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This Natural Disaster Assistance Law Is Why Other States Are Policing Dakota Access Pipeline Protests
Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog
Almost exactly 20 years ago, President Bill Clinton signed into law a bill creating an interstate agreement for emergency management. That inconspicuous law has opened the door for the current flood of out-of-state law enforcement agents present at the continuing protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) in North Dakota.
Security Firm Running Dakota Pipeline Intelligence Tied to U.S. Military Work in Iraq, Afghanistan
Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog
TigerSwan is one of several security firms under investigation for its work guarding the Dakota Access pipeline in North Dakota while potentially without a permit. Besides this recent work on the Standing Rock Sioux protests in North Dakota, this company has offices in Iraq and Afghanistan and is run by a special forces Army veteran.
What Keeps the F-35 Alive
Imagine if a local business in your town invented a brand new tool that was intended to have an almost magical effect thousands of miles away. However, where the tool was kept and used locally became an area unsafe for children. Children who got near this tool tended to have increased blood pressure and increased stress hormones, lower reading skills, poorer memories, impaired auditory and speech perception, and impaired academic performance.
Most of us would find this situation at least a little concerning, unless the new invention was designed to murder lots of people. Then it'd be just fine.
Now, imagine if this same new tool ruined neighborhoods because people couldn't safely live near it. Imagine if the government had to compensate people but kick them out of living near the location of this tool. Again, I think, we might find that troubling if mass murder were not the mission.
Imagine also that this tool fairly frequently explodes, emitting highly toxic chemicals, particles, and fibers unsafe to breathe into the air for miles around. Normally, that'd be a problem. But if this tool is needed for killing lots of people, we'll work with its flaws, won't we?
Now, what if this new gadget was expected to cost at least $1,400,000,000,000 over 50 years? And what if that money had to be taken away from numerous other expenses more beneficial for the economy and the world? What if the $1.4 trillion was drained out of the economy causing a loss of jobs and a radical diminuition of resources for education, healthcare, housing, environmental protection, or humanitarian aid? Wouldn't that be a worry in some cases, I mean in those cases where the ability to kill tons of human beings wasn't at stake?
Disobey or Die
Back in the winter of 1982, Air Florida flight 90 took off from National Airport. The first officer noticed dangