
Nationally Renowned Scholars, Writers, Artists, and Advocates Urge Attorney General Holder to Uphold
July 29, 2009
Several prominent Americans, including authors, artists, legal experts, and renowned voices of conscience, today transmitted a letter to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder urging the appointment of a prosecutor to investigate allegations of torture and other violations of human rights and civil liberties committed by former government officials and others.
July 29, 2009
In November 2008, then President George W. Bush and then Puppet Nouri al-Maliki negotiated an unprecedented, unconstitutional treaty to "legalize" three more years of war in a manner not unlike the "legalization" of invasions, detentions, torture, and warrantless spying by secret decree of the Office of Legal Counsel in the U.S. Department of Justice.
July 28, 2009
If you support a healthcare bill with a public option in it, chances are many single-payer advocates don´t trust you. If you supported that same bill in exactly the same way and also advocated leaving in it the language that allows states to create single-payer, those same missing passionate advocates might not line up perfectly with you, but many of them would be willing to work together -- or at least have a beer on a picnic table and talk about it.
July 27, 2009
Following a pattern of civil resistance in Washington D.C. and around the country, citizens in Des Moines Iowa on Monday risked arrest to press for the creation of single-payer healthcare, the establishment of healthcare as a human right, and an end to the deadly practices of Iowa's largest health insurance company, Wellmark Blue Cross Blue Shield.
July 26, 2009
House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers has called on Attorney General Eric Holder to open a criminal investigation into the misdeeds of former president George W. Bush and former vice president Richard B. Cheney.
July 24, 2009
A few words from U.S. troops in Iraq, all quoted in Chapter 1 of Dahr Jamail's brilliant new book "The Will to Resist: Soldiers Who refuse to Fight in Iraq and Afghanistan":
July 24, 2009
If Attorney General Eric Holder creates a special prosecutor for torture but forbids him or her to prosecute the lawyers who facilitated torture or the top officials who ordered it, proposing to go after only torturers who exceeded the limitations outlined in the lawyers' memos, what are the risks?
July 22, 2009
Another name for "what's called a single-payer system" would be: healthcare as a human right, not a commodity to be purchased. Many humans have this right. They just aren't Americans.
July 22, 2009
Congressman Anthony Weiner (D., N.Y.) has introduced an amendment in the House Energy and Commerce Committee that would replace the convoluted please-the-public-and-the-insurance-companies-at-the-same-time healthcare bill with the single-payer plan found in HR 676 and backed by 86 members of Congress. The vote has been delayed beyond Wednesday, support for the measure is growing, people are phoning in constantly, and a whip count is being kept online.
July 21, 2009
A week ago, I published a report on 1,200 photos of U.S. torture that I have examined but the public at large has not seen. I talked about the photos on a few progressive radio shows. I received calls from some advocacy groups that have been trying for years to get hold of these photos. But I received not one single inquiry from the corporate media. Even most good blogs ignored this story despite a handful of prominent blogs promoting it. This started me thinking and fantasizing: what would the world look like if we had major media outlets that were worth more than a warm bucket of spit?
July 20, 2009
In six months as president, Barack Obama has aggressively done the opposite of many specific things he explicitly and unequivocally promised as a candidate. A lot of these were things Obama's fiercest opponents never wanted. And Obama's fiercest supporters favor censoring this information. But if we expect public servants to be public servants, the public must know the facts, make of them what it will.
July 16, 2009
The healthcare legislation under consideration in Congress would prevent states from improving on what Congress creates. An amendment is under consideration right now in a House committee that would change that, leaving the federal initiative as is but permitting states to do better.
July 14, 2009
The most useful tool progressive political activists have in the United States, at the local, state, and national levels, was created from scratch five years ago, and has been developed and sharpened while proving itself time and again in each and every week since. Progressive Democrats of America has stood strongly behind truly progressive, majority positions more consistently than any other activist group with national weight that I'm aware of. And at the same time, PDA has maintained good working relationships with more members of Congress than probably anyone outside of corporate lobbyists. How can this be and what should it teach us?
July 13, 2009
This moment, in which the Attorney General of the United States claims to be considering the possibility of allowing our laws against torture to be enforced seems a good one in which to reveal that I have seen over 1,200 torture photos and a dozen videos that are in the possession of the United States military.
July 08, 2009
Should soldiers follow illegal orders? Should they take part in illegal wars and occupations? And if they don't want to do so, what choices do they have? And what can we do to help them?
July 08, 2009
The day after ramming through nearly $100 billion more for wars and $100 billion in loans to European banks through the IMF, the majority leader in the U.S. House of Representatives, Steny Hoyer, introduced a "PayGo" bill, requiring that any spending be paid for with cuts in other spending.
July 07, 2009
It might be ideal to protest, pressure, and lobby both the Congress and the president, but if you have to choose the top priority, which is it?
July 05, 2009
When the Democrats were in the minority and out of the White House, they told us they wanted to work for us but needed to be in the majority. So, in 2006, we put them there. Then they told us that they really wished they could work for us but they needed bigger majorities and the White House. So, in 2008/2009, we gave them those things, and deprived them of two key excuses for inaction. We took away the veto excuse and the filibuster excuse.
July 03, 2009
There are a million and one things that people can do to try to end the U.S. wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, and to prevent new ones in Iran and elsewhere, as well as to close U.S. military bases in dozens of other nations around the world. Certain people are skilled at or interested in particular approaches, and nobody should be discouraged from contributing to the effort in their preferred ways. Far too often proposals to work for peace are needlessly framed as attacks on all strategies except one. But where new energy can be created or existing resources redirected, it is important that they go where most likely to succeed.
July 02, 2009
The book I just read is in the running, in my estimation, for second-best text on how to undo the imperial presidency.
July 01, 2009
Do they have a fourth of July in Italy? That's not a trick question. This July 4th, Italians plan to gather in Vicenza to take nonviolent action aimed at freeing Italy from U.S. occupation and opposing the proposed construction of an enormous new U.S. military base in a town already swarming with U.S. troops stationed at existing bases.
July 01, 2009
When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with a gang of lawless thugs and insist on the appointment of a special prosecutor to enforce the laws of the land even against those until recently holding the reins of Power, a decent respect to the opinions of humankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the Prosecution.
June 29, 2009
We've heard of John Yoo and Alberto Gonzales, and maybe even Jay Bybee. Some of us recall John Ashcroft, Michael Mukasey, and even David Addington. William Haynes, Stephen Bradbury, and Douglas Feith occasionally make the news. If I had any say about it all 40 of these facilitators of torture would be universally known -- plus the eight more that readers of this article will call to my attention and angrily accuse me of trying to cover for by only being aware of 40. I would also make universally known the fact that two of the worst now work for President Barack Obama.
June 27, 2009
Lawless detention is the least of it. State secrets and warrantless spying scrape the surface. Drone attacks and ongoing torture begin to touch it.
June 26, 2009
Did you know the United States has in recent years prosecuted hundreds of people for political reasons? This is a crime, or rather a crime wave, that has thus far been addressed primarily by ignoring it.
June 25, 2009
(Remarks at Torture Accountability Action Day rally in Washington, D.C., June 25, 2009 -- video of this and other speeches at AfterDowningStreet.org)
June 24, 2009
If you were a reporter and suspected that the PR stunt you were "reporting" on was very likely part of a deal to win a vote for war and bank bailouts, would you mention that circumstance? Would you perhaps refuse to cover the "event" at all? Would you choose to cover the deficit and green jobs events but report separately on the vote-whipping and partisan corruption? Or would you simply sit back and allow yourself to be played like a cheap ukelele?
June 22, 2009
Thursday, June 25, 2009, has been designated Torture Accountability Action Day by a large coalition of human rights groups planning rallies and marches in major U.S. cities, including a rally in Washington, D.C.'s John Marshall Park at 11 a.m. followed by a noon march to the Justice Department where some participants will risk arrest in nonviolent protest if a special prosecutor for torture is not appointed.
June 22, 2009
The single most powerful, and yet largely ignored, document yet to emerge, might, now in 2009, finally, produce results. And, of course, it is our friends over in England who are, as always, two steps ahead of us.
June 18, 2009
Sometimes, during a tsunami of bad news, it's nice to come up for a breath of encouraging air. The only way to do that this week that I know of is to read a beautiful 42-page order by a judge (PDF). Usually such things don't strike me as beautiful, but this one says that leading torture lawyer John Yoo can be sued in court by one of his victims.
June 17, 2009
In probably the most disturbing testimony to hit Capitol Hill since Attorney General Eric Holder appeared before the House Judiciary Committee in May and refused to rule out lawless detention or to agree that government officials can sometimes be prosecuted for their crimes, on Wednesday Holder appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee and, among much else, refused five times to agree that warrantless spying is illegal and unconstitutional. I spoke to Holder in April, and he assured me that I would be proud of my country. When?
June 16, 2009
If George Orwell could see this he'd probably curse himself for not having thought of it. We are apparently about to see wars perpetuated by an exit strategy. How is this possible?
June 16, 2009
I just spoke with Keith Stern, communications director for Congressman Jim McGovern and asked him whether the report in Congress Now yesterday was true, that McGovern, who has been one of the most reliable members of Congress in opposing wars, would now be voting Yes on the war money.
June 14, 2009
A healthy rivalry between the branches of government is the soul of our republic, so when the Senate's proposed ban on releasing photos and videos of torture fell short of completely covering things up, the White House proposed allowing prisoners to plead guilty to capital crimes and be executed wit...
June 14, 2009
The executive director of something called the National Security Network, named Heather Hurlburt, offers -- I kid you not, and that's really her name, so try not to hurl -- Six Reasons to Love the Supplemental and Celebrate Progressives in Government.
June 12, 2009
And now abideth funders, broadcasters, and party bosses, these three; but the greatest of these is the party bosses.
June 12, 2009
The majority in Congress in the past two elections has been elected to end wars. If you elect me I will put your money where my mouth is. I will vote against funding to support the continuation of foreign occupations. I will oppose any new wars of aggression.
June 10, 2009
On Tuesday President Obama proposed that any increases in federal spending on anything useful, such as healthcare or retirement security, must be balanced by cuts and savings to something else useful, such as healthcare or retirement security.
June 09, 2009
Someone recently asked if I could please explain to him why anybody would oppose torture. After all, we defend killing in wars, so why not defend torture? And wouldn't I torture to save my kidnapped child?
June 09, 2009
The greatest war fraud is the funding of war by individuals who claim to oppose it and who vote against funding it whenever a bill is guaranteed to pass. On May 14, 2009, 60 congress members voted against $85 billion to continue the war in Iraq and escalate the war in Afghanistan, plus $12 billion more to buy the Pentagon airplanes it doesn't want and related extravagances. Of those 60, 51 were Democrats. Some of them made beautiful and principled statements about their No votes.
June 08, 2009
Rather than apologizing, which even Max Baucus has done sort of, CAF decided to put forth a bunch of insultingly false reasons why single-payer is a terrible idea.
June 08, 2009
I ran into Creigh Deeds, candidate for Virginia Governor, at the farmer's market in Charlottesville on Saturday.
June 05, 2009
The House is about to vote on another supplemental spending bill for continued and escalated wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. We're not accustomed to winning in our efforts to block war money, but the Democratic leadership has delayed the vote out of concern that we will.
June 03, 2009
Senator Max Baucus met Wednesday with advocates for single-payer healthcare, including Senator Bernie Sanders, and told them that he might drop criminal charges against 13 people arrested for speaking up in his hearings, but that he would not include any supporters of single-payer health coverage in any future hearings.
June 02, 2009
Every year in Washington, D.C., the Campaign for America's Future (CAF) convenes the largest conference of activists positioned anywhere to the left of wherever the center has drifted off to. Labor and community groups and civil rights groups play a big role, most of them strictly loyal to the Democratic Party. The focus is on domestic issues, and the approach is an inside strategy of nudging and honoring those in power. You can sense my cynicism, and yet this year I was very pleasantly surprised.
May 30, 2009
The number one policy proposal on the president's website and now third second most popular proposal over all calls for prosecuting Bush and Cheney.
May 28, 2009
You might want to hurry because the open government is about to close. Participation in the "Brainstorming" phase 1 of President Obama's online Open Government Initiative only lasts from May 21st to May 28th.
May 27, 2009
I've just interviewed Les Leopold, who blames the recent financial disasters on trends that began over 30 years ago, explains how a great deal of Wall Street's "investing" has had as much connection to the real economy as fantasy baseball has to baseball, diagnoses the failures of labor and the left to resist the financialization of the economy, views the current situation with genuine optimism as a rare moment in which we might be able to make necessary changes to regulate finance and to shift money from a tiny group of billionaires to the rest of society, and explains why that latter step is needed to stabilize any economy.
May 26, 2009
Now President Obama is asking for our opinions on a website. This is a good thing but should be gone into with some caveats.
May 22, 2009
If you're like me you find it at least a bit disturbing that we're giving trillions of dollars to save the economy to the very people who wrecked it, and more disturbing that we're doing so without any solid basis for expecting to get much of it back and without making fundamental changes to prevent a repetition. But if you're like me, you also aren't 100 percent certain how a credit default swap works with a cubed collateralized debt obligation, much less whether such a monstrosity needs to be eliminated or reformed. What to do?
May 21, 2009
Dick Cheney could make anyone look decent, honorable, and law-abiding by comparison. But is the existence of someone worse, no matter how many hours our media monopoly gives him, enough to make Obama's decisions acceptable? Let's look at their pair of speeches given on Thursday in Washington, D.C., and depicted as a debate by the media.
May 19, 2009
If I could feel more shame over my country's torture it would be over my university's support for torture. The University of Virginia, which has long paid its employees poverty wages while increasingly becoming a major partner of the U.S. military and its "intelligence" operations, nonetheless still holds for me an image of individual honor and principle. I still imagine that UVA students and professors, staff and alumni, can be expected not to stoop to the lowest possible forms of human behavior.
May 16, 2009
"I don't recall" is now "that would depend." While then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, when testifying before Congress, was oddly unable to remember anything prior to that morning's breakfast, now Attorney General Eric Holder is oddly unable to forecast what, if anything, he will do to hold gove...
May 14, 2009
It could be a plan to exit by 2092; it would just have to be a plan of some sort, and Secretary Gates could take up to seven months to write it.
May 14, 2009
"I don't recall" is now "that would depend."
May 12, 2009
Two hundred organizations, including After Downing Street, Democrats.com, the Robert Jackson Steering Committee, the Center for Constitutional Rights, the National Lawyers Guild, the Society of American Law Teachers, Human Rights USA, the American Freedom Campaign, and the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, have signed a joint statement urging Attorney General Eric Holder to appoint a special prosecutor for former top officials of the Bush Administration.
May 11, 2009
#1: Cheney says that he and Bush ordered torture but did nothing wrong.
May 08, 2009
Imagine that tomorrow you begin to feel ill and rush to the hospital where you are eventually diagnosed with a horribly debilitating and probably incurable disease. Within a week your body and mind have deteriorated drastically.
May 07, 2009
I can't recall a better corporate news video segment in at least the past decade than the story that Ed Schultz just aired on MSNBC in which he interviews Margaret Flowers of Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP) and Senator Debbie Stabenow on the topic of healthcare reform.
May 04, 2009
Jay Bybee wrote another memo that nobody has noticed, one purporting to authorize crimes far worse than torture, the same crimes the torture was itself intended to create false justifications for.
May 04, 2009
Our nation has more money than any other, more weapons than all the others combined, and a majority of its citizens believing it is, in some undefined sense, superior. But the people who live in the United States trail many other nations in basic measures of health and well-being. Almost uniquely among wealthy nations, we leave tens of millions of our citizens without health coverage, and many times that number with insufficient -- albeit expensive -- health insurance. We pay more per capita than anybody else for healthcare, and we get dramatically less for it. What gives?
April 28, 2009
When Americans get "ethical" these days they ponder the great moral mysteries, like "Is public health coverage fair to insurance companies?" or "If we increase the military budget but reduce one section of it, can the whole world still be safe?" or "Would you still oppose torture if it worked?"
April 28, 2009
One of the best books published in Canada last year is one of the best books published in the United States thus far this year: "The Sun Climbs Slow: The International Criminal Court and the Struggle for Justice," by Erna Paris.
April 27, 2009
When did recent U.S. torture begin on a major scale? When September 11, 2001, provided a weak excuse to attack Iraq, an excuse that would need some bolstering. When did Bybee send the CIA a recipe for torturing Abu Zubaydah? A week after the Downing Street meeting. When did our government waterboard Khalid Sheikh Mohammed 183 times? The same month the bombs destroyed Baghdad. When did the intense torturing of key figures stop, although the routine torturing of thousands of people continued? As soon as the war on Iraq was underway.
April 19, 2009
We can restore power to Congress AND begin to deter future abuses through one absolutely necessary action.
April 17, 2009
Congressman Jerrold Nadler has just publicly asked that the Attorney General appoint a special prosecutor.
April 17, 2009
On August 1, 2002, then-Assistant Attorney General of the United States Jay Bybee sent an 18-page official memorandum from the Office of Legal Counsel to the Acting General Counsel of the CIA John Rizzo. Such memos are treated as laws within our government, not opinions, not theories, not briefings, but laws.
April 10, 2009
Raise your hand if you recall the 110th Congress (2007 - 2008) as having spent two years funding a war in Iraq that it had been elected to end, increasing the military's bloated budget, and adamantly refusing to hold war criminals accountable?
April 08, 2009
The largest military budget in the history of the world is being increased. Certain weapons are being cut back, others expanded. But the overall budget is going UP. However, you don't need me to tell you that. You've learned it from these fine news sources:
April 07, 2009
As evidence of Bush and Cheney's crimes is slowly pried loose from President Obama's fingers, it's easy to forget just how long ago numerous articulate voices were identifying and denouncing those crimes, none more so that Francis Boyle, who told Bill O'Reilly on his Fox News show on September 13, 2001:
April 06, 2009
The Pentagon is starting to cut weapons programs, and peace groups are bound to cheer.
April 06, 2009
One member of Congress stood alone 7.5 years ago against the original authorization to attack Afghanistan. And one member of Congress, a different one, stood alone last week against funding a massive escalation of that war.
April 04, 2009
Doug Feith is bluffing big time, and he's lifted Dick Cheney and George Bush onto the table as his bet. Now if only he could stop visibly sweating.
April 02, 2009
Good news is being taken as bad. Vermont constituents of Senator Patrick Leahy report that he's finding very little support for his proposed truth and reconciliation commission from Republicans or Democrats in the Senate. Numerous people have taken this as bad news and cause to despair. I disagree. Here are ten reasons why.
March 30, 2009
While General David "Betray Us" Petraeus must be thrilled with his conversion from traitor to saint in the eyes of the pseudo-left and amazed that such things can be accomplished simply by changing the political party of the president, the group that formerly bashed him with an ad in the New York Times and now supports whatever Obama does is not as new to supporting wars as this simple story suggests.
March 29, 2009
Spain has begun a criminal investigation into six of Bush and Cheney's torture lawyers, and our own Justice Department has got some 'splaining to do.
March 26, 2009
Obama's Thursday "town hall" featuring questions submitted online produced some interesting comments from our president.
March 25, 2009
It's just spring, when the world is puddle-wonderful, and your representative and your two senators pack up their lingerie and come dancing from hop-scotch and toy soldiers to make the trek outside the Beltway for a well-earned vacation.
March 25, 2009
Leading human rights organizations in the United States on March 20th presented charges of human rights abuse and torture against the U.S. government to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), which can recommend actions, including prosecutions, to the U.S. government, other nations' governments, or the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.
March 24, 2009
(In which I scientifically prove the outcome of the NCAA tournament, sort of.)
March 23, 2009
If there is a day for mass action in the United States for peace and justice, April 4 is it. And if there is a place for it right now, it's Wall Street. April 3rd is a Friday, so more robber barons will be at "work" that day, but April 4th is a Saturday, so more of the robbed will be off work and able to take part. April 4 is also the anniversary, not only of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s, death in 1968, but of his speech exactly one year earlier at Riverside Church in New York City in 1967.
March 22, 2009
While the U.S. media obsesses over teeny fractions of the trillions of dollars the U.S. government is giving to bankers, 130,000 troops and 160,000 contractors continue to occupy Iraq in the name of the United States, and very few Iraqis are convinced they will ever leave, while even fewer want them to stay.
March 19, 2009
From outside the United States it's easy to imagine that everyone inside the United States is doing well. If you live in a country occupied by U.S. soldiers, as over 150 countries are around the world, if you live with extreme poverty and disease, if the United States provides your country's government with shiny expensive weapons, if the Americans you come into contact with treat you with contempt, and if the images you have of the United States come from Hollywood, it would be understandable to think that everyone in the homeland of the empire is doing well.
March 18, 2009
We're now at 6 years of bloody and horrific occupation of Iraq, and 7.5 years in Afghanistan. That means that most college students in the United States were not yet college students when this began.
March 16, 2009
As with the evidence that Bush, Cheney, and gang intentionally lied us into a war, or the evidence of illegal and unconstitutional spying, each time a major new piece of evidence of torture emerges, it is impossible not to hope that this is the one that will compel the Justice Department or Congress or the courts or the American people to act decisively.
March 12, 2009
If you live in the United States, you are almost certainly friends with at least one atheist, agnostic, nonbeliever, skeptic, or unaffiliated humanist, whether you know it or not. And your friend almost certainly endures prejudice and unequal treatment, whether you know it or not. And your friend is roughly as decent, good, loyal, honest, courageous, and generous as your other friends, and you know it.
March 11, 2009
We are fast approaching the end of the sixth year since the invasion and occupation of Iraq, and seven and a half in Afghanistan. There has been no accountability for the criminals who launched these wars of aggression. The current congress and president are continuing both and escalating one.
March 10, 2009
It has become almost commonplace, since the release last week of seven "legal" opinions written in 2001 and 2002 by the Justice Department, to remark that unbeknownst to us we came within an inch of dictatorship. And with President Obama announcing an end to torture and a new policy on signing statements, it is extremely common to speak as if we are moving quickly and deliberately in the opposite direction. But this picture is far too simplistic.
March 03, 2009
142 Organizations Agree With Leading Senators and Congress Members: The Crimes of Bush, Cheney, and Other Top Officials Must Be Prosecuted
March 01, 2009
This weekend in Washington, D.C., there was a lot of preparation for Monday's massive civil disobedience for clean energy at the Capitol power plant. Nonviolence trainings, sign creation, conferences. On Sunday night, just before it began snowing hard, I attended a gathering of authors, poets, singers, and the lead organizers of the action in a large university auditorium, and blogged as follows:
February 28, 2009
Democrats in Congress respected former Attorney General Michael Mukasey beyond any measure he appeared to have earned, and to the extent of fully expecting him to perform his duties even in the most difficult circumstances. In contrast, the same Congress members do not believe Attorney General Eric Holder is up to the job.
February 24, 2009
We urge Attorney General Eric Holder to appoint a non-partisan independent Special Counsel to immediately commence a prosecutorial investigation into the most serious alleged crimes of former President George W. Bush, former Vice President Richard B. Cheney, the attorneys formerly employed by the Department of Justice whose memos sought to justify torture, and other former top officials of the Bush Administration.
February 22, 2009
Progressive Democrats of America has endorsed Tom Geoghegan in his bid to replace Rahm Emanuel in the House seat representing Illinois' 5th Congressional District.
February 21, 2009
SUMMARY OF PRELIMINARY MEMORANDUM OF THE JUSTICE ROBERT H. JACKSON CONFERENCE ON FEDERAL PROSECUTION OF WAR CRIMINALS
February 19, 2009
Now along comes a new caucus of Democrats called the Populist Caucus, which has at least 23 members thus far, including my own Congress member, Tom Perriello.
February 18, 2009
Now here's a horrendously bad piece of thinking from a usually terrific website that occasionally lets loyalty to a political party trump common sense. Cynthia Boaz, who has written much better stuff, writes:
February 18, 2009
The UFPJ Working Group on Accountability and Prosecution works to achieve accountability and prosecution of high officials guilty of war crimes, including the supreme crime of aggressive war.
February 17, 2009
Peace and justice activists in Virginia's Fifth District were thrilled last November when we and our neighbors replaced Congressman Virgil Goode with Tom Perriello. We got together and held a couple of meetings to discuss what we might begin talking with the new congressman-elect about. On February 17th we finally met with him. This brief report may prove somewhat useful to others meeting with their representatives and senators, and I've included links to useful materials to modify as needed and bring along to your meetings.
February 16, 2009
At a time when more and more organizations are speaking up for accountability, including AfterDowningStreet, Democrats.com, Progressive Democrats of America, Code Pink, Center for Constitutional Rights, Robert Jackson Steering Committee, National Accountability Network, People for the American Way, American Civil Liberties Union, American Freedom Campaign, Amnesty International, World Can't Wait, High Road for Human Rights, and many others, ...
February 13, 2009
Some months back, United for Peace and Justice held a big conference in Chicago for three days, and hundreds of us from all over the country spent most of those three days voting on the language to go in the documents that would determine what UFPJ would work on in the coming year and a half, especially the program document.
February 10, 2009
I wrote recently about the possibility of outgrowing the use of war. Today I got a book in the mail that makes a strong argument intended as a tool for ending war.
February 09, 2009
A letter to the editor in my local newspaper, the Charlottesville Daily Progress, has persuaded me to rethink the truly remarkable accomplishments of President George W. Bush and inspired me to join the movement to erect a Bush Memorial on the National Mall.
February 08, 2009
If we can move beyond torture, do we not have a responsibility also to think for a moment about the obvious fact that torture is not the cruelest thing we do? Torture offends us, in part, because the torturer is not at risk, but neither are most pilots dropping bombs.
February 07, 2009
From the pains Democrats take to out-argue and/or to compromise with the fringe minority party called the Republicans you'd think no other course of action was available, specifically you'd have to assume that the filibuster -- the power of senators representing 11 percent of us to block all work by the House and Senate -- is written in stone. In reality, 51 senators could eliminate the filibuster or change the number of votes required to use it. This nation got along for many years without the filibuster and could do so again. It is no more a part of our Constitution than the CIA, enemy combatants, corporate persons, or the political parties that allow the filibuster to wreak such havoc with our so-called democracy.
February 04, 2009
After what he said this week on ABC, it will be interesting to see whether Congressman Barney Frank is permitted on television anymore.
February 01, 2009
Impeaching Jay Bybee would not just put Congress back on the map. It would also derail a potentially very lengthy career as a powerful appeals judge for a man whose work was central to facilitating the crimes of the past eight years. And that might help move the criminal prosecutions along as well.
January 29, 2009
While a Democratic polling firm has just found, as pollsters always do, dramatic public support for public health coverage, Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill appear divided, as they have always been, over whether to take a comprehensive approach to health care.
January 25, 2009
The Center for Constitutional Rights has expressed concern that President Obama's executive order banning torture may contain a loophole. But no president has any right to declare torture legal or illegal, with or without loopholes. And if we accept that presidents have such powers, even if our new president does good with them, then loopholes will be the least of our worries.
January 16, 2009
History cannot be the judge of Bush and Cheney. The corporate news really is the first draft of history, and there will be no magical leap from its dishonesty to an honest account.
January 15, 2009
After comments made in his confirmation hearing, Attorney General nominee Eric Holder will be hard pressed not to prosecute Bush, Cheney, and their co-conspirators, or to appoint a special prosecutor.
January 14, 2009
3,000 in Front of FBI Building for Inaugural Parade to Demand Bush's Arrest
January 12, 2009
House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers has introduced a bill, H.R. 104, that would create a commission to spend a year and a half looking at the various crimes of Bush and Cheney. While this might allow congressional Democrats to run election campaigns against Bush and Cheney yet again, even though those two will have been out of office for two years, it's not clear that it would do much else that would be positive.
January 11, 2009
On Thursday, January 15, at 9:30 a.m., the Senate Judiciary Committee will hold its confirmation hearing for Attorney General nominee Eric Holder. If the Senators are willing to work together and to listen to those of us who elected them, the questioning might go something like this:
January 09, 2009
REPORT NAMES 30 BUSH OFFICIALS COMPLICIT IN TORTURE
January 09, 2009
Cindy Sheehan asked if I could record a 3-minute goodbye message to Bush and Cheney for her radio show, so I wrote down and read the following:
January 07, 2009
As the 111th Congress was being sworn in on Tuesday, a seemingly endless line of figures dressed all in black with stark white masks slowly marched single-file around Capitol Hill. Each wore a placard bearing the name of someone who had died in the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Palestine, their age, and the date of their death.
January 04, 2009
A long column of figures dressed all in black with white death masks and bearing the names of those killed in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Palestine. The march will be followed by a dramatic nonviolent action intended to awaken Congress to the need to end the wars.
January 01, 2009
Congress will be greeted on day 1 this year by a march of war dead on Capitol Hill.
December 30, 2008
New Year's resolutions come in a lot of shapes and sizes. I don't think New Year's 2009 is a year to aim low. So, I'm resolving to create peace on earth. And I intend to follow through. The catch, of course, is that unless a couple of million other people make the same resolution and really commit to it, then I will have been a liar.
December 27, 2008
On his third day in office President Grant revoked two pardons that had been granted by President Andrew Johnson. President Nixon also undid a pardon that had been granted by President Lyndon Johnson.
December 26, 2008
Russ Baker's new book presents an account of the U.S. government that is both remarkably new and extensively documented.
December 24, 2008
Trying to squeeze any sort of peace on earth out of our government in Washington has been a steep uphill climb for years. For the most part we no longer have representatives in Congress, because of the corruption of money, the weakness of the media, and the strength of parties. There are not 535 opinions on Capitol Hill on truly important matters, but 2. Our supposed representatives work for their party leaders, not for us. Luckily, one of the two parties claims to want to work for us.
December 22, 2008
The wonderful thing about big lies is their kettle logic. The term, of course, derives from the story of the man who offered several mutually incompatible excuses for returning his friend's kettle in damaged condition: "It broke too easily." "It was like that when I got it." "I improved it for you." "I never borrowed the thing." Et cetera. A big lie is not just a beautiful creation because the bigger you make it the more firmly people believe in it, but also because you can tell other big lies to make the same point and the lies don't have to make any sense in combination.
December 17, 2008
As George Bush prepares to leave office, he and his aides are trying desperately to rewrite history, especially on Iraq.
December 16, 2008
Given the fates of the other two members of Bush's axis of evil, some would argue that the best defense Iran could have would be a nuclear bomb. They would, however, be wildly wrong.
December 15, 2008
This is the question now raised in Iraq: If they throw shoes at your face are you a combat troop or a noncombat troop? The answer may be important in helping to guide President Elect Obama's strategy of reducing but continuing the genocidal occupation that has made a shoeless journalist one of the most beloved, if little known, people in the world overnight.
December 13, 2008
United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ), the largest coalition of peace organizations (over 1,400 of them) in the United States, held a national assembly in Chicago December 12-14, and drafted documents establishing the movement's agenda for the coming year.
December 13, 2008
New York state could soon be represented in the U.S. Senate by a woman with more respect for and understanding of democratic representation, the Constitution, and the rule of law than we've grown accustomed to finding in Washington, D.C., a woman who has done more to oppose the abuses of power of the Bush administration than have most current members of the House or Senate.
December 11, 2008
I've never had any use for the Senate Armed Services Committee before, or even for the idea that someone who was armed could provide a service, but the report on U.S. torture policy that the committee released on Thursday is noteworthy.
December 09, 2008
The Pardon Scorecard is expanding rapidly, tracking punditry and advocacy against and in support of Bush pardoning crimes he authorized. Happily, the Against column is much longer than the Support column.
December 06, 2008
Would you say "Enough!" Even if you'd been to law school?
December 05, 2008
Alice squinted as she peered up through the rabbit hole at sunlight wondering how many books she might have to stand on to be able to climb back out. She hadn't even begun to make up her mind when she was completely distracted by a large elephant on a motor scooter who grabbed her with his trunk and stuck her on the back seat as he sped off down a dark gravel path.
December 05, 2008
I think it is imperative that we deter future wars, as well as defunding them, that we reestablish the rule of law in addition to simply requesting that certain laws be voluntarily obeyed for the moment.
December 04, 2008
For the past two years, Congress has pretended that ending a war requires passing a bill and blamed its failure to pass a bill on Republican filibusters and presidential vetoes. The veto excuse is gone. But the pretense that a bill is needed is firmly entrenched, and the filibuster excuse lives.
December 04, 2008
The ACLU sent out an Email on December 4th joining a chorus of voices in declaring that Bush has the power to pardon crimes he authorized but shouldn't use it. This is a step forward for many organizations and publications that have never supported impeachment or prosecution. But it is potentially less than helpful.
December 04, 2008
Requesting the prosecution of a known criminal ought not to be an action that requires any particular consideration or debate.
December 02, 2008
I know, I know, Bush liberated the Iraqis. But when will we liberate them from Bush's liberation? Well, ideally, the American people will rise up tomorrow and force Congress to cease funding the occupation and to vote an immediate and complete withdrawal with a veto-overriding supermajority, not to mention impeaching Bush and Cheney. I raise that possibility not so much because I've been drinking as because long-term movements for systemic reform require awareness of what we're missing. If we ever replace a Congress dominated by money, media, and parties with one loyal to us the people, it will be because we tragically realize what so very easily could have been.
December 01, 2008
The debate among progressive activists and commentators in recent weeks has tended to range from the leave-Obama-alone-and-he'll-fix-everything position to the stage-a-protest-at-Obama's-house-for-the-next-month position, including numerous stances in between those extremes. What all these positions share is acceptance of the incredible shift of power from Congress to the White House that we have seen in just the last eight years. It is in these concluding moments of the Bush-Cheney era that Congress's coffin is being constructed just outside our window, and I'm afraid that the peace and justice movement is picking flowers to bring to the funeral.
November 26, 2008
Statement from the Steering Committee for the Prosecution for War Crimes of President Bush and His Subordinates
November 21, 2008
Nadler Introduces Resolution Opposing Possible Bush Pardons of His Own Subordinates for Crimes He Authorized
November 18, 2008
Bush has, for some time now, been terminating large numbers of employees in the federal government, people known as whistleblowers, people suspected of disloyalty.
November 15, 2008
This was the second time that a group of veterans opposed to illegal wars and in favor of the rule of law had taken over the National Archives building in Washington, D.C. The first time, several weeks ago, a group of them had climbed onto a ledge on the front of the building with flags and banners. This time, they aimed higher.
November 13, 2008
I think the peace movement and every justice movement in the United States should simply overwhelm Congress members during the next two months with one and only one demand.
November 07, 2008
November 11th is Veterans' Day in the United States and Remembrance Day, Armistice Day, or Poppy Day in various other countries. It was on a November 11th that World War I ended. But November 11th is also a Catholic holiday that long predates World War I: the Feast of Saint Martin, celebrated in honor of a man who supposedly died on November 11, in the year 397.
November 06, 2008
As of about 9 p.m. ET on Thursday, 316,476 votes had been counted in Virginia's Fifth District congressional race between incumbent bigotted xenophobe Virgil Goode and challenger Tom Perriello, with 158,562 going to Perriello and 157,914 to Goode, for a difference of 648 votes or 0.2 percent of the total.
November 05, 2008
Subpoenas? What are those? Miers? Rove? Who are they? Are they from Chicago? Do they believe in change?
November 05, 2008
Virginia and the rest of the old South always voted for Democrats for president when the Democratic party stood for racism, and for Republicans when the Republican party stood for racism, until tonight.
November 04, 2008
Former Vice President, and the man elected president in November 2000, Al Gore was asked on the radio this morning about a letter that Gore Vidal and many others have sent to presidential candidate Barack Obama urging him not to concede a stolen election.
October 31, 2008
Having spent the past several years trying to end wars and militarism, I have just voted for a presidential candidate who seems intent on expanding them.
October 27, 2008
When a Congress member steps forward and courageously articulates a forbidden truth that is absolutely necessary for our survival and well-being (and by "our" I mean our species, not just our nation), he must be praised, rewarded, and defended at all costs, without question or hesitation. This is the situation we are in with Congressman Barney Frank having just blurted out the obvious but taboo fact that the U.S. military budget must be cut. "If we are going to get the deficit under control without slashing every domestic program, this is a necessity," Frank said, proposing to cut military spending by 25 percent.
October 24, 2008
Congressman Brad Sherman said on the floor of the House that a few Congress members had been told there would be martial law in America if they did not pass Paulson's Plunder.
October 24, 2008
Without the efforts of a number of fine upstanding Americans, there never would have been a President Pinochet.
October 24, 2008
I know this play is powerful from reading the script, so I can only imagine and look forward to how moving it will be to see it performed live.
October 23, 2008
Jerry Seib, executive Washington editor of The Wall Street Journal said on the Diane Rehm Show on NPR last week that he expects Bush, Cheney, and their subordinates to be prosecuted for torture. This expectation is spreading.
October 23, 2008
The DVD seeks to teach people that an entire religion, Islam, is aimed at terrorizing and killing them. The distributors of the DVD have clearly determined by some respectable and scholarly method that this information is most edifying for residents of swing states.
October 20, 2008
If your television declares John McCain the president elect on the evening of November 4th, your television will be lying. You should immediately pick up your pre-packed bags and head straight to the White House in Washington, D.C., which we will surround and shut down until this attempt at a third illegitimate presidency is reversed.
October 20, 2008
Barack Obama would like to bring Colin Powell into his new administration. But Americans consider Powell only marginally more credible than how the rest of the world views him, and the rest of the world thinks he lies like a rug. Powell either wholeheartedly backed the biggest crime thus far this century, or he secretly opposed it but worked to make it happen anyway. I'm not sure which is worse, but either disqualifies him for future office.
October 20, 2008
Imagine for a second that it's November 5th, and the Democrats are set to control both houses of Congress and the White House. Perhaps they even control 60 Senate seats, making Republican filibusters impossible. Now what?
October 18, 2008
I spent the past couple of days hanging out with Vincent Bugliosi who wants Bush killed for his crimes, following a fair trial of course, and who openly pushes the supposed need for retribution while disclaiming much interest in deterrence or restoration. Then I watched Oliver Stone's new movie, "W," which depicts Bush as a poor, sad fool who's just been trying his hardest to please his daddy all these years. If I have to choose, I'm on Stone's side.
October 18, 2008
The three participants in the third U.S. presidential debate last week pretended Iraq didn't exist, but if you go to a rally of supporters for either candidate it's the top issue talked about. Baghdad, a city in ruins, divided into ethnically cleansed fiefdoms of rubble, rats, and open sewage, a place where one risks death by walking outside, is managing major rallies of tens of thousands of people in opposition to the treaty to extend the occupation for three more years (and beyond) that is being negotiated by Bush and Maliki. And yet, the U.S. peace movement is largely hibernating until the November 4th U.S. elections, and the U.S. Congress remains almost entirely comatose.
October 16, 2008
Donald Trump told Wolf Blitzer on CNN on Wednesday that Bush should have been impeached for lying us into a war, and that he was surprised Nancy Pelosi hadn't done it.
October 13, 2008
Feral House offers this important and urgent publication of Dennis Kucinich´s Articles of Impeachment this election season in two formats: an offset-printed paperback book available for the cost of $12 and a free downloadable PDF available below.
October 09, 2008
On Thursday, ABC News reported a big new break in the story of illegal and unconstitutional spying that our government has engaged in for years now, except that there was nothing new in the story and the important parts were left out.
October 09, 2008
There's that word: change. This may be the time for it. It's going to take a lot more than hope.
October 09, 2008
United States Senator John McCain, according to the documents obtained, has begun referring to Americans as "my fellow prisoners," and adopting the habit of denying prisoners names. McCain now refers to his opponent, Senator Barack Obama, as "that one."
October 07, 2008
Last March, veterans of the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan gathered to talk about what they'd seen and done and survived. The event was called "Winter Soldier" and the soldiers' testimony is recorded in a powerful new book: "Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan: Eyewitness Accounts of the Occupations," by Iraq Veterans Against the War and Aaron Glantz.
October 07, 2008
As you watch the presidential debates, here's a game to play that won't even get you drunk (unless you want to add tequila shots to it):
October 06, 2008
1.-Why the United States should not attack Iran; 2.-Why there is a serious danger that the United States will attack Iran; 3.-Why Charlottesville City Council should pass a resolution opposing such an attack.
October 03, 2008
A long, long time ago...
I can still remember
Seeing houses used to make me smile.
And I knew if I got a loan
That I could call some house my own
And, maybe, we´d be happy for a while.
September 30, 2008
By David Swanson
Why would anyone phone the United States and ask for lawyers, guns, and money? Primarily because, other than bad movies, that's most of what the United States produces. What else could you phone home for if you wanted to? We produce weapons and movies about weapons and weapons...
September 26, 2008
There was only one foreign policy asked about in Friday night's foreign policy debate: war and potential wars.
September 24, 2008
Wednesday night.
September 23, 2008
Have you heard the latest news? John McCain is now in favor of regulating Wall Street.
September 22, 2008
The last time the Democrats all started bleating "No blank check - No blank check" it meant only one thing. They were signing a check and scribbling a bunch of nonsense in the memo line.
September 17, 2008
Be part of the conversation.
September 15, 2008
You can do a lot in the time Sarah Palin thinks it took to create the world.
September 12, 2008
I'm sending this early, Senator, because of my confidence that you won't open it until Christmas and my concern that when you do you'll say I should have spoken up sooner.
September 06, 2008
Article VI. of the U.S. Constitution says that "no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States."
The writers of the Constitution knew the recent history of wars of religion and religious persecution in Europe. Many of the thinker...
July 31, 2008
Many of my fellow Americans will, I am sure, join me in asking you to lend us, your friends, a much needed helping hand. In doing so, I think you will be coming to the aid of yourselves as well, and of the rest of the world.
July 30, 2008
If anyone buys Conyers' staffs' new forthcoming book, it will be because Conyers is (or at least was) chair of the Judiciary Committee. And yet, the book's existence will demonstrate and it will document that Conyers was never any such thing, that in fact he's just a professor who uses public funds to pay his teaching assistants to write books in his name.
July 28, 2008
Imagine being so angry that you couldn't find a job that you were able to decide, as a man in Tennessee just did, that the way to solve your problems was to attack liberals - the people who support (albeit ineffectively) workers' rights, union rights, and fair trade, who oppose NAFTA, oppose tax breaks for shipping jobs overseas, support investing in job creation at home rather than wars abroad, and want to tax corporations and the super-rich rather than small businesses and working people.
July 28, 2008
Last Friday one of two things indisputably happened. Either a dozen senior Congress members and several well-known expert witnesses went certifiably and collectively insane, or charges of the most extreme executive abuses of power ever heard in the history of this nation were backed up by overwhelming evidence during a six-hour hearing of the House Judiciary Committee focused on the possible need to impeach the President and the Vice President. Either way, a nation with a public communications system worthy of a democracy would have learned the news.
July 23, 2008
A race to get involved in, no matter where you live!
July 22, 2008
A race to get involved in.
July 17, 2008
There's been a lot of public discussion of late of the Associated Press's Washington Bureau Chief Ron Fournier's changes in style rules. Out with "just the facts," in with opinion and perspective. Or so the story goes. The changes that are afoot at the AP appear to be part of a broader trend, influenced - in part - by the internet, the medium itself and the competition from bloggers. Of the two biggest problems I see in American journalism, this trend could fix one of them while not necessarily having any immediate impact, pro or con, on the other.
July 15, 2008
An Open Letter to Luis Moreno-Ocampo, Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court
July 10, 2008
This is the part where justice rolls down like a mighty stream.
July 06, 2008
and finding a flag big enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people
July 02, 2008
While George Dubya will desecrate Monticello with some dishonest remarks from a podium on Friday as new citizens swear to defend the Constitution he has destroyed, this AP story has the plans of the man in charge. Dick Cheney will make his remarks on a ship named the Constitution and talk about fighting pirates rather than being one:
June 30, 2008
Exactly what does July 4th celebrate?
June 27, 2008
The Unitary Executive is scheduled to disgrace the grounds of Thomas Jefferson's house, Monticello, in Charlottesville, Va., making a speech on the morning of July 4, 2008.
June 27, 2008
(Originally published in July 2007, and to be published every summer until the right to do so is gone.)
June 26, 2008
That's a translation of subpoena: Sub Poena: Under Punishment. And if you or I refused to obey a subpoena we would certainly be under punishment.
June 22, 2008
Michael Waldman, former Bill Clinton speech writer and current director of the Brennan Center, has a new book called "A Return to Common Sense: 7 Bold Ways to Revitalize Our Democracy."
June 22, 2008
What's the matter with Congress?
June 12, 2008
Blood up to our shoulders. Oil in our eyes.
June 10, 2008
Congressman Dennis Kucinich Introduced 35 Articles of Impeachment Against President Bush on Monday Night
June 03, 2008
I've got no strings
To hold me down
To make me bow to Cheney's crown
I had strings
But now I'm free
I'm Nouri al Maliki
May 19, 2008
Another American chooses to speak out.
May 13, 2008
There are 103 delegates on the line next Tuesday in Kentucky and Oregon. There's not a single employee of any of the media outlets promoting this phony contest that believes Obama could possibly win fewer than 14 delegates in Kentucky and Oregon.
May 13, 2008
Former Republican Rhode Island Senator Lincoln Chafee on Tuesday evening called George W. Bush the worst president in U.S. history and the occupation of Iraq the worst foreign tragedy in U.S. history. Chafee said Bush deserved to be impeached.
May 13, 2008
Rep. Robert Wexler (Dem., Florida) has written a book, soon to be released, that is as different from most congress members' books as Wexler is from most congress members. He's titled it "Fire-Breathing Liberal: How I Learned to Survive (and Thrive) in the Contact Sport of Congress." Wexler is depicted on the cover with the Capitol in the background and his fists in the air.
May 07, 2008
It's reached a point that everyone has known for months it had to reach, the point at which even people paid to do so cannot keep it going with a straight face.
May 05, 2008
The poll marks a 14% increase from 54% in September.
May 03, 2008
Obama and Clinton each picked up 2 pledged delgates in Guam this weekend. Obama now has 1,493 pledged delegates. Clinton has 1,334 pledged delegates. Of the remaining 404 delegates yet to be pledged, Clinton would need to win 282 of them to beat Obama. That's a victory of 70 percent to 30 percent. There is not a single political reporter in the country who considers that a remote possibility, and yet every media outlet covers this "race" as if either candidate could win.
April 30, 2008
Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Shirin Ebadi to Answer Your Questions Online
April 26, 2008
California's 24th District is grotesquely misrepresented by Cheney-Bush rubber stamper Elton Gallegly, who is ready to start his lobbying career on K Street but who was talked into running again by the Republican Party.
April 11, 2008
On Friday outside the gates of Stratcom, the strategic command center outside of Omaha, Nebraska, that controls U.S. nuclear weapons and military space technology and from which the next war of aggression will be run, a group of activists gathered from all over the world. A number of people gave speeches in the freezing bone-chilling wind and snow. This was mine:
April 11, 2008
During an endless airplane trip from hell yesterday that included an extended stay in Chicago's scenic O'Hare airport, I had the misfortune to read one book about where our tax dollars go and another book that was, indirectly, about where they do not go.
April 08, 2008
I recently sent the following note to a friend. The note I was replying to is pasted in below it. You might want to skip down and read it first.
April 07, 2008
Senator Jim Webb, (D., Va.) and Roger Ebert, a movie reviewer with the Chicago Sun-Times have announced a joint initiative.
April 03, 2008
Coming out of today's meeting with John Conyers, these seem to be the significant developments:
March 31, 2008
This is the most encouraging thing I've seen in many months.
March 30, 2008
The first international conference of the World Prout Assembly, entitled, "Building a New World," committed to ending imperialist wars and affirming models of cooperative, community-based economies and political activism, will be held May 22-25 at Radford University, Radford, Virginia.
March 28, 2008
Donna Edwards worked wonders by nearly beating Al Wynn in a Maryland congressional primary in 2006 and threatening to run again.
March 28, 2008
How would you like to vote for a political party that sacrifices hundreds of thousands of lives to win elections? Yeah, neither would I. So, how can they be so sure they will win elections?
March 28, 2008
In 2006 we elected a Congress to end the occupation of Iraq. If we don't hold that Congress to it, we will not have the power in 2008 to elect anyone for any stated purpose. Fulfillment of campaign promises will be entirely optional in 2009. Our last chance to hold the current Congress to its commitment is in the coming month of April, when the House takes up Bush's request for another $102 billion of our grandchildren's money.
March 27, 2008
Chris Hedges recently published an article called "The Dangerous Atheism of Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris," but he failed to include in it any indication of what he thinks is dangerous about their atheism.
March 25, 2008
Below is what Senator Robert Byrd (D., West Virginia) has to say about ending the occupation. Please call him at 202-224-3954 and ask him to show he is serious by announcing his intention to filibuster the funding.
March 25, 2008
We just passed another tragic milestone with the 4,000th death of U.S. soldiers in Iraq, while the uncounted death toll of innocent Iraqis climbs beyond 1 million.
Yet in April, Congress will vote to give George Bush another $102 billion blank check for Iraq on top of past blank checks for $562 billion - unless we finally persuade our Representatives to Just Say No.
March 24, 2008
The greatest purveyor of violence in the world is, by no coincidence, also the wealthiest nation in the world that does not provide its people with health coverage. About one in six Americans has no health coverage at all, and another two or three out of those six lack adequate coverage even though they pay more than enough to receive it and to provide it to those who lack it as well.
March 23, 2008
Robert Dreyfuss's presentation that I now have to follow was tremendous and I learned a lot, but I disagree with his pessimism. I am fond of the saying "Let's save our pessimism for better times." It's a choice to be a pessimist, and it is a wrong one, always.
March 20, 2008
Several Democratic House candidates have backed what they call the "Responsible Plan to End the War in Iraq".
March 20, 2008
The videos below show exactly how much fun it can be to interrupt the day of war profiteering oil barrons and educate the public about an occupation that we said six years ago would be blood for oil and that we say now is blood for oil.
March 18, 2008
The activist group No War, No Warming today announced that they will be celebrating outside the headquarters of the American Petroleum Institute Wednesday morning beginning at 8:30 a.m. The API is located at 1220 L St. NW, at the corner of 13th and L.
March 17, 2008
In a wide-ranging hour-long discussion on live radio, General William Odom said he sees two useful things Congress can do: cease funding the occupation of Iraq, and impeach Bush and Cheney.
March 14, 2008
A pair of new polls may suggest the power of falsehoods repeated ad infinitum on our televisions and in our newspapers.
March 13, 2008
What if Senator John McCain were forced to choose an extremely and increasingly unpopular position and stand by it for months as it became less and less popular?
March 13, 2008
Imagine yourself sitting down transfixed and watching video footage of U.S. bombs hitting Iran. You see children ripped limb from limb, mothers screaming and wailing, people panicked, tortured, traumatized, and killed. Imagine asking yourself at that point: What was I doing these past many months that I thought was more important than preventing this?
March 13, 2008
Today was the day for Stop-Loss Congress. We notified every Congress Member and Senator over the past two days that they were being stop-lossed and denied permission to leave until they end the occupation of Iraq. Today we took action.
March 04, 2008
New Hampshire State Representative Betty Hall is the chief sponsor of a resolution to be voted on this week in the state legislature, a resolution to petition Congress to impeach Bush and Cheney. Hall asked people to Email her their thoughts, and she is receiving more than one Email per minute, almost all of them from New Hampshire, but some from other states and countries, and every single one of them supportive of impeachment.
March 04, 2008
This makes 26 cosponsors, or 27 total members including the orginal sponsor of H Res 333, Congressman Dennis Kucinich, who won his reelection primary today.
March 04, 2008
Many of us fear, I think, that it is not our place as Americans to ask Iraqis to put their lives at risk through nonviolence.
March 04, 2008
Brattleboro, Vt., voted today in support of a measure calling on the town's police force to arrest and indict Bush and Cheney. The vote was 2012-1795.
March 03, 2008
Congressman Dennis Kucinich's resolution to impeach Vice President Dick Cheney now has more cosponsors signed onto it than any resolution to impeach President Richard Nixon ever had. But separate resolutions to impeach Nixon, some with a handful of cosponsors, many with no cosponsors at all, were fi...
March 03, 2008
When citizens and voters go to the town meeting and primaries in Brattleboro, Vermont, on Tuesday, there will be a question on the back of all ballots, and a circle to mark Yes and one to mark No:
"Shall the Selectboard instruct the Town Attorney to draft indictments against President Bush and Vi...
February 27, 2008
Is it possible to convict a group of people of the highest possible crime simply by editing together public statements that they made while planning it?
February 27, 2008
This is the worst I've heard and far worse than I had thought before conducting the interview.
February 27, 2008
Yesterday in the rain in front of the U.S. Capitol hundreds of 911 rescue workers who risked their lives in a toxic mess they were told was safe piled off buses from New York. They held a rally with a handful of Congress Members and asked Congress to get them health care so that they can stop suffering every day while we slaughter people abroad in their names and in the name of those who died that day.
February 26, 2008
Cleveland, Ohio's corporate media has passionately opposed the progressive populist efforts of Dennis Kucinich for decades. This week marks the climax of its most ferocious crusade to remove him from Congress.
Unable to be confident of motivating enough Democrats to vote against Kucinich in Tues...
February 26, 2008
Senator Russ Feingold (D., Wisc.) is preparing to give the Republicans in the Senate two more opportunities this week to grandstand and filibuster in favor of the occupation of Iraq. They will, of course, do so; and they will, of course, win.
Feingold cannot possibly have any doubt of that as he...
February 26, 2008
On Wednesday, February 27th, from 8 to 9 p.m. ET I'll be interviewing live another female Halliburton employee who was subjected to an environment of constant sexual harassment in Iraq. Tracy Barker was sexually assaulted by Halliburton employees and - in one instance - by a U.S. State Department em...
February 26, 2008
If you've lost your house to a predatory lender and you ask your congress member to impeach Bush and Cheney for your loss, will they look at you like you're crazy? That depends entirely on how many of you are asking.
If there are not enough of you, they'll look at you like you're crazy for sugge...
February 26, 2008
George W. Bush has set a record for unpopularity that may stand for all time: He now has a 19 percent approval rating. And, remember that Cheney has always polled LOWER than Bush.
Imagine if the Democrats were to do something we care about (preserving the Constitution) by doing something they ...
February 26, 2008
We the people of the Homeland, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, kill the terrorists, lock up the immigrants, and honor ou...
February 24, 2008
If you've lost your house to a predatory lender and you ask your congress member to impeach Bush and Cheney for your loss, will they look at you like you're crazy? That depends entirely on how many of you are asking.
If there are not enough of you, they'll look at you like you're crazy for sugge...
February 12, 2008
There's a new rule on Capitol Hill: the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee can remove impeachment from the Constitution, but cannot also use telephones, Email, or fax machines, because the flood of pro-impeachment communications from outraged citizens is overwhelming each of those devices. Do...
February 12, 2008
I spoke with Congressman Dennis Kucinich because a rumor was gaining traction that:
"Before the Nevada primary, Dennis was visited by representatives of Nancy Pelosi and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee — AIPAC. They told Dennis that if he would drop his campaigns to impeach Che...
February 12, 2008
Virginians created and may end the right of impeachment.
CHARLOTTESVILLE -- A recent national poll on impeachment, conducted by the American Research Group last November, found that 52 percent of Americans believed Vice President Dick Cheney had committed impeachable offenses.
The numbers for...
February 12, 2008
Cville Weekly's "Coverage" Close Behind.
Two weeks ago an article in the Cville Weekly by Josh Levy (http://tinyurl.com/3ckznf) told us that the "surge" was going to win the "war" in Iraq. "Victory has not yet arrived," he cautioned, "and it may be years before we can mark its arrival with con...
February 05, 2008
Of course, Americans must be 18 to serve in the military, but much of the military's recruiting work is directed at those who have not yet turned 18.
According to Dave Meserve in Arcata, Calif., localities can avoid the consequences of the No Child Left Behind law (which turns students' names and...
February 03, 2008
Increasingly, all the news that's fit to print does not include the news that editorial writers deem significant. The New York Times and many other newspapers have developed the habit of writing lengthy editorials about news stories that never make it into the news section. One example of this tre...
January 30, 2008
Washington State Senator Eric Oemig has drafted a resolution urging the U.S. Congress to impeach Bush and Cheney and remove them from office. Oemig plans to introduce his resolution (SJM 8016) when the legislative session begins on January 14th. Senator Darlene Fairley, Chair of the committee that w...
January 30, 2008
What does one say to a young woman gang raped by men paid by us to work for a company from which our vice president profits, men who have yet to be charged with any crime, a company yet to make amends in any way, and a presidential administration effectively granted immunity by our representatives i...
January 30, 2008
These are some of the words of Martin Luther King Jr.:
"The nonviolent strategy has been to dramatize the evils of our society in such a way that pressure is brought to bear against those evils by the forces of good will in the community and change is produced. The student sit-ins of 1960 are a c...
January 30, 2008
I am not a United States Senator today. I am not a candidate for President. Today, on the 6th anniversary of the first incarcerations at Guantanamo, I am a man who has been tortured.
There are two key types of people in the world, and I am both of them. I have been tortured, and I have tortured. ...
January 30, 2008
January 16, 2008 - I'm in the Cannon House Office Building Caucus Room, and it's much fuller than it has been in the past for some recent Congressional Progressive Caucus events. That's encouraging. But the few Congress Members who were here at the start of the event have left to go vote. Other than...
January 30, 2008
The Randi Rhodes Show worked its magic today just as it used to do for www.afterdowningstreet.org almost three years ago. Congressman Robert Wexler came on and discussed the need for Cheney impeachment hearings. His petition at http://wexlerwantshearings.com passed the 200,000 mark before the show w...
January 30, 2008
This is a tale of our upside-down election world. Please read it from the bottom up.
UPDATE #3: Having ruled out the possibility that one of the other candidates was whispering to himself, MSNBC has added an update to its blog post concluding that someone in the audience must have been whispering...
January 30, 2008
Congressman Dennis Kucinich is facing a tough primary in five weeks in his working class district in Cleveland, Ohio. He's up against better funded opponents and the concerted effort of the corporate and media powers of Cleveland that have opposed him since long before he took that seat away from a ...
January 30, 2008
"In the past six years, we've stopped numerous attacks, including a plot to fly a plane into the tallest building in Los Angeles, and another to blow up passenger jets bound for America over the Atlantic."
--George W. Bush, 2008 State of the Union
"We stopped an al Qaeda plot to fly a hijacked a...
January 30, 2008
On the day of the State of the Union, apparently hoping nobody would notice, President George W. Bush posted a statement on the White House website announcing his intention to violate major sections of the Defense Authorization bill that he just signed into law.
For their part, the Democrats in ...
January 30, 2008
Every major pseudo peace movement organization in the country, afraid to actually urge Congress to cut off the money for the illegal occupation of Iraq, believed it was really important to set up a commission to probe contractor waste in Iraq, and to once again ban the construction and maintenance o...
January 30, 2008
- Based on a report from Malachy Kilbride.
Mike Ferner was found guilty today in District of Columbia Superior Court. He has just been sentenced.
Ferner was originally sentenced to 5 days incarceration suspended and 6 months unsupervised probation including a $100 fine and $50 to the victims ...
January 26, 2008
Some of you may recall the powerful evidence in 2004 that George W. Bush was cheating in the debates by wearing an earpiece. The New York Times famously (well, at least somewhat famously) documented the evidence and then refused to print it because it might have had an effect on the election: http:/...
January 26, 2008
In a December 31, 2007, editorial, the New York Times faulted the current president and vice president of the United States for kidnapping innocent people, denying justice to prisoners, torturing, murdering, circumventing U.S. and international law, spying in violation of the Fourth Amendment, and b...
January 25, 2008
John Bowe's terrific new book called "Nobodies: Modern American Slave Labor and the Dark Side of the New Global Economy" takes the reader on a journey ending in the question I've placed above this essay.
Bowe makes three major stops along the way. The first is in Florida, where we learn in depth...
January 24, 2008
A private off-the-record meeting was held on Capitol Hill on Wednesday that included House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, Subcommittee on the Constitution Chairman Jerrold Nadler, Judiciary Committee Member and advocate for opening Cheney impeachment hearings Robert Wexler, and several o...
January 24, 2008
Kucinich to Introduce Bush Articles of Impeachment.
I interviewed Congressman Robert Wexler today (listen here: http://www.thepeoplespeakradio.net ), and he said that he had attended a meeting earlier today that included Congressman John Conyers and addressed the topics of contempt and impeachm...
January 21, 2008
Check out this letter I just received by Email:
The lurch was first mentioned in Dante's "Purgatorio," and I had always wanted to go there. What can I say? I'm an adventurer. That's one reason I joined the military in the first place. Well, that and all the lies about money and college and not ha...
January 21, 2008
Congress has the power to bring all troops, mercenaries, and contractors home safely this year. The cost of bringing them home is minimal and already covered by funds appropriated for wars and for a military budget that eats up over half of every tax dollar. We cannot afford another year of damaged ...
January 21, 2008
What should the peace movement do in 2008 to speed the end of the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, bring home the troops and mercenaries and contractors, and stop draining trillions of dollars out of Americans' pockets for an expense that most of us do not want? And what should all organization...
January 09, 2008
In a December editorial, the New York Times faulted the current president and vice president of the United States for kidnapping innocent people, denying justice to prisoners, torturing, murdering, circumventing U.S. and international law, spying in violation of the Fourth Amendment, and basing thei...
January 06, 2008
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Florida has followed the lead of the ACLU of Central Florida, the ACLU of Monroe County Florida, and the ACLU of the Treasure Coast (Florida), all of which followed the lead of the ACLU of Southern California in backing impeachment and calling for the Nat...
January 04, 2008
Numerous peace and justice organizations, including student groups taking advantage of Spring Break, are making plans for a week of actions from March 12th to 19th to mark the end of the fifth year of U.S. occupation in Iraq. Events will culminate in a national day of actions on March 19th, the fift...
January 03, 2008
I love Dennis Kucinich and think he is far and away the best candidate running for president. He and I are speaking together on a panel in New Hampshire this weekend. But asking his supporters in Iowa to vote for Obama as their second choice makes no sense to me.
First of all, any Iowan willing ...
January 03, 2008
Congressman Mike Michaud, a conservative and Blue Dog Democrat from Maine sent a letter over the holiday break to House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers calling for impeachment hearings of Vice President Dick Cheney.
Michaud is not among the 25 cosponsors of Rep. Dennis Kucinich's H Res...
January 02, 2008
In a surprise and apparently sudden decision Tuesday evening, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced the hiring of a new Chief of Staff for her DC office. The choice of someone without any experience on Capitol Hill surprised many observers, leading to speculation as to what changes Pelosi may have i...
December 29, 2007
Of course we've long since established that they do not hate us for the reasons they say they hate us. For example, our military bases in their countries have nothing to do with it. When I mention to people in the U.S. that Italians or Czechs or Germans or Koreans are protesting new U.S. bases, th...
December 28, 2007
The past year has seen the public exposure of enough evidence of old, ongoing, and new crimes, abuses of power, and impeachable offenses by George Bush and Dick Cheney that in any remotely representative democracy, these two thugs would be out of office and behind bars. The chief reason this does no...
December 23, 2007
On Thursday, Congressman Anthony Weiner told Bob Fertik of Democrats.com that he would sign onto Congressman Robert Wexler's letter to Chairman John Conyers urging the commencement of impeachment hearings for Dick Cheney. Wexler, together with Congress Members Luis Gutierrez and Tammy Baldwin, hopes...
December 17, 2007
The people of the northern Italian city of Vicenza, with help from activists around Italy, the rest of Europe, and even in the United States, are continuing to block the proposed construction of a new U.S. military base on their soil. When a company laid underground fiber-optic cables at the site of...
December 05, 2007
"A very few serve the state with their consciences, and so necessarily resist it." -Henry David Thoreau
"We should never forget that everything Adolph Hitler did in Germany was legal and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was illegal." -Martin Luther King Jr.
"A real cyn...
December 03, 2007
As noted by the uniquely vigilant Charlie Savage in the Boston Globe, President Bush in November issued a signing statement unconstitutionally overturning 10 sections of H.R. 3222, the "Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2008." Among the little technical details Bush just erased was the requi...
November 23, 2007
Jonathan Schell's latest book "The Seventh Decade" places our current situation in the context of the past 62 years of the nuclear age, or the past 68 years as Schell might prefer to date it. It was 68 years ago that scientists concluded a nuclear bomb was possible. Scientists and politicians imme...
November 23, 2007
I wonder what would happen if the people and their representatives were to shock the powerful and their funders for a change? What if on November 16th, the Iraq Moratorium day, everybody together took major actions? What if everyone with a job took the day off work? What if everyone wore orange? ...
November 22, 2007
Like most Americans, I'm appreciative of all the wonderful people and experiences in my life, and I like the idea of taking a day off from lamenting all the painful, tragic, and humiliating experiences in my life and the many more in the lives of so many people around the world impacted by my govern...
November 16, 2007
That does it. It's time for the Democratic Party to stage its own debate, ask its own questions, and offer the video to networks as a completed package. Allowing CNN to not just air a debate but to ask the questions proved on Thursday night (even more dramatically than in the past) to be a soul sick...
November 09, 2007
If I were a member of Congress, I would make this pledge:
I pledge to vote No on any bill, and to vote No on bringing to the floor for a vote any bill, that includes any funding to extend the occupation of Iraq. This pledge does not prevent me from voting for funding for a withdrawal, although s...
November 09, 2007
I've often seen Bush compared to a child and Cheney to a monster, which I think is incredibly unfair to children and monsters. The following is a commentary on a blog posting by Digby that compares the Bush-Cheney crime gang to postmodernists and “relativists”, which I think is entirely unfair to po...
November 06, 2007
This past Friday night and Saturday, Ann Wright and I spoke at four events in the Los Angeles area on the topics of peace and impeachment. I flew home, but Ann intended to keep going at the same pace for another week or more without ever leaving L.A. The people of Santa Barbara and Oxnard and Venice...
November 06, 2007
Congressman Dennis Kucinich said on a conference call Monday evening that after moving to impeach Vice President Cheney on Tuesday he will also introduce, at a future date, a resolution to impeach President Bush. Or rather, he would have said that on the conference call if not for several technical ...
November 05, 2007
When someone whose opinions I respect as much as John Nichols' joins those who have been saying since 2003 that Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich should announce that he's not REALLY running for president, I feel compelled to reply.
Nichols, like most Americans, supports the sam...
November 04, 2007
On the eve of the Senate Judiciary Committee vote on the nomination of Judge Michael B. Mukasey (Monday, November 5th at 12:00 noon), a group of human rights activists will demonstrate waterboarding at the Justice Department, 10th & Pennsylvania, NW.
The volunteer torture victim will demonstrate...
November 02, 2007
Of the eleven major peace rallies organized around the country by United for Peace and Justice last Saturday the smallest and most unusual took place in Jonesborough, Tennessee. Jonesborough is a town of about 4,000 people in the northeast corner of Tennessee, within a couple of dozen miles of both...
October 30, 2007
I'm live-blogging an Obama rally here in Charlottesville VA. I just wrote 10' tall in chalk on the Charlottesville "Freedom of Expression Wall" the following: "Hey, Barack, If you'll filibuster the spying, why won't you filibuster the war funding?" I'd love to actually ask him, but I couldn't affo...
October 28, 2007
Remarks at October 27, 2007, rally in Jonesborough, Tenn., preceding march to Aerojet Ordnance, manufacturers of Depleted Uranium weapons.
There are those who think Congress should keep shelling out our grandchildren's money to continue our occupation of Iraq, and there are those who think Con...
October 22, 2007
Beginning last November and ever since, I have repeated a standard conversation with many Congress Members and staffers. It starts out with me urging them to impeach Bush and Cheney. They then stress all their other priorities that this would supposedly distract from, including often children's he...
October 22, 2007
If you haven't already, you really should read Chris Hedges' book "War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning." The portrait of war and wartime propaganda and emotion is brilliant and deadly accurate. But the headline is misleading. War does not give us lasting solid self-assured meaning. War gives us...
October 19, 2007
Senator Chris Dodd on Thursday single-handedly blocked a bill to legalize unconstitutional spying and immunize criminals who have engaged in it. But by doing so, Dodd may have made the biggest blunder Washington has seen in many months. He advertised the fact that a single senator with nerve has the...
October 11, 2007
On Wednesday, I spoke with Congresswomen Barbara Lee and Lynn Woolsey about getting out of Iraq. They are moving in the right direction, but are not yet serious about ending the occupation this year. They are resigned to putting up an effort in a misguided approach, and then hoping to actually end i...
October 08, 2007
Remarks on October 6, 2007, at a rally in Richmond, Va., celebrating the U.S. Constitution and flag.
There have always been those in the antiwar movement who believed that if Congress finally found the nerve to stop funding the occupation of Iraq, Bush and Cheney would actually pull out. Th...
October 08, 2007
When Republican Senator Pat Roberts chaired the Senate Intelligence Committee, he refused to conduct an investigation into how Bush and Cheney misled the Congress about the case for invading Iraq. The investigation, part of what was known as Phase II, had been agreed to, but Roberts refused to do i...
October 03, 2007
The leaders of today's Congress have made clear through numerous lobby visits that unless we can produce polls that show congressional elections in November 2008 hang on the question of impeachment, nobody's going to be impeached. Bush and Cheney can continue to ignore subpoenas, spy illegally, kidn...
October 02, 2007
While they may not be in Congress, there are members of our government willing to risk their careers and more to blow the whistle on the criminal takeover of our former democracy. One of them is Sam Provance.
I've just posted an amazing video of Sam Provance telling his story, along with vi...
September 27, 2007
Over the past day or so, the following things have happened:
The Senate passed language aimed at antagonizing Iran.
The House approved billions more dollars to extend the occupation of Iraq a couple of more months and also joined the Senate in passing a condemnation of an activist gr...
September 27, 2007
There are now two types of Democratic presidential candidates, the ones who promise to end the occupation of Iraq, and the ones who say they may very well keep it going for another four years.
MSNBC hosted another Democratic presidential debate Wednesday evening. Due to a technical error, the cab...
September 27, 2007
Jeremy Scahill, author of a terrific book on the Blackwater mercenary army, spoke in Charlottesville, Virginia, on Tuesday to a packed hall. He took questions at the end, and one man asked something to the effect of "Why does the government want to privatize the military? We taxpayers have been pa...
September 25, 2007
As police officers were torturing a University of Florida student with a taser in the back of a lecture hall as punishment for asking inconvenient questions of Senator John Kerry, the Senator chose not to order them to stop. Rather he calmly mumbled his non-answers to the questions and even joked ab...
September 25, 2007
I was invited to speak on a (foreign, of course) television show about the money that U.S. presidential candidates are accepting and how it affects them, so I took a look at the latest numbers on OpenSecrets.org. The television producers only wanted to discuss the three Democrats and three Republic...
September 25, 2007
A Roseland, Indiana, city council member orders police to remove a fellow city council member. The police escort him out, shove him down on his face and pound his head. Onlookers either cheer, do nothing, joke, behave as if all were normal, or yell at others to let the police do their jobs. Not a ...
September 25, 2007
I spent a day meeting with Congress Members and their staffers, urging them to end the occupation of Iraq, and having them tell me they would never "defund our troops." In the evening I watched Paul Haggis's new film "In the Valley of Elah." I walked out stunned, shaken, far more angry than I'd been...
September 25, 2007
From the point of view of a corpse, Thursday's die-in on the steps of the U.S. Capitol was overwhelming and diminishing. I was one of twenty some corpses lying dead in a river of blood in front of police and tourists and a color guard of Iraq veterans. I was one of a pile of corpses. You could ha...
September 25, 2007
Sam Provance exposed the torture in Abu Ghraib and as thanks had his career ruined, was threatened with prison, has had his wife leave him, and is now barely scraping by. He said Thursday evening that on a personal level his choice to speak out was not worth it. "But," he said, "this is not about ...
September 19, 2007
[Remarks at Saturday's impeachment rally in Miami, Fla., organized by www.floridaimpeach.org ]
It's great to see such a crowd and so many groups represented. I especially want to thank Veterans for Peace. Dave Cline was a great leader and will be badly missed. We should all go out and do as much ...
September 11, 2007
United for Peace and Justice, the country's largest anti-war coalition, has produced an assessment of the situation on the ground in Iraq that contrasts sharply with the projected conclusions of the so-called Petraeus Report – actually written within the White House. Leslie Cagan, National Coordi...
September 10, 2007
A top priority for progressives regarding next year's presidential election should be convincing Barack Obama and John Edwards to join forces as a ticket and defeat Hillary Clinton.
Were one of them to drop out, the other would easily take first place in the polls. But neither of them is ...
September 10, 2007
Are you here to communicate your own view, that of the White House, or both?
Please name all the people with whom you have had communications in preparing for this testimony.
What does the White House expect from your testimony?
Are you submitting a written report to this Con...
September 10, 2007
"Someone must have been telling lies about Joseph K., for without having done anything wrong he was arrested one fine morning…"
If you read the rest of The Trial by Franz Kafka you'll find that K. is not just arrested, but also executed, and that his execution comes as the perfectly natura...
September 10, 2007
The killing in Hawijah, Iraq, of 18-year old Corporal Jeremy Shank of Jackson, Missouri, (population 12,000) merited an article in the Southeast Missourian. Cpl. Shank was killed on Sept. 6, 2006 and I was in that part of Missouri when his body came home for burial. According to the Pentagon, Shank ...
September 06, 2007
I spent a day meeting with Congress Members and their staffers, urging them to end the occupation of Iraq, and having them tell me they would never "defund our troops." In the evening I watched Paul Haggis's new film "In the Valley of Elah." I walked out stunned, shaken, far more angry than I'd be...
September 06, 2007
The other day I wrote a column that no corporate newspaper would ever dream of printing, but submitted it to all of them anyway in hopes it might jar something loose. The Editorial Page Editor of Barron's Weekly wrote me back to disagree with my column, and I wrote him back, and he wrote me back, a...
September 03, 2007
The administration of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney is set on a course that leads directly to a third world war. And a third world war leads almost inevitably to most of us dying horrible deaths. And we're not talking about it.
The White House has made clear it is seriously considering ...
September 03, 2007
The Governor of Virginia, Timothy M. Kaine, has just pardoned Gabriel Prosser for leading a slave revolt in Virginia over 200 years ago. Prosser sought to organize thousands of slaves to accomplish the "wholesale massacre" of whites in Richmond and other slave-holding areas, according to historian ...
September 01, 2007
If Ron Paul had been president for the past 6 years, a million more Iraqis would be alive, and another 4 million would not be refugees. The world would be a safer place, and Americans would have lost fewer freedoms.
But more Americans would lack decent health care. More American children...
August 30, 2007
Every corporate media outlet in the country believes a story that Democrats.com reported months ago is the top news of the day. Here's the Los Angeles Times version:
BREAKING NEWS: Sen. Craig denies being gay
"I am not gay," Sen. Larry Craig said twice during a 10-minute statement today follow...
August 30, 2007
On April 10th, the House Judiciary Committee subpoenaed the Justice Department for papers and Emails related to the apparently politically motivated firings of U.S. attorneys. The deadline passed. The DOJ did not comply.
On April 25th, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee subpoenae...
August 28, 2007
Detailed Pentagon plans for a military attack on Iran are far more extensive than has been reported in the U.S., according to top British military analysts. There have been occasional news reports on various strategic bombing options - both conventional and nuclear - but this is the first comprehens...
August 28, 2007
[Remarks at Peace Vigil in Charlottesville, VA Today]
Thank you all for coming. My name is David Swanson.
Ken Zelin who organized tonight's vigil asked me to welcome everyone and say a few words.
This event is one of over 500 taking place today all over the country organized...
August 28, 2007
Transcript from Democracy Now!, Commentary added in brackets by David Swanson
AMY GOODMAN: Congressman Conyers, it was interesting to see you at this major rally in Newark on Saturday. About more than a thousand people were there. It was the largest demonstration against war and violence at home...
August 27, 2007
"Made Love, Got War" is the title of Norman Solomon's latest book, an autobiographical account of the peace and disarmament movements in the United States over the past half century. Better than his other books, I think, this one achieves the level of artistic composition found in Solomon's brillia...
August 27, 2007
If you were a member of Congress, wouldn't you behave completely differently from how most members of Congress behave? I mean, if you had not gone through the process required to become a congress member, but just suddenly became one tomorrow, wouldn't you behave as though you had an ounce of decen...
August 15, 2007
Public pressure on Congress to end the occupation of Iraq resulted in a fundamental breakthrough on July 19th when 70 congress members sent a letter to the president. The key sentence in the letter was the first one:
"We are writing to inform you that we will only support appropriating add...
August 13, 2007
The Portside listserve, whose moderators have chosen to send out several articles over the past few weeks criticizing those activists who sat in at Congressman John Conyers' office on July 23rd to demand impeachment, today sent out a lengthy article by Mark Solomon.
Three-quarters of the article si...
August 12, 2007
There is something else we can try. If you've given up on staging marches and rallies, or if – like me – you haven't but you want to try something else as well, and if you've given up on lobbying Congress as pointless, or if – like me – you haven't but you want to try something else as well, and if...
August 12, 2007
I've been a reader and contributor to the Black Commentator since it began, as well as to the Black Agenda Report, which split off from it. The July 23rd sit-in in Congressman John Conyers' office, in which I took part, has led to quite a brouhaha in both publications. Last week the Black Agenda R...
August 12, 2007
Should it go without saying that the current Congress is Democratic? The Democrats have the majority, control the agenda, and chair and hold a majority on every committee. But does that make the Congress Democratic?
Liberal commentators averse to criticizing Speaker Nancy Pelosi have begun...
August 12, 2007
Former members of the House Judiciary Committee often have excellent advice for current members. Former Congresswoman Liz Holtzman, who served on the committee when it passed articles of impeachment against President Richard Nixon, has published a book and spoken at numerous events arguing for the i...
August 07, 2007
If you support the ongoing occupation of Iraq, I'm sure you have your reasons and that they're based in hard scientific calculations. But please indulge me for a moment and help me do this little math problem:
All the benefits we've gotten out of invading and occupying Iraq (whatever they may be)...
August 07, 2007
According to the Memphis Commercial Appeal, Congressman and Judiciary Committee Member Steve Cohen is moving beyond Congressman Inslee's bill to draw up actual articles of impeachment against Attorney General Alberto Gonzales:
In a telephone interview from Memphis on Monday, Cohen said he and his...
August 06, 2007
Iraqis oppose oil development plans, poll finds
Further setback for US / UK as Iraqis reject oil privatisation
http://priceofoil.org
Iraqis oppose plans to open the country’s oilfields to foreign investment by a factor of two to one, according to a poll released today. Iraqis are united in this v...
August 06, 2007
Forty-five Congress Members now stand in one manner or another for impeachment.
Congressman Steve Cohen from Tennessee, and Congresswoman Shiela Jackson-Lee of Texas have signed onto H. Res. 333. That makes six Judiciary Committee members ready to impeach the Vice President. The other four are Ha...
August 05, 2007
Forty-one Congress Members now stand in one manner or another for impeachment.
Seventeen have signed on as cosponsors of H. Res. 333, a bill proposing articles of impeachment against Vice President Dick Cheney. H Res 333 cosponsors include, Dennis Kucinich, Jan Schakowsky, Maxine Waters, Hank Joh...
August 03, 2007
America is quite likely to elect a Republican president in 2009. The first reason is that Republican election fraud has been well established since 2000. Bush and Cheney lost Florida, and therefore America, according to the recount completed by major media outlets after it was officially blocked b...
August 01, 2007
Congressman Kucinich will receive petitions from people throughout the country who support impeaching Vice President Dick Cheney.
Kucinich introduced H. Res. 333, which proposes articles of impeachment against the Vice President on April 24, 2007.
Petition signatures in support of i...
August 01, 2007
Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin (D., Wisconsin) and Congressman Donald Payne (D., N.J.) have signed on as cosponsors of H. Res. 333, a bill proposing articles of impeachment against Vice President Dick Cheney, according to Congressman Dennis Kucinich's office. Kucinich is the original sponsor of the bil...
August 01, 2007
John Cavanagh of the Institute for Policy Studies opened an event at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday. Cavanagh announced that with the recent addition of Santa Fe, N.M., a total of exactly 300 towns, cities, and states have passed resolutions against the occupation of Iraq. ...
August 01, 2007
Speaker Nancy Pelosi said today that if she were not Speaker she would probably back impeachment. Other Congress Members are of course free to do what even she admits she would do in their position. They should, I think, start taking her advice and ignoring her ban on impeachment.
The reas...
August 01, 2007
I ran into Congressman Donald Payne Tuesday evening and asked him if he would sign on to cosponsor H Res 333, articles of impeachment against Vice President Dick Cheney. He said yes immediately and brought his legislative director in on the conversation. They both said yes, as a matter of course, ...
July 31, 2007
On Tuesday morning in Washington, D.C., a five-member group of Americans reported on their just-completed 12-day trip through Iran. As with other delegations of this sort, they reported on a country that bears very little resemblance to the horrifying axis-of-evil member we hear about on U.S. telev...
July 30, 2007
On July 20th, House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers discussed the prospects for impeachment at greater length than has previously been widely reported. What has previously been known is that Congressman Conyers gave a speech in San Diego at which he said:
"We need to have three M...
July 29, 2007
It's remarkably common for a grandson to take up his grandfather's major project. This occurred to me when I read recently of Thor Heyerdahl's grandson taking up his mission to cross the Pacific on a raft. But what really struck me was the BBC story aired on July 23rd documenting President George ...
July 28, 2007
When a Member of Congress wants to push an agenda forward, even one supported by very few other Congress Members, he or she will introduce or sign onto a bill and urge others to do the same. Almost every Congress Member is willing to do this sort of thing, often on very controversial issues. But w...
July 28, 2007
Some colleagues and I spent much of Thursday and Friday meeting with Congress Members and their staffers to discuss impeachment. Some of them were on the edge of backing it, others miles away but inching closer. Congressman Bobby Scott, a Democrat from Virginia who serves on the Judiciary Committe...
July 27, 2007
Declare It Now: Wear Orange! Drive Out the Bush Regime campaign Launches.
Asking, “Do you want to see the Bush regime impeached and driven from office? Do you want the war in Iraq ended?” a new campaign challenges people to “Declare It Now! Wear Orange.” Proponents of removing Bush and Cheney ...
July 25, 2007
Congressman Robert Brady, (D., PA), who represents portions of Philadelphia, on Tuesday signed on as a cosponsor of House Resolution 333, articles of impeachment against Vice President Dick Cheney.
Also on Tuesday, Cindy Sheehan, Rev. Lennox Yearwood, Carlos Arredondo, Bill Perry and many ...
July 25, 2007
Joel Wendland has written an article opposing impeachment. His claims, and all claims of impeachment opponents, have long since been answered here. But here's some redundancy:
Wendland objects to calling Conyers "no Martin Luther King". Most of us are no Martin Luther King, but the point of that ...
July 24, 2007
About 47 of us spent 8 or 9 hours yesterday in jail for protesting a man who, at least when he woke up yesterday morning, only thought of himself as on the side of those who protest power.
While hundreds of us lined the hallways outside Chairman John Conyers' office, one of his staffers ap...
July 23, 2007
In the Marx Brothers movie "Duck Soup" which was a dark spoof of pre-war Germany, Rufus T. Firefly (Groucho) who is the Prime Minister of Fredonia, is asking his cabinet, "Any old business?" Someone says, "Yes, about the taxes ..." And Groucho says, "Nah, that's new business." Later, Groucho asks, "...
July 21, 2007
House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers has said that if three more Congress Members get behind impeachment he will start the impeachment proceedings.
I was a guest today on Bree Walker's radio show. She's the progressive radio host from California who purchased Cindy Sheehan's land from ...
July 19, 2007
Remember the last NIE (National Intelligence Estimate) that made really big news? Remember how it helped defraud a nation into an aggressive war and occupation that has left nearly a million Iraqis and 4,000 Americans dead? Remember how the declassified bits distorted the truth much further than t...
July 15, 2007
John Conyers has a great quote in John Nichols' book "The Genius of Impeachment" (pointed out by attentive reader Gordon Bennett):
"I have a choice. I can either stand by and lead my constituents to believe I do not care that the president apparently no longer believes he is bound by any law or ...
July 12, 2007
Congressman Sam Farr (D., Calif.) is the latest member of Congress to respond to intense pressure from his constituents and co-sponsor H Res 333, articles of impeachment against Vice President Dick Cheney. The official list of co-sponsors at thomas.loc.gov includes 11 names, plus the original spons...
July 03, 2007
CNN allowed the eight Democratic presidential campaigns to vote: Should CNN continue to place its preferred candidates together in the center of the stage in order to keep the candidates it ignores off camera at the edges, or should it follow the model PBS used last week and choose candidate positi...
July 03, 2007
George Mason (1725-1792), the father of the Bill of Rights (1791-2002), argued at the Constitutional Convention in favor of providing the House of Representatives the power of impeachment by pointing out that the President might use his pardoning power to "pardon crimes which were advised by himself...
June 28, 2007
United for Peace and Justice held a workshop at the US Social Forum in Atlanta on Thursday, at which several speakers made some pretty amazing statements.
Adrienne Kenney of Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) described her work serving stateside with the NSA of listening in on foreigners. Pri...
June 22, 2007
In May of 2005 the Downing Street Memos came out, and some of us started a website and coalition called After Downing Street. And for many months we worked closely with Congressman John Conyers and many other Democrats in Congress, holding unofficial hearings, trying to pass resolutions of inquiry,...
June 20, 2007
Kate Michelman introduced John Edwards and he began with the topic of Iraq, saying he was wrong to vote for it. A tough start, and a tough slot - following Obama on the stage. But Edwards said some of the right things and was applauded for it.
This Congress had a mandate, he said. Congress sumbit...
June 20, 2007
Obama got a packed house and huge applause before saying anything about what he would do as president. For a while it was all about the influence of lobbyists in Washington, the tragedy of Katrina, the tragedy of Iraq, the need for a politics of the people, the need for hope and optimism. All opposi...
June 20, 2007
While the Take Back America conference has included two self-organized and underpromoted panels on impeachment, on Wednesday it included an official panel, well promoted and in an actual room on the topic of "Curbing the Imperial Presidency." Former Clinton Chief of Staff John Podesta opened the eve...
June 20, 2007
My friend Steve Cobble gave Kucinich a great introduction, receiving applause for each point he made about Kucinich's platform and past performance, arguing that Kucinich was right four years ago that opposition to the war and support for fair trade were key to winning, and that's how Democrats won ...
June 20, 2007
"Hip Hop Artists and Activists: Politically Empowering a Culture of Resistance" was the name of a panel at the Take Back America Conference in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday. Cherryl Aldave from National Hip Hop Political Convention MC'd.
Speakers included Billy Wimsatt from the League of Independ...
June 19, 2007
Two presidential candidates, Bill Richardson and Mike Gravel, spoke Tuesday morning at the Take Back America Conference in Washington, D.C. Barack Obama and John Edwards were expected later in the day, and Hillary Clinton and Dennis Kucinich on Wednesday.
Richardson got loud applause. He focuse...
June 19, 2007
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS ABOUT IMPEACHMENT
Why would we want a President Cheney? Or why would we want a new Republican who could run as an incumbent? Or why would we want a President Pelosi?
We propose impeaching Cheney first or together with Bush. The first Articles of Impeachment to be intro...
June 18, 2007
The fifth annual Take Back America Conference began this morning with a press conference at which Bob Borosage of Campaign for America's Future, Karen Ackerman of the AFL-CIO, Eli Pariser of MoveOn, Cecile Richards of Planned Parenthood, Brad Woodhouse of Americans United for Change, and Jerome Ring...
June 14, 2007
Condoleezza Rice is refusing to comply with a subpoena to appear before Congress. The Justice Department is refusing to produce subpoenaed documents. Harriet Miers and Sara Taylor will almost certainly refuse to comply with subpoenas to appear. Dick Cheney has said that if he is subpoenaed he will n...
June 14, 2007
There is much that I can agree with or tolerate in Barack Obama's new article in Foreign Affairs. On the occupation of Iraq, he does not favor completely ending it, and he does not mention the ownership of oil, but he does say:
"[W]e must make clear that we seek no permanent bases in Iraq. We sho...
June 13, 2007
Whenever anyone asks me what author has had the greatest impact on me, I don't hesitate. There's no doubt that it's Richard Rorty. I consider him the most significant author of the past century, something I once told him, and which he had the humility to say and honestly believe was ludicrous. Ri...
June 12, 2007
"I have a choice. I can either stand by and lead my constituents to believe I do not care that the president apparently no longer believes he is bound by any law or code of decency. Or I can act." -- U.S. House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers
The latest version of the lengthy report on ...
June 11, 2007
The most creative, energetic, and effective peace activists in the United States right now are women organized explicitly as "CODE PINK: Women for Peace." While CODE PINK welcomes the participation of men (and when I'm in DC I stay at the CODE PINK house), the group is organized around the idea tha...
June 11, 2007
The new film "War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death" makes arguing against wars easy. If you get into a debate about war, just make the points made so clearly in this film, or - better yet - convince a war supporter to watch the film. Best of all would be to persuade ...
May 31, 2007
Eighteen months ago Congressman John Murtha and other pro-war Democrats had not yet developed even a muddled half-hearted opposition to the occupation of Iraq, Joe Lieberman had not lost a primary, MoveOn.org and the Center for American Progress were pretending there was no such thing as Iraq, and t...
May 30, 2007
(*note: title of article written with bush grammar)
Over the past two months of repeated Congressional votes to fund the occupation of Iraq, culminating in President Bush's signing the bill on Friday, what – if anything – have we learned? Have we learned anything about individuals or political par...
May 30, 2007
I picked up a pamphlet the other day that said "Just for You" at the top, so I assumed it was just for me. Much of the front page contained an image of soldiers marching, and next to them the words "What's your exit strategy?" That's easy, I thought. Impeachment, removal, indictment, and convicti...
May 24, 2007
On Wednesday morning, the U.S. Senate voted on a proposal from Senator Russ Feingold (D., Wisc.) to end the war by next March. The amendment would have really ended the war, in so far as it would have cut off funding to illegally continue it. But the amendment included loopholes and exceptions, so...
May 24, 2007
Another day, another impeachable offense. If this one were on a television show we'd all flip it off in disgust as too unlikely. The President phones up a hospital to demand that the ailing Attorney General (who has turned over his duties and is disoriented) admit the President's legal counsel and...
May 23, 2007
Dick Cheney and Jim Wright Saved Reagan: What Can Cheney and Nancy Pelosi Do for Bush?
For almost five months, Congress has gone out of its way to avoid impeachment in order to get things done, and has thereby managed to have signed into law all sorts of wonderful legislation. Er, well, actua...
May 23, 2007
Introduced by Council President Pro Tempore Monica Conyers and Council Member JoAnn Watson.
A resolution calling on the U.S. House of Representatives to impeach President Bush and Vice President Cheney was passed today by the unanimous vote of the Detroit City Council. The resolution was recomm...
May 23, 2007
Speech delivered at Town Hall meeting on impeachment at the University of Wisconsin – Madison, May 21, 2007.
It's wonderful to be here with these speakers, and with Buzz Davis and everyone who put this event together. My grandparents lived for many, many years in Madison, and my dad grew up here...
May 20, 2007
It took 13 colonies to throw out the last King George. Thirteen state Democratic parties have now passed resolutions demanding impeachment, nine of them since Nancy Pelosi ordered the Democratic Party away from impeachment.
In May 2004, the Nevada Democratic Party led the way, passing a res...
May 20, 2007
The corporate media in the United States will not allow a real peace candidate any time or substantive or respectful coverage. It will slander and mock and, above all, ignore. Then it will find people outside the media to quote as saying that they don't believe the candidate is "viable." The ideal s...
May 15, 2007
Nailing Dick Cheney for tax evasion would be like nailing Al Capone for tax evasion. But the last time a U.S. president faced a strong movement for impeachment for actual impeachable offenses, one of the major road blocks was fear that an unpopular vice president would take his place, and this road...
May 14, 2007
And we've been right. The first of the five "benchmarks" in the war funding bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives on May 10 requires Iraq to pass an oil law.
The law has long been drafted, and it opens up two-thirds of Iraq's oil to ownership by foreign corporations (widely expected t...
May 14, 2007
If, like General Electric and Fox News, ordinary citizens were permitted to ask questions of candidates for U.S. President, these are a few of the questions I think they might ask:
If you are elected president, which of the new presidential powers assumed by the Bush-Cheney administration wi...
May 11, 2007
President Bush vetoed a war spending bill because it included a deadline for ending the war, albeit a non-binding one. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has proposed to hold a vote on Thursday on a new bill that will not include even a nonbinding "timeline." The media and even activist groups have...
May 11, 2007
Congresswoman and House Judiciary Committee Member Maxine Waters (D., Calif.) has spoken up in support of impeaching President Bush and Vice President Cheney. Waters said she advocates impeaching Cheney first, which is the same approach taken by Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D., Ohio) in his bill, H...
May 11, 2007
On Thursday, May 10, 2007, Lawrence Wilkerson, speaking on National Public Radio, proposed impeaching President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.
Here's the audio:
http://www.onpointradio.org/shows/2007/05/20070510_a_main.asp
Wilkerson is a Retired Army Colonel, the f...
May 11, 2007
The new war money bill passed by the House on May 10 does not include even a nonbinding end date for the war. It does fund the war for a shorter period of time at one shot, but the Senate doesn't like that idea, and the bill must be reconciled with whatever the Senate passes. So, what's left in th...
May 05, 2007
The U.S. government has proposed to make Vicenza, Italy, the largest US military site in Europe, but the people of Vicenza, and all of Italy, have sworn it will never happen.
As with the story of the Downing Street Minutes two years ago this week, a major news story and huge controversy in Europe...
May 01, 2007
Speech delivered in Portland, Maine, at rally organized by http://www.maineimpeach.org onApril 28th national day of impeachment events organized by http://www.a28.org.
I want to thank Maine Impeach dot org for putting this event together. This is a wonderful crowd! The paper on grounds f...
April 30, 2007
ANOTHER HISTORIC STEP ON IMPEACHMENT.
Sparked by an insurgency among delegates, the California Democratic Party has taken an historic step forward on the issue of impeachment. In a resolution affirmed by the full state party convention Sunday, the Democrats called on the U.S. Congress to use it...
April 26, 2007
MSNBC, owned by weapons-maker General Electric, opened Thursday night's debate with the unavoidable topic of Iraq, and unavoidably allowed each of the eight candidates on the stage to address it. Two of them, Congressman Dennis Kucinich and former Senator Mike Gravel, spoke in favor of ending the w...
April 23, 2007
Bill Moyers has put together an amazing 90-minute video documenting the lies that the Bush administration told to sell the Iraq War to the American public, with a special focus on how the media led the charge. I've watched an advance copy and read a transcript, and the most important thing I can say...
April 23, 2007
You can't put a trillion dollars in a frame and hang it on the wall, but if it weren't for another kind of frame we would never spend this kind of money on war. When we frame the debate over war money with the idea that funding war amounts to "supporting troops," the debate is constrained to range ...
April 18, 2007
The Democratic leadership in Congress wants the war to be around in 2008 so that a Democrat can win the White House by "opposing" the war. Congressman Rahm Emanuel has explained this to the Washington Post. The ONLY way to convince the top Democrats that this calculation is wrong is to promote in ...
April 13, 2007
In 10 U.S. states, either this year or last year or both, the state legislature has introduced and considered, though not yet passed, a bill to petition the U.S. House of Representatives to impeach Bush and Cheney. The question, of course, is what in the heck is wrong with the other 40 states? We ...
April 12, 2007
Wanted: A czar to take charge of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan! Yesterday’s press report of the White House vacancy announcement was hard to believe until the administration confirmed that the search is on, and that the catalyst is the departure from the National Security Council staffer Meghan O...
April 12, 2007
When Senator Russ Feingold and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid propose cutting off the funding for the war, they are proposing the only thing that can possibly benefit U.S. troops. In fact, there is no way to make any sense of the idea that they could possibly be hurting U.S. troops. The funding...
April 12, 2007
George Will has pulled a trick out of Karl Rove's bag and begun attacking his opponents at his own weakest point. In his latest column, Will attempts to teach other people how to think straight. This has to be worth a few guffaws…
"In a campaign without peacetime precedent," Will begins, "...
April 12, 2007
Kurt Vonnegut published over two dozen books, including 2005's "A Man Without a Country." It's a book that is brutally honest in its hopelessness, in fact – I think – overly hopeless, and yet humorous. It may even be hopeless in order to better be humorous. Vonnegut discusses in the book the use of ...
April 12, 2007
Bill Moyers has put together an amazing 90-minute video documenting the lies that the Bush administration told to sell the Iraq War to the American public, with a special focus on how the media led the charge. I've watched an advance copy and read a transcript, and the most important thing I can sa...
April 11, 2007
The Cheney energy meeting, the Iraq Study Group, the Supplemental spending bill, the choice of which buildings to defend after Shock and Awe, Iraq's proposed new hydrocarbon law, the threat of an attack on Iran, and the sudden recognition of reality that comes from throwing away your television, all...
April 11, 2007
Subpoena is a beautiful word. Sub means Under, as in "The subservient subject submitted along with his subordinates to the rule of law." Poena means Penalty, as in "There's an opening at the penal colony." Subpoena means a nation under laws, not unitary executives. Three and a half months later ...
April 06, 2007
Last night in a bar in Austin, Texas, we held a family reunion for the peace movement. The occasion was the presentation of the Camp Casey Peace Awards. Much of the evening was devoted to the incredibly powerful anti-war music of Carolyn Wonderland, Emma's Revolution , Hank Woji , and Jesse Dyen, ...
April 04, 2007
Imagine a president who violates numerous laws that predate his presidency. Imagine that Congress redundantly and repeatedly re-bans that criminal behavior. Imagine a president who repeatedly throws out the new bans with signing statements and continues to violate the same laws. This is the heart...
April 04, 2007
For many months, some in this country have been urging a tougher line toward Iran, ranging from threatening to drop nuclear bombs to imposing sanctions that could result in hundreds of thousands of deaths. Others have been urging negotiations as the only way to avoid an escalation, and as the only w...
March 29, 2007
You are one today, March 29, 2007, Wesley Neil Swanson, and 365 days ago you had not yet seen the light of day. Now you love it. Now you wake up every morning with the sun and shout your delight at being alive. You make the hand sign for light, and then you hear a bird and flap your arms like a b...
March 29, 2007
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is right to point Unitary Executive George W. Bush toward a copy of the Constitution. The President (should Bush care to resume that legal role) is permitted to veto bills but not to write them. In particular, the President cannot rewrite legislation after it has been vo...
March 29, 2007
For George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, 2008 is too soon to end a war that they intend to last forever. 2008 is too soon to stop constructing enormous military bases in Iraq and abandon them. 2008 is too soon to bring our men and women home to their families and the criminally inadequate health care a...
March 25, 2007
I think Karl Rove should be permitted to testify to Congress in private, without taking any oath, and without any record being kept of what he says. I had hoped we could avoid the indecency of having to spell out the reason why, but apparently we can't. So please remember this and then never say i...
March 22, 2007
If you could secretly tell a magic genie "Yes" and receive a million dollars but cause the deaths of a million people you've never met in China, would you say No? This is no longer just a philosophical brain teaser. The U.S. House of Representatives is expected to vote Friday morning on funding fo...
March 22, 2007
The Supplemental spending bill proposed by Speaker Nancy Pelosi funds the war. It gives Cheney and Bush roughly another $100 billion. And you can be quite sure they will spend it as they choose, which may include attacking Iran. In fact, a measure in the bill requiring Bush to get Congress's appr...
March 19, 2007
Rallies are being held all over the country marking the fourth anniversary of the official start of the war, and many of them are focusing on opposing the supplemental spending bill proposed by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. The peace movement has been firmly opposed to it from the start, and o...
March 17, 2007
The media left the room on Thursday when Valerie Plame did. The first part of the hearing in which she testified was indeed interesting: http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/19727
But of more importance to our nation, I believe, was the testimony that followed. It came from these two wi...
March 15, 2007
Congress Dithers as Americans Across the Country Mark the Beginning of the Fifth Year of War and Occupation of Iraq.
Silver Spring, MD -- On the eve of the fourth anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq, national peace organizations including United for Peace and Justice, Military Families Spe...
March 14, 2007
It did. Her name was Sibel Edmonds. This is her story, as she told it to me. Edmonds discusses what she knows, whom it implicates, and what she's been through and what hope there is in the new Congress to start an investigation.
Here's the audio.
Swanson: This is David Swanson wi...
March 14, 2007
On March 17, a huge mass of people will gather at the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C., and march from there to the Pentagon for the cause of impeachment and peace.
http://www.impeach07.org
A handful of pro-war people, some volunteer and some probably paid to be there, will stage a counter-...
March 11, 2007
The reason I sent the media a video of House Appropriations Chair David Obey (Dem., Wisc.) throwing a bit of a fit http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/19392 was not just to embarrass him. Nor was it, as some Democratic Party Die-Hards allege, to foolish split the forces of good and allow the evi...
March 11, 2007
David Sirota has just published an article disagreeing with me, which is quite disturbing because I usually agree with and often admire Sirota's work. And yet, the claims he makes in this article don't persuade me. So, my inclination is not to pretend they do because Sirota has done good things in t...
March 09, 2007
The U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs is prepared to follow in Dick Cheney's footsteps and shoot a friend in the face. I just sat through a hearing on Iran, and there is apparently universal bipartisan agreement in the committee that Iranians feel kindly toward Americans and welcome them as f...
March 09, 2007
I've spoken at impeachment forums, debates, rallies, strategy meetings, and workshops, but tonight's event in Washington, D.C., will be the first I've spoken at since the Vice President's Chief of Staff was convicted for lying to protect him. So, I'm going in expecting fewer objections and reservat...
March 09, 2007
If the Republicans in the House vote against the Supplemental spending bill to throw another roughly $100 billion at this war because the bill requires that troops be trained and rested, provides for veterans health care, gives money to Katrina relief and avocado growers, and threatens to move the w...
March 04, 2007
As war wages on in the Middle East, there's a heated battle on Capitol Hill over which political party's proposals to continue the war are more PRO-TROOP. There's a raging debate over exactly what set of futile recommendations to the dictator living in the Vice President's mansion on Massachusetts ...
March 04, 2007
The following is a remarkable interview of Karen Kwiatkowski who retired from the active duty USAF as a Lieutenant Colonel in early 2003. Her final assignment was in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Under Secretary for Policy Near East South Asia (NESA) Policy directorate. In her responses ...
February 26, 2007
Peace activist and gold star mother Cindy Sheehan and spokesman for a war-based oligarchy George Will both published columns this weekend arguing that non-Americans are human beings. Sheehan's column was written in response to an Associated Press article that provided evidence that Americans disagr...
February 22, 2007
A growing network of organizations and individuals has launched a new campaign to pursue the immediate impeachment of George Bush and Dick Cheney through widespread public protest, creative dissent, media activism, education, and coordinated lobbying. Members of the Impeach07 campaign believe that B...
February 21, 2007
Congressman John Conyers, Chair of the House Judiciary Committee, has used the following rhetoric repeatedly in recent weeks:
"George Bush has the habit of firing military leaders who tells him the Iraq war is failing. But let me tell you something. He can't fire you. He can't fire us. But we can...
February 20, 2007
In a video interview with Tom Andrews posted at http://www.movecongress.org Congressman Jack Murtha makes clear that the limitations on additional war money that he intends to include in the forthcoming "emergency" supplemental bill are aimed only at undoing the recent escalation (a.k.a. "surge"), n...
February 20, 2007
Remarks at Emergency Impeachment Conference in New York City, February 17, 2007.
It's an honor to be speaking with these panelists and it's great to be back in New York. But I want to ask you one thing about New York, because there's something I heard Senator Hillary Clinton say and I want...
February 16, 2007
Congressman John Conyers, Chair of the House Judiciary Committee, has used the following rhetoric repeatedly in recent weeks:
"George Bush has the habit of firing military leaders who tells him the Iraq war is failing. But let me tell you something. He can't fire you. He can't fire us. But we can...
February 16, 2007
Alaska Congressman Don Young just attempted on the floor of the House to quote Abraham Lincoln's opinion on opposition to presidents' war plans. Young failed rather dramatically.
Here's his misquote of Lincoln:
"Congressmen who willfully take actions during wartime that damage moral...
February 14, 2007
Here's the latest reason they must be telling the truth about Iran and the need for a new war: they lied about the last one. That's right, according to the latest dispatch from the Associated Press,
"No one who has seen the files has suggested the evidence is thin. But senior officials – ...
February 14, 2007
On Newsweek's website you can flip through a short PDF slideshow of a presentation produced by the Pentagon in 2002. The presentation purports to show that Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda were working together and had been for years. Not only was this a presentation of intelligence at odds with what the...
February 14, 2007
How does sex differ from torture? The one is good and the other bad, might be your immediate reply. But were I to describe an act of torture, this would be taken as a serious article. Were I to describe an act of sex, then political publications wouldn't publish it, spam filters wouldn't allow yo...
February 13, 2007
An Iraq vet named Charlie Anderson told me that he likes to get his photo taken with senators and House members, and then have his friend fiddle with the camera, so that Charlie gets to talk while the elected official has to stand there and smile. And this is what Charlie says: "Congressman, I work ...
February 13, 2007
Aiding a nation against a foreign invasion is not grounds for war. The US aided France against Germany and still brags about it.
WMD possession is not grounds for war. The US has more of them than anyone.
The motivation for attacking Iran was laid out in 2000 by the PNAC, and as early as 1992 ...
February 09, 2007
Democrats on Capitol Hill see the world through bureaucratic shades and have been circulating this self-congratulatory Email:
"Over the last four years,the Republican Congress failed to conduct oversight on the Iraq war and failed to hold the Administration accountable for the conduct of the war....
February 02, 2007
At the House Judiciary Committee hearings on Bush's use of signing statements on Wednesday, two exchanges at the end were quite revealing. Four hours into a hearing interrupted by several votes (thanks, Nancy!) the corporate media had all departed. Broadcast media never showed in the first place. ...
February 02, 2007
This is what it's come to. The local newspaper in my town in Virginia today ran an op-ed by rightwinger Cal Thomas attacking Hillary Clinton for her past support for the war. Thomas began by criticizing Clinton for pretending she had never supported the war, but the bulk of his column blamed her s...
February 01, 2007
Senator Feingold held a hearing on the topic yesterday and plans to introduce a bill today to end the war by denying the President the money to continue it. Congress Members Lynn Woolsey, Jim McGovern, and Jerrold Nadler have bills in the House to do the same. But the bills are not all the same.
...
January 31, 2007
President Bush claimed in his State of the Union speech to have prevented four terrorist plots. Phew! It's a good thing to know that we tossed out our Bill of Rights for some actual REASON – I mean other than turning Iraq into a training ground for terrorism.
Except that we didn't.
...
January 31, 2007
This country has learned to be afraid… of Dick Cheney. The number one reason a significant minority of Americans still hesitates to get behind impeachment of Bush is fear of Dick Cheney. This will remain the case even should Cheney die, I am convinced. Certainly it remains the case no matter how ...
January 31, 2007
Remarks at United for Peace and Justice Pre-Lobby Day Event on Jan. 28, 2007.
It's an honor to be part of this obviously growing movement for peace and justice. Our president took us into war before Congress gave its so-called authorization. He did so without telling Congress or the American ...
January 25, 2007
Washington DC - Progressive Democrats of America, the grassroots ally of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, is mobilizing its membership into the streets for this Saturday's peace march in D.C. Jan. 27 and into the halls of Congress Monday Jan. 29 to lobby on behalf of a prompt, orderly withdraw...
January 25, 2007
It was disturbing to see so many members of Congress in both parties clamoring to get Bush's autograph on their copies of his State of the Union—not because it was such a dishonest speech that did such a disservice to this country, and not because they should have been handing him subpoenas instea...
January 19, 2007
It began with that monstrous young man so evil we needed to blindfold him and strap him to a board, that confusing young man who looked like Christ but cast us in the role of crucifiers, that treasonous young man who brought dark and heathen evils across linguistic and cultural borders and brought t...
January 18, 2007
Larry Everest made an interesting comment on a panel we did in Memphis last weekend. He said that if Nancy Pelosi, who claims her top priority is ending the war and who claims to support democracy, were to ask people to come to Washington, D.C., on January 27th to march against the war, probably 20 ...
January 17, 2007
Remarks at the National Conference for Media Reform in Memphis, Tenn., January 13, 2007.
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/17292
I'd like to request that nobody shout during this event, and I'll tell you why. I watched Bush's speech with some people who thought it would be a good idea t...
January 16, 2007
Remarks at the National Conference for Media Reform in Memphis, Tenn., January 13, 2007.
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/17293
By any serious standard of journalism, impeachment should be in the news right now. This illustrates the worst problem with our media. It's not how ...
January 10, 2007
Here's why.
Bush just connected Iraq to 9-11 again, and the media will not tell you it was a lie.
Bush just gave a list of reasons why this time his escalation of the war will work. The reasons amounted to:
1)We'll have more troops.
2)We'll go into neighborhoods holding hands with Iraqis
...
January 10, 2007
Here's a statement that's blasphemy both in the peace movement and in the halls of the warmongers:
"Whether we escalate the war or not is unimportant."
Here's the situation we're in. President Bush and his gang lied us into a war. The occupation of Iraq has nothing to do with weapons ...
January 05, 2007
As some people learned from the minimal and abusive media coverage, on December 8, 2006, Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney introduced Articles of Impeachment [http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/16230]against President George W. Bush, making him the 10th president of the United States to face such a...
January 05, 2007
Unlike the previous majority party in Congress, the Democrats who take power today know their weaknesses. They know they're not very good at the whole press conference thing where you're supposed to stand there and say something people care about. So they've announced an open-mic policy.
...
January 02, 2007
Unbeknownst to many Americans, there is overwhelming consensus among scientists that we are very close to reaching a point of no turning back on global warming, which is caused by the burning of fossil fuels. We are approaching a point at which all of the following will become unavoidable: massive ...
January 02, 2007
With Jimmy Carter's book a best seller and the Iraq War a top political concern, many Americans may have an interest right now in thinking about Israel and Palestine. I'd like to recommend to anyone with that interest picking up a copy of a short and brilliant book by the British philosopher Ted Ho...
December 14, 2006
Congress Members of both parties, not to mention the White House, have already forgotten the anti-war and anti-Bush vote of November 7th (the Republicans lost one more seat in a runoff on Wednesday) and are dreaming of big Christmas presents for war profiteers. Since we Americans apparently have no...
December 11, 2006
Did you notice something about the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group Report? It recommends all sorts of changes, all of them far short of actually ending the war, but it recommends them all to the same person responsible for the disastrous situation we're in now. It doesn't suggest what Congress sho...
December 11, 2006
Political questions are tricky and complicated. Sometimes causes that are just and good must take a backseat to other priorities or long-term strategies. Setting all such perfectly reasonable considerations aside for a moment, I'd like you to ask yourself a simple yes or no question: Do you think ...
December 11, 2006
Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney has introduced articles of impeachment [ http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/downloads/mckinneyarticles.pdf ]against George Bush, Dick Cheney, and Condoleezza Rice. In doing so, she alone has spoken for the 51 percent of Americans who Newsweek says want Bush impeached. ...
December 06, 2006
The Minneapolis Star-Tribune recently published an editorial that said of Bush: "His pronouncements now bear no resemblance to reality." Now? Oh, never mind.
Marc Sandalow, the Washington Bureau Chief for the San Francisco Chronicle, recently wrote: "There is mounting evidence that the wor...
December 01, 2006
As long as there has been a U.S. military, people have been leaving it. That choice has never been more appropriate than today. Individuals who signed up to defend the United States are engaged in a war that was sold on the basis of lies, was entirely unnecessary, is making us less safe, has nothi...
November 30, 2006
An astonishing 44 percent of Americans do not want President Bush impeached (Newsweek), 36 percent approve of the job he's doing (AP-Ipsos), 33 percent support the Iraq War (CNN). What, you may ask, is the matter with these people? Well, primarily this: they get their news by watching television a...
November 23, 2006
Now, we almost all agree that Bush and Cheney have done bad things. But have they actually committed crimes? If you know anyone who has any doubts on this topic, may I recommend a brilliant little book for you to stick in their stocking next month?
In her new book, "United States v. George...
November 23, 2006
Over a year before the United States launched an endless war on Iraq in what President George W. Bush told Congress [ http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/611 ] was an urgently needed action to prevent an attack with nonexistent weapons by non-Iraqi terrorists…
Eleven months before Bush...
November 18, 2006
Public awareness of the lies that led to the war and the crimes committed during the war helps build public demand for the troops to come home. Not every committee in Congress can work fulltime on simply ending the war: a legislative process that must be pursued but which will be uphill and subject...
November 16, 2006
WHY did all manly gifts in Webster fail?He wrote on Nature's grandest brow, For Sale.--Emerson
A Tale of Two Conyers
PART I
Congressman John Conyers, "The Constitution in Crisis", December 2005:
"In brief, we have found that there is substantial evidence the President, the Vice Pres...
November 13, 2006
The evidence of impeachable offenses by Bush and Cheney is already public knowledge. There is no question that impeachment is needed. The question is why it hasn't happened yet. Investigations will reveal more details and move the process forward, but the outcome is clear from the start. In fact...
November 10, 2006
On Wednesday, Cindy Sheehan, Ann Wright, Lennox Yearwood, and about 50 other activists for peace met up on the sidewalk in front of the White House. I brought along a box containing 6,000-some pages of names and comments: about 80,000 names with cities and states, about half of them with comments b...
November 08, 2006
Chairman John Conyers Jr. Chairman Henry Waxman. Those titles will prove to be the most important outcome of yesterday's elections, even if the Dems get the Senate too. It's investigation and impeachment time. Vice President Cheney has already announced his plans to "probably" refuse to obey a s...
November 07, 2006
Sheesh. Took me 4 hours to drive into DC. I came to hang out with Cindy Sheehan at the White House – that is: outside protesting, where we all should be – and to talk on Pacifica Radio about the elections. Pacifica is broadcasting from the DCCC and DSCC party at the Capitol Hill Hyatt. There's a par...
November 06, 2006
There's a small college town in New York state called Oneonta. Some of the students at the state university there organized an event Monday night that had terrific turnout, and for once the crowd at a college political event was made up of mostly college students. I'm used to seeing adults in the ...
November 06, 2006
The White House has arranged to announce two days before the November 7, 2006, elections a guilty verdict for Saddam Hussein and, no doubt, plans to finally murder him. Meanwhile an appeals process is delaying until at least five days after the elections release of photos of members of the U.S. mili...
October 27, 2006
The White House has arranged to announce two days before the November 7, 2006, elections a guilty verdict for Saddam Hussein and, no doubt, plans to finally murder him. Meanwhile an appeals process is delaying until at least five days after the elections release of photos of members of the U.S. mili...
October 22, 2006
David Swanson: Dennis Loo, it's good to talk to you.
Dennis Loo: Thank you for having me, David.
David Swanson: Sure. So, just to start at the beginning, where did the idea come from to do a book about impeachment, and when did you decide impeachment was the way to go?
Dennis Loo: Well, the...
October 19, 2006
"Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers," by far the best film Robert Greenwald has created, is not about the military industrial complex. Rather, it is about the remaining shell of the former military, having embedded within itself not just the media, but numerous other corporate entities. The U.S. mi...
October 17, 2006
Lewis Lapham, essayist extraordinaire and editor of Harper's magazine, asked Congressman John Conyers what he thought the point was of publishing a lengthy report laying out evidence of Bush's impeachable offenses. Conyers' response was: "to take away the excuse that we didn't know."
But ...
October 14, 2006
If you live in a solidly red (Republican) or blue (Democratic) district, then the Fifth Congressional District of Virginia might strike you as a moderate area being contested by two moderate candidates. The historically Democratic district, which continues to vote for Democratic state governors, sw...
October 09, 2006
With "The Genius of Impeachment: The Founders' Cure for Royalism," John Nichols has produced a masterpiece that should be required reading in every high school and college in the United States. Unlike several recently published books, this is not an argument for impeaching Bush, not a list of charg...
October 06, 2006
If you've been around long enough, you've lived through moments -- there were a couple of striking ones in the Vietnam era -- when all the collective, practical wisdom of pundits and policy makers about what is possible in this world seems to fall away and suddenly the previously inconceivable enter...
October 02, 2006
Ron Brownstein wrote a column this week that illustrates exactly how far the corporate media will go in criticizing President Bush. Brownstein's criticism is not motivated by his own reflections. He has none, other than those that quietly shape his omissions and categorizations. He's a corporate ...
September 26, 2006
Some say the globe will end by warming,Some say nuclear war. At the risk of being too alarming,I hold with those who favor warming.But if religious feuds can't waitI think I know enough of hateTo say that just a few more missilesCould end us firstWhile Dubya whistles.
Apologies to Robert Fr...
September 14, 2006
The testimony that I presented in January to the International Commission of Inquiry on Crimes Against Humanity Committed by the Bush Administration was related to the evidence found in the Downing Street Memos. This evidence is connected to Count 1 in the Wars of Aggression Indictment being deliver...
September 05, 2006
On Tuesday, September 5th, at least three things will change. Congress will finish vacationing and return to its long and difficult task of destroying the world; many of us will welcome our Congress Members back to Washington with a giant protest camp called Camp Democracy; and Network News will of...
August 21, 2006
Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber have a new book, which is always a good thing; but this one is especially good. It's called "The Best War Ever: Lies, Damned Lies, and the Mess in Iraq." It's 206 pages and you'll read it in one sitting, because it's more entertaining than the corporate media whose...
August 12, 2006
SEATTLE -- Ricky Clousing, a Sergeant in the U.S. Army, and a veteran of the Iraq War who has been AWOL for a year announced at the Veterans for Peace convention in Seattle that he will turn himself in at the gates of Fort Lewis and face whatever punishment the military chooses to impose.
Cl...
August 10, 2006
Last December, when Congressman John Conyers released a huge report documenting the evidence that Bush and Cheney had lied us into a war, he also introduced a bill (H. Res. 635) to start a preliminary investigation of the matter and make recommendations on impeachment. This showed far more courage,...
August 08, 2006
With Help From Constitution Summer, San Francisco Approves Ballot Initiative to Call for Impeachment Announcement Comes on Anniversary of Nixon Resignation.
SAN FRANCISCO, CA – Four City San Francisco Supervisors have put their pens to a document that will allow the city's 421,000 registered vo...
August 02, 2006
I'll grant you that in the United States our two big political parties never nominate a candidate of, by, or for poor people. Nonetheless, we have now established a pattern of stolen elections, and we have NOT taken over our nation's capital to demand justice. This fact alone would make me ashamed...
July 28, 2006
Can you name the one country on earth where the government can steal elections, strip away basic rights, spy on citizens, and launch wars based on lies, but where the people do not take over the nation's capital in protest?
If you said the United States, you'll be wrong on September fifth wh...
July 24, 2006
WHY
Many previous presidents and vice presidents have committed one or two of the following crimes. Never before has any approached this total level of assault on the Constitution. If we do not impeach now, we never can again, and the legislative branch will not maintain power over the exe...
July 22, 2006
John Dean, former legal counsel to Richard Nixon, is 95% recovered from a long bout of conservatism, and he doubts that many others can make the same recovery, but I don't.
Dean's published two excellent books on the Bush-Cheney administration's abuses of power. The first was "Worse Than Wa...
July 18, 2006
On Monday, July 17, 2006, at Fox News headquarters in New York City, Rupert Murdoch hosted a fundraiser breakfast for Hillary Clinton. Then he rushed off to a fundraiser lunch for John McCain, and Hillary rushed off to announce her unqualified support for Israel's and Bush's war policies.
H...
July 16, 2006
Remarks at Democracy Fest, San Diego, July 15, 2006
More than any other weapons system, the chief products of the military industrial complex are lies. We just learned this week that Congress was cracking down on corruption by denying another contract to Halliburton. In reality, Halliburto...
July 12, 2006
A radio show reported yesterday that Republican Texas Congressman Ron Paul said the following:
"I would have trouble arguing that he's been a Constitutional President, and once you violate the Constitution and be proven to do that I think these people should be removed from office."
...
July 03, 2006
An Associated Press story on Sunday carried a predictably militant headline: "Iraq amnesty offer upsets U.S. lawmakers." But the story did something very atypical: it led with and focused on the views of Democrats, rather than Republicans. And the Democrats' views were unusually straightforward and ...
July 03, 2006
Supporting our troops and working to ensure that they not have died in vain are notions that no longer apply to the soldiers who died in the fields around my house in Virginia. The statute of limitations has expired, and the 4,435 who died to rid America of a King George are now in fact required – ...
July 03, 2006
Congressman Jim McDermott became involved in politics through his opposition to the Vietnam war. He came to Washington 17 years ago hoping to create national health coverage. Instead he's spent much of his time opposing new wars and war crimes. McDermott's record on matters of peace and war is unsur...
June 29, 2006
Veterans for Peace has drafted a Declaration of Impeachment using nothing but excerpts from the Declaration of Independence (plus a few words in parentheses). It reads as follows, and should be read at picnics and protests on the Fourth of July:
…whenever any Form of Government becomes destructiv...
June 06, 2006
Nominal leader of the Democrats in Congress Nancy Pelosi, following talking points produced by the Republican National Committee, recently told her fellow Dems to keep impeachment off the table. This past weekend, the Democratic Parties in Maine, New Hampshire, and Hawaii passed resolutions demandi...
May 22, 2006
Remarks at Progressive Democrats of America Lobby Training, May 21, 2006, Washington, D.C.
On Friday our President attended a fundraiser in Virginia Beach for a Republican Congress Member. But the Congress Member didn't show up. This has happened a number of times, with both Bush and Cheney....
May 18, 2006
Remarks in front of White House, May 17, 2006.
Some weeks back, Cindy Sheehan asked me to start a petition opposing an attack on Iran. We posted it at www.dontattackiran.org
It's wonderful that so many people are here as we deliver the petition to the White House. It would be nice if President ...
May 11, 2006
Cindy Sheehan's interviews, essays, and speeches get better with each passing month, as her pain continues, her passion and insight grow, and the war that killed her son goes on ? as the president who killed her son goes on being president. Cindy's latest book, "Dear President Bush," is the best of...
May 09, 2006
Ray McGovern wasn't aiming to make Donald Rumsfeld stutter and stammer like a kid caught cheating on a test when he asked him last week why he'd lied us into a war. That was just a side benefit. Ray wants answers, and he's taking his demand to Donald Rumsfeld's house in Washington, D.C.
On T...
May 07, 2006
Here's an article about yesterday's jury award of $2.25 million to Earl Washington, whom the state of Virginia came within days of killing for a crime he had been clumsily and obviously framed for. Washington is mentally retarded, poor, and black. White cops in Culpeper, Virginia, interrogated hi...
May 07, 2006
The Republican National Committee (RNC) has launched an aggressive campaign to smear Congressman John Conyers.
Here's the background: It is accepted common wisdom among reporters, pundits, congressional staffers, and a majority of Americans that Bush and Cheney lied us into a war. A new "smok...
May 07, 2006
With the exception of Jews and African-Americans, no demographic group in the United States voted more heavily against Bush and for Gore and Kerry than did atheists, who make up 10 percent of the electorate. Atheists tend to be disproportionately progressive. So do atheistic countries.
The...
May 05, 2006
There are now 37 Congress Members backing an investigation into grounds for impeachment related to the war. Rep. Hilda Solis has joined the list of cosponsors of House Resolution 635, introduced by Congressman John Conyers.
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/635
This compares to 17 members b...
May 05, 2006
WaPo's William Arkin has posted a blog with the headline "Rumsfeld Didn't Lie, But He Should Still Go."
He quotes Rumsfeld's exchange with Ray McGovern and then writes: "If the issue here is Saddam Hussein's connection to al Qaeda and his involvement in 9/11, to the 'bulletproof' evidence th...
May 05, 2006
The Spring 2006 issue of Ms. Magazine contains an article by Rebecca Clarren about some beautiful tropical islands described by disgraced House Majority Leader Tom Delay as "a perfect petri dish of capitalism." What's so perfect about Saipan and the other 13 Northern Mariana Islands? Primarily thi...
May 02, 2006
We should impeach Vice President Dick Cheney first, and President George Bush immediately thereafter. This idea is not original with me. It's been seen on bumper stickers for quite some time. My attention has been called to it by the fact that Congresswoman and Judiciary Committee Member Maxine W...
April 26, 2006
Public opinion in the United States and Iraq favors pulling U.S. troops out of Iraq, not to mention removing any who have already entered Iran. This sentiment will be on display this Saturday at the United for Peace and Justice March in New York: www.april29.org
Inside Congress opinions var...
April 24, 2006
Joining Illinois, California has become the second state in which a proposal to impeach President Bush has been introduced in the state legislature. And this one includes Cheney as well.
California Assemblyman Paul Koretz of Los Angeles (where the LA Times has now called for Cheney's resignat...
April 24, 2006
April 22, 2006 -- The first sentence of the top article in the only daily newspaper in Charlottesville, Virginia, today contains a remarkable analysis of the living wage movement: "The president of the University of Virginia on Friday acknowledged that students fighting for better pay for university...
April 24, 2006
State legislators in Illinois and California have introduced resolutions (details below) to initiate impeachment proceedings against President Bush and Vice President Cheney.
The Jefferson Manual of rules for the U.S. House of Representatives allows state legislatures to initiate impeachment proce...
April 22, 2006
Congresswomen Lynn Woolsey and Barbara Lee will host a hearing on the Iraq War next Thursday, April 27, 8:30-11 a.m., in 2325 Rayburn House Office Building. The two Co-Chairs of the Congressional Progressive Caucus are continuing to do what the "leadership" of both parties does not, respond to the d...
April 19, 2006
When it came to pinning the terrorist label on the Saddam Government," Dilip Hiro wrote in 2004 ("Secrets and Lies," p. 381), "all the Bush administration had to do was point a finger at the Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO, People's Mujahedin). An anticlerical Iranian group opposed to the regim...
April 18, 2006
An AP article on Tuesday begins: "President Bush bats away talk of bombing Iran's disputed nuclear sites as 'wild speculation.' But plodding diplomacy hasn't borne fruit so far, and the administration is facing a hard truth: There may be no way to stop Iran from getting the bomb."
Here we have enc...
April 15, 2006
The first of May is May Day, the real labor day, the commemoration of the Haymarket Massacre and the fight for an 8-hour day in Chicago – an American holiday celebrated everywhere except America. But the first of May is two other things as well in more recent but already fading history.
Thi...
April 10, 2006
Now might be the time to read, if you haven't already, "Stop the Next War Now: Effective Responses to Violence and Terrorism," an amazing book edited by CODE PINK cofounders Medea Benjamin and Jodie Evans, which includes a forward by Alice Walker and an introduction by Arundhati Roy.
http://www.co...
April 05, 2006
What would happen if politically active progressive Americans suddenly stopped devoting their energies to drafting better sound bites, and instead directed all that time and passion into a serious and strategic campaign of civil disobedience?
I know, I know, we're constantly told that we're be...
April 04, 2006
The Stop the War Coalition in the UK has set a standard for anti-war activism that we in the United States struggle to match. They've held larger protests, convened more significant conferences, and moved their agenda further in public opinion, in Parliament, and in the courts than we have done. O...
March 29, 2006
It's March 27th, my son's due date, but it looks like he may be late being born. Maybe he's heard what it's like out here. I may have had C-Span a little loud during Bush's last press conference.
Wesley has spent the past nine months preparing to enter the world. I've spent the past ten mon...
March 19, 2006
Something is happening in Iraq that most Americans have never heard about, but many Americans think the war is being fought for: the United States is building what look like permanent military bases.
Something happened in Congress last Thursday that most Americans have not heard about. A nu...
March 18, 2006
Everyone's on message. The right-wing pundits, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Rush Limbaugh, Nancy Pelosi. They're all trying to tell us that raising a demand for impeachment is good for Republicans.
Here's Barney Frank: "This is an understandable response from people who are v...
March 17, 2006
If you have not yet seen the film "Occupation Dreamland," I highly recommend it. Co-Director Garrett Scott died on March 2, but he truly accomplished something before he left.
http://www.occupationdreamland.com
Those who oppose the Iraq War often struggle with the fact that so many U.S. so...
March 15, 2006
For the past 10 months I've worked on a project at www.afterdowningstreet.org to urge Congress Members to hold the Bush Administration accountable for crimes and abuses of power. Some Democratic members of Congress have been as helpful in this effort as Fox News. Some have been less. In that last...
March 13, 2006
When we watch a video of Bush being informed of the danger of Hurricane Katrina and recall that he claimed that there was no way he could have known of that danger, our faith in his good intentions may be shaken.
And when we learn that Bush has long since authorized wiretapping without court a...
March 03, 2006
Remarks at the University of California – San Diego, March 03, 2006:
Fox News titled a recent segment "All Out Civil War in Iraq: could it Be a Good Thing?" Presumably it could from the point of view of the Bush-Cheney gang, if it gets in the way of all-out resistance to the occupation. That...
March 03, 2006
Remarks at the City Club of San Diego on March 03, 2006:
The Iraq War is a pure war, a war for the sake of war. Congress is debating whether to spend another fortune on it, another fortune that could completely remake this nation if spent on useful projects, and Congress has no reason for the w...
February 27, 2006
So, the word Anthrax is back in the news, but only because a man contracted it through what is reportedly a freak accident, not because Saddam Hussein's vast stockpiles have been found, not because Bush has apologized for inventing those vast stockpiles, not because Forest Whitaker has agreed to pla...
February 18, 2006
The following are remarks I made last Wednesday night in Santa Cruz, California, at an event held in the Veterans Hall, where the star speaker was Medea Benjamin, and where a group of Raging Grannies with pink aprons and rolling pins belted out anti-Bush songs of their own creation that brought down...
February 18, 2006
The following are remarks prepared for February 18th pro-impeachment rally in colonial dress in Charlottesville, Va., home of Thomas Jefferson and James Monroe, and near the home of James Madison.
Impeachment has been part of American culture longer than baseball or apple pie. Only Mom has bee...
February 13, 2006
Simple acts and a little courage have worked wonders in the world. Nonviolent people's movements won democratic reforms in Russia, booted the British out of India, resisted the Nazi occupation in Denmark, drove a dictator out of El Salvador and another out of the Philippines, ended Jim Crow, crushe...
February 11, 2006
Can you even imagine Republicans, even if they were in a minority in Congress, debating whether or not to call for the impeachment of a Democratic president known and documented as guilty of a wide range of high crimes and misdemeanors? In particular, if you can imagine that, can you imagine the Re...
February 10, 2006
Joe Scarborough hosted a discussion of impeachment last night on MSNBC. Here's the transcript:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11256483/
There were four guests, two explicitly labeled as liberals, and two as conservatives. The conservatives were Tucker Carlson and Pat Buchanan. The liberals...
February 08, 2006
Ending the extreme inequality of wealth and well-being in the United States would end the war in Iraq.
Ending the war in Iraq and others like it would go a long way toward reducing the inequality.
Reverend Dr. Joseph Lowery honored Coretta Scott King at her funeral, speaking in front o...
February 06, 2006
At a White House press conference on June 7, 2005, Steve Holland of Reuters asked President Bush and Prime Minister Blair the $1,000 question: (1)
"On Iraq, the so-called Downing Street Memo from July, 2002, says 'Intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy of removing Saddam thro...
February 06, 2006
Remarks prepared for World Can't Wait rally at White House, Feb. 4, 2006.
There are protests outside at least two houses today, the White House and Bush's luxury estate near Crawford, Texas. Bush can run, but he cannot hide.
He tries to hide behind fear, our fear. The only tool in his bag is mak...
February 04, 2006
The Guardian is reporting that Bush told Blair "that the US was so worried about the failure to find hard evidence against Saddam that it thought of 'flying U2 reconnaissance aircraft planes with fighter cover over Iraq, painted in UN colours'. Mr Bush added: 'If Saddam fired on them, he would be in...
January 31, 2006
The following are remarks prepared for California Democratic Party Progressive Caucus meeting in Los Angeles, Jan. 28, 2006
I was asked to speak about "Creating National Action as an Individual," so here are a few thoughts. Back in May, five of us individuals brought a bunch of groups together as...
January 29, 2006
Yesterday I spoke on a panel in Los Angeles organized by the California Democratic Party Progressive Caucus, a body that is leading the way in promoting a plan to end the occupation. Below are my answers to the moderator's thoughtful questions.
QUESTION: During the Vietnam War, there was conside...
January 17, 2006
We've all heard the line. "That would make us look weak on national security." That line is supposed to be based on public opinion, not just the opinions of media corporations and pundits working for Pentagon-funded think tanks. That line is supposed to have something to do with the general Ameri...
January 12, 2006
David Sirota recently documented instances of what he called Rectal Journalism.
http://www.davidsirota.com/2006/01/rise-of-rectal-journalism.html
He described this sort of reporting as "based on reporters and pundits simply pulling stuff right out of their ass."
His examples are good and h...
January 11, 2006
A long list of peace organizations put together over 150 town hall forums last Saturday on the topic of getting out of Iraq. Reports, and audio and video, from dozens of these events have been posted at www.afterdowningstreet.org. What I gather from reviewing the reports, and from the two events I...
January 09, 2006
President Nixon famously said that if the President does it, it's legal. And he didn't think that up on his own – that's a way of thinking that has long had currency in America.
Today there are over 150 Out of Iraq events like this one happening around the country. A dozen members of Congr...
January 06, 2006
A town hall forum hosted by Congressman Jim Moran and featuring Congressman Jack Murtha packed a large room in Arlington, Va., Thursday evening, and filled an overflow room, and had to turn away another 500 people. The media was well represented.
Both Moran and Murtha spoke strongly in support of...
January 02, 2006
Try as I might to believe that the President accidentally got it all wrong about those weapons of mass destruction and ties to 9-11, I just can't seem to square it with the fact that the White House pressured the CIA to get it wrong or else.
And pressure the CIA they did.
This story is...
January 02, 2006
Can there be any doubt that if the White House finds out who leaked the story of its illegal spying, fierce retribution will follow?
Another way of asking that question is: Should auld acquaintance be forgot and never brought to mind?
Remember what happened to Ambassador Joseph Wilson?...
December 31, 2005
Kurt Vonnegut, at age 82, has published over two dozen books. His latest is called "A Man Without a Country." It's a book that is brutally honest in its hopelessness, in fact – I think – overly hopeless, and yet humorous. It may even be hopeless in order to better be humorous. Vonnegut discusses...
December 30, 2005
A new report looks into instances in which the Bush Administration leaked classified information to support its case that Iraq was a threat to the United States.
While that case was, of course, ridiculous and the information falsified, the leaking of it was illegal. And the leaks appear to ...
December 30, 2005
Larry Beinhart, author of "Wag the Dog" and "The Librarian," has done us a remarkable service with the publication of a new small nonfiction book titled "Fog Facts." He has given language to a new and critically important concept, that of the fact that is neither secret nor known. By "fog facts," ...
December 30, 2005
The U.S. military used white phosphorous as a weapon in Fallujah, and the U.S. military says such use is illegal. That's one heck of a fog fact (Larry Beinhart's term for a fact that is neither secret nor known). This fact has appeared in an article in the Guardian (UK) and been circulated on the ...
December 30, 2005
Talk of censure and impeachment has begun swirling around President Bush. Can Vice President Cheney come to the rescue? He will do so if enough of Bush's opponents adopt the position of this Philadelphia Daily News op-ed writer
http://www.philly.com/mld/dailynews/news/opinion/13513578.htm
-- t...
December 30, 2005
U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has admitted that he "ghosted" a detainee, meaning that he made the decision to hold a prisoner without keeping any records of the fact.
While prisoners of war can be theoretically stripped of their rights by calling them other names (like "unlawful ...
December 21, 2005
Censure is not the enemy of impeachment, any more than impeaching Bush prevents impeaching Cheney. We have a tendency to jump five steps ahead of ourselves in order to find imaginary problems.
Let me explain.
Congressman John Conyers has introduced a bill to censure Bush, another to cen...
December 20, 2005
CONYERS INTRODUCES BILL TO CREATE A SELECT COMMITTEE TO INVESTIGATE POSSIBLE CRIMES AND MAKE RECOMMENDATIONS REGARDING GROUNDS FOR IMPEACHMENT
CensureBush.org Campaign Launched in Response to New House Legislation
The AfterDowningStreet.org coalition, an alliance of over 100 grassroots organizat...
December 19, 2005
There is a solution that most of us are not seriously considering but should be. We are all increasingly aware of the problem: a world that lacks peace, democracy, an equitable distribution of resources, and practices that can be sustained without risking the viability of human life.
We can s...
December 14, 2005
London, England, December 10, 2005 -- Fellow PDA National Board Member Steve Cobble and I participated in an historic international peace conference in London on December 10 and in various related events the same week. We met with several Members of Parliament and will be working to facilitate te...
December 08, 2005
Today, Cindy Sheehan and Scottish mothers who have lost their sons in Iraq held a rally outside the Scottish parliament, spoke at a cross-party meeting of Members of the Scottish Parliament, were welcomed to the City of Glasgow by the Lord Provost, and addressed an anti-war rally in Glasgow. This, ...
December 07, 2005
Ken Livingstone, the Mayor of London, England, threw a bash for anti-war activists this evening and denounced the Bush Administration as "a gang of thugs." He praised the work of those present from the US and the UK who have worked to end the war, including offering high praise for Cindy Sheehan, w...
December 05, 2005
On Tuesday in New York, Jonathan Tasini will announce the launch of his campaign for United States Senate, challenging Hilary Clinton in the Democratic primary.
A Democrat, at least one who convincingly opposes Bush, is very likely to win the general election in this race. This means that t...
December 05, 2005
On Saturday, December 10, in London, England, leaders of the peace movement against the Iraq war from the United States, the United Kingdom, and Iraq will meet to strategize. There is hope that the tide has already turned against the occupation, and that a coordinated international effort will be a...
November 28, 2005
"What's more moderate than exploring the truth? Is there really partisanship in truth?...We don't need to be afraid to use the word impeachment. It is the process that was set up. It's not a bad word. It stands for accountability. It is the system of justice in our political system…There's noth...
November 21, 2005
During the middle of the day on Friday, I spent an hour or two on a conference call with activists and congressional staffers discussing next steps to end the war. We planned, among other things, to organize support for Congressman John Murtha's bill, H.J.Res. 73, which he introduced on Friday. Th...
November 16, 2005
Cindy Sheehan has a court date Wednesday morning in Washington, D.C., and faces up to 6 months in jail for the charge of demonstrating without a permit, as a result of the civil disobedience action at the White House in September at which Cindy and nearly 400 other activists protested the war. Some...
November 16, 2005
John Bonifaz is seriously considering running for election next year as Massachusetts Secretary of State, or more properly, Secretary of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. A victory for him would be a victory of national importance for election reform and voting rights.
John's Voters' Bill of...
November 16, 2005
While it would of course be good for the world for Bush and Cheney to be impeached, convicted, and sent packing, would it be politically advantageous for a Congress Member to introduce articles of impeachment? And would it benefit the Democratic Party for some or all of the Democrats to push for im...
November 10, 2005
Deputy Prime Minister Ahmed ChalabiIraqi National Congressc/o The Ritz-Carlton Georgetown3100 South Street, NWWashington, DC 20007
Dear Mr. Deputy Prime Minister:
We write to you as members of the 60 to 70 percent of Americans who believe that this war has been (in the words of the polling comp...
November 07, 2005
Apparently the new "ethics refresher course" at the White House is going to focus on reminding White House staff that classified information is not supposed to be told to reporters.
Ethics Part 2, to be taught in the Spring, will delve into the appropriateness of endangering the life of a wo...
November 04, 2005
New Poll Shows Majority of Americans Support Impeachment; ImpeachPAC is Launched to Support Pro-Impeachment Candidates
By a margin of 53% to 42%, Americans want Congress to impeach President Bush if he lied about the war in Iraq, according to a new poll commissioned by AfterDowningStreet.org, a gr...
November 02, 2005
Remarks for World Can't Wait Rally at White House, Wednesday, Nov. 2, 2005:
I don't know about the world, but certainly I can't wait any longer to end this war or to impeach this president. One more death, American or Iraqi, is too many.
Actually, what I said is not true. We do know so...
October 30, 2005
Remarks delivered at National Writers Union conference in Philadelphia, October, 29, 2005, opening forum with Ed Herman, Danny Schechter, and Linn Washington, on "Writing in an Age of Terror."
Obviously, if this really were an age of terror, an age in which we were all terrorized, there would be n...
October 26, 2005
The first reason I'm going to lie down, refuse to move, and wait to be arrested outside the White House today is my belief that massive civil disobedience is needed if we are going to end the war and forestall the next war. The power of nonviolent sacrifice has been tried and tested. It may not wo...
October 16, 2005
I wrote these remarks down on Thursday, when a Washington Post columnist was pleading with Patrick Fitzgerald to please just go away, and a New York Times news article was claiming that if Lewis Libby leaked anything, he did so with the best of intentions. Meanwhile virtually no voices in the corpo...
October 11, 2005
By a margin of 50% to 44%, Americans want Congress to consider impeaching President Bush if he lied about the war in Iraq, according to a new poll commissioned by AfterDowningStreet.org, a grassroots coalition that supports a Congressional investigation of President Bush's decision to invade Iraq...
October 07, 2005
A growing list of Congress Members are not just speaking out about Bill Bennett's recent racist remarks on his radio show. Some of them are pressuring the network that airs his show, Salem Radio Network, and asking the sponsors that fund it to withdraw their support. One already has. Other Congre...
October 04, 2005
A coalition of anti-war groups operating under the name After Downing Street put out a request Friday evening for donations to fund public opinion surveys by mainstream polling companies to measure support for impeachment proceedings against President Bush. The request had brought in $6,300 by Tues...
October 02, 2005
A senior staff person for one of the most progressive and courageous members of Congress recently advised a room full of peace activists that they won't be able to persuade Democrats to oppose the war simply by showing them polls finding that a majority of Americans oppose the war. Rather they must...
September 29, 2005
David Corn, www.davidcorn.com, published an article today on his site and on www.tompaine.com arguing that last weekend's march on Washington to end the war was a waste of time and money and energy and won't help end the war. I disagree, but think Corn makes some useful points.
Corn's argum...
September 24, 2005
I came to know Cindy Sheehan in May, and – like most people – I immediately loved her. She is a very friendly and loving person, and you cannot work on a project with her without being constantly reminded of what it is all about, how important it is, how right it is.
Cindy does not talk about pe...
September 09, 2005
Numerous media organizations regularly poll members of the public on whether they approve of the President's job performance. Uniformly, these polls show a dramatic upsurge in approval of Bush immediately following the attacks of September 11, 2001, but a decline in approval following Hurricane Kat...
September 06, 2005
On September 15, Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey and other congress members will be holding hearings on Capitol Hill on the issue of creating an exit strategy for Iraq. This event will be nine days before what organizers are hoping will be the biggest ever march against the war in Washington. Many of t...
September 02, 2005
The trillion dollar question has long been: How do we get the major media outlets in this country to notice that the White House is run by oil barons who launch illegal wars based on lies, defund everything else, and destroy the environment at every opportunity – and that this is a single, connected...
September 01, 2005
PART 1
The single biggest reason that the peace movement is not larger and more aggressive is that people with one foot in it are focused on trying to be respectable in the eyes of the corporate media, for their own sake and – in their misguided view – for the sake of the movement.
A...
August 27, 2005
It's very, very early morning on Saturday, August 27, in Crawford, Texas. The roads are as dark as Dick Cheney's heart, and the stars as numerous as W's lies. All hell has not yet broken loose and may or may not do so later today. But the police are telling the media that they're preparing for troub...
August 21, 2005
The Washington Post today wondered out loud whether Cindy Sheehan might be a "catalyst for a muscular antiwar movement." In translation, this is an assertion that Cindy Sheehan has already become an accepted reason for the corporate media to finally acknowledge the existence of, and consequently he...
August 15, 2005
Question: How is Howard Dean like the Bible?
Answer: There is no position for which you cannot, with a little research, find both support and opposition in the pronouncements of Howard Dean.
Today DailyHowler.com exulted: "DEAN GETS IT! Hurrah! Hooray! A million kudos! Howard Dean says that De...
August 11, 2005
Norman Solomon's new book, "War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death," opens with a disturbing prologue. The U.S. media has refused to give serious coverage to the Downing Street Memos on the grounds that they are "old news." In the initial pages of his book, and supplem...
August 04, 2005
For the length of next year, the nearly 600,000 residents of Washington, D.C., will continue to pay federal income taxes and to send their kids to die in Iraq (thus far in greater proportion than any other area of the country), but will be deprived of any representation in either house of Congress.
...
July 29, 2005
A significant percentage of the U.S. news stories about Iraq in the past couple of days have been stories about a fictional TV series set in Iraq – "Over There," which debuted on the FX Network on Wednesday night. Much has been made of the idea that this is the first such series about a war to air ...
July 28, 2005
Remarks for gathering of progressive caucus interns at US Capitol, July 27, 2005
Well, what kind of times are these? They seem to me to be times not just of an increase in plutocracy, but also of a decrease in awareness of it.
A majority of Americans favor single-payer health cover...
July 26, 2005
The Case Against Hauling 44 Thousand Metric Tons of Nuclear Waste Through 45 States and Storing it Above Ground on Native American Land, Against the Tribe's Sovereign Will and Next to an Air Force Bombing Ground, Without a Single Hearing or Safety Investigation
Or
How to Lobby Congress With a ...
July 23, 2005
How the United States Marked the 3rd Anniversary of the Downing Street Memo
Hundreds of people were turned away today as capacity crowds packed public forums in U.S. cities to discuss the Downing Street Memo and related evidence that President Bush lied about the reasons for war. Halls were fi...
July 07, 2005
Groups around the country will perform this dramatic recreation on July 23, the three-year anniversary of the meeting at Downing Street.
ACT I
The Players:
Prime Minister Tony Blair – (not much of a speaking role, can be played by a moderately well-behaved poodle)
Foreign Secretary Jack ...
July 06, 2005
Remarks prepared for workshop at the 50th Anniversary Convention of the American Federation of Teachers Communications Association
To follow viewing of a George Lakoff film and discussion of the fight to save Social Security.
I didn't think too much of George Lakoff until...
July 03, 2005
Remarks prepared for July 4, 2005, anti-war rally in Washington, D.C.
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/622
An ABC News/Washington Post poll last week found 52 percent of Americans believe the Bush administration "deliberately misled the public before the war," and 57 percent say the B...
June 28, 2005
In the coming free 30 minutes of uninterrupted airtime that ABC News and the Disney Corporation will no doubt give to a spokesperson for the majority of Americans who believe that the war on Iraq was a mistake, I expect we'll see some of the following points made about the speech that Bush just gave...
June 25, 2005
Ten Senators Send Letter on Downing Street Minutes to Senate Intelligence Committee
AfterDowningStreet.org Coalition Welcomes Senators' Letter as "Another Major Step Forward"
"The senators' letter is another major step forward in our demand for the truth," said John Bonifaz, Co-Found...
June 21, 2005
The most repeated excuse by U.S. media outlets for not covering the Downing Street Minutes and related documents is that they tell us nothing new, that they're old news. This conflicts, of course, with the second most common excuse, which is that they are false. If they're false, they can't be new...
June 15, 2005
Hearing Moved to 2:30 p.m.
Important Speakers Added to Line-Up at Rally
Citizens urged to lobby Congress Members and Senators, and to meet at DNC, which is serving as overflow room.
On Thursday June 16, 2005, from 2:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. in Room HC-9 of the U.S. Capitol, Rep. John Conyers...
June 13, 2005
1. TIME AND PLACE FIXED FOR THURSDAY RALLY
2. NEW BRITISH DOCUMENTS LEAKED
1. Hearings and Rally
On Thursday June 16, 2005, Rep. John Conyers, Jr., Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee, and other Congress Members will hold a hearing on the Downing Street Minutes and related evide...
June 13, 2005
Later today RawStory.com [1] will be posting an article that they have been researching for several days. Six new secret British documents have been leaked and made widely available on the internet, including via the links below. These were retyped from the originals to protect the source, but RawSt...
June 11, 2005
Military Families Against the War, in Britain, and AfterDowningStreet.org, in the United States, are working together to demand answers to the questions raised by the Downing Street Minutes and related evidence suggesting that the rulers of both nations conspired to deceive the public, Congress, and...
June 10, 2005
On Thursday June 16, 2005, Rep. John Conyers, Jr., Ranking Member of House Judiciary Committee, and other Democratic Members will hold a Democratic hearing to hear testimony concerning the Downing Street Minutes and the efforts to cook the books on pre-war intelligence.
On May 1, 2005 a Sund...
June 08, 2005
The corporate media today began its coverage of the Downing Street Minutes, moved to do so by a visit to Washington by Prime Minister Tony Blair, and by the pressure all of us have applied.
And, while most newspapers simply reported what Bush and Blair said, the USA Today, Houston Chronicle, Bost...
June 07, 2005
[Comments in brackets By] David Swanson, www.afterdowningstreet.org
HUME: When we come back with our panel, the memo that the left says the U.S. media won't talk about it. Well, we'll talk about it, next.
[Thanks! Here's a memo about your refusal to talk about it in the past:
http://www...
June 06, 2005
Chair of Republican Party Put at a Loss by Downing Street Minutes
On June 5, 2005, Ken Mehlman, Chairman of the Republican Party, was asked about the Downing Street Minutes on "NBC News' Meet the Press."
To my knowledge, this was the first serious treatment of the matter on any U.S. network ne...
June 06, 2005
A teach-in on ending the Iraq War was held in Washington, D.C., on June 3, organized by Progressive Democrats of America (PDA). It followed, in part, a pattern established by other teach-ins, but also took an exciting new turn.
The event was familiar in that the speakers argued for the spee...
May 31, 2005
Aggressive followers and participants in U.S. politics often have strong opinions about the Downing Street Minutes. Most other Americans have not heard of or are not clear about what the Downing Street Minutes are.
How is this possible? Here we have the official government minutes from a meet...
May 26, 2005
Campaign Demands Resolution of Inquiry into Possible Impeachable Offenses
A coalition of veterans' groups, peace groups, and political activist groups announced a campaign today to urge that the U.S. Congress launch a formal investigation into whether President Bush has committed impeachable offe...
May 23, 2005
Presentation on May 24, 2005, at the Second National Summit on Equitable Development, Social Justice, and Smart Growth, www.policylink.org, in Philadelphia, Penn.
It is with some hesitation that I speak about communicating ideas on regional equity and smart growth to a gathering of experts on the...
April 28, 2005
U.S. Out of Iraq: Forum Features Conyers, Woolsey, Lee, Ellsberg
A forum held in a US House of Representatives office building on April 28 brought together leaders of the movement to withdraw US troops from Iraq, including Congresswomen Lynn Woolsey and Barbara Lee, both California Democrats and...
April 27, 2005
Al Gore Attacks "Right-Wing Religious Zealotry"
Former Vice President Al Gore gave a lengthy speech on Wednesday on the topic of Republicans' attempt to eliminate the right to filibuster in the Senate.
The event was organized by MoveOn.org, and MoveOn member Sarah Landon introduced Gore...
April 27, 2005
Two white Republican U.S. senators and a group of largely African-American preachers held a press conference in the U.S. Capitol building on Tuesday to demand a vote on the nomination of Janice Rogers Brown to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. Brown's is one of the nominations that Democratic se...
April 27, 2005
James Roosevelt stood on a large outdoor stage on Tuesday in a Washington, D.C., park filled with union members waving signs about Social Security. "Every American," he said, "deserves what my grandfather, Franklin Delano Roosevelt laid out for them."
The shouts that followed that remark must ha...
April 26, 2005
Dear Italy, forgive us. Bring your dear soldiers home from Iraq. Teach them about peace. Teach us in the United States about peace. We need to learn from you.
I spent some terrific years of my life in your bel paese, and one of the first things that caught my attention was your humility and your ...
April 26, 2005
Democratic and Progressive Activists Challenge Howard Dean's Comments Supporting Continued Occupation
Activists Rally Support for Congressional Progressive Caucus Members' Call to Bring Troops Home
Progressive Democrats of America (PDA), a national organization of activists with active membe...
April 20, 2005
A Nation Is Not a Father or Mother, But Our Child
George Lakoff has become perhaps the most listened to thinker by progressive activists. His instruction to take care in how a debate is initially framed is very persuasive. Clearly it is much harder to bring people to a conclusion that lies outsi...
April 19, 2005
Harold Meyerson has an interesting article in the Spring 2005 Dissent Magazine called "Beyond The Consensus: Democrats Agree on How to Play Defense, but What Are They Fighting For?" http://www.dissentmagazine.org/
Meyerson encourages Democrats to "go to war against Democratic Wall Street e...
April 19, 2005
So, Jimmy Carter and James Baker are sitting at a table, and Carter starts talking about the disastrous election of 2000 in Florida.... It sounds like the start of a joke. It was actually the start of the first meeting of the Baker-Carter Commission on Federal Election Reform in Washington, D.C., ...
April 17, 2005
For more than a decade we've heard about a political animal called the RINO (Republican in Name Only), but most species of RINO have become endangered or at least threatened. Republicans in Congress have learned to close ranks and vote as a block.
On the recent bill restricting the rights o...
April 14, 2005
Bankruptcy Bill Opponents Thank Congress Members Who Voted No, Promise to Hold Accountable Those Who Voted Yea, and Prepare for Upcoming Battles
Following Senate passage of the bankruptcy bill on March 10, Democrats.com and Progressive Democrats of America created a coalition at www.DebtSlave...
April 14, 2005
Panel Presentation for Conference of United Association of Labor Educators
April 1, 2005, Philadelphia, Penn.
I originally proposed as a title for this workshop "What Direction Should Labor Media Take?" Somewhere along the way, the word "Media" got lost, a fortunate accident in that it produced ...
April 14, 2005
The most remarkable thing about the bankruptcy bill (which has now been postponed in the House until next week) is something that the corporate media is incapable of reporting on and probably in some cases incapable of even recognizing. Namely, this bill offers an ideal test for the Democrats.
M...
April 14, 2005
Presentation at Marymount University, April 7, 2005
Crystal asked me to come here because I had some connection to the hunger strike for a living wage at Georgetown University. When I told her that I was not a hunger striker, but primarily a reporter who wrote about it, she was kind enough to stil...
April 14, 2005
The Socialist Worker's Lance Selfa wrote an article opposing the idea of trying to turn the Democratic Party into a truly progressive force. Hopeless, he said. I sent him a response, which the Socialist Worker published together with a reply from Selfa. See the exchange here:
http://www.socialistwo...
April 14, 2005
Betsy Leondar-Wright has just published "Class Matters: Cross-Class Alliance Building for Middle-Class Activists." In this 160-page book from New Society Publishers, which contains brief interviews with numerous activists, Leondar-Wright takes us on a tour of many of the pitfalls and possibilities d...
April 01, 2005
"April Fools! We're not really going to wreck the bankruptcy system and turn families over to the gentle mercies of credit card companies! We just wanted to see how extreme we could get and have the media still believe it!"
That's what I'd like to hear the United States Senate announce today, but...
November 30, 1999
What if there were Republicans in Congress who supported forced abortions and prostitution and slave labor? And what if there were progressive Democrats running against them. Meet Republican Congress Members John Doolittle and Richard Pombo and their challengers in California's 4th and 11th distri...
November 30, 1999
They have taken untold millions that they never toiled to earn,
But without our brain and muscle not a single wheel can turn.
We can break their haughty power; gain our freedom when we learn
That the Union makes us strong.
The House has just passed the Employee Free Choice Act, a bi...
November 30, 1999
The New York Times and CBS News recently polled the US public:
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/national/03022007_poll.pdf
After a long list of questions that confused any distinction between health care and health coverage, the New York Times/CBS asked:
"Do you think it w...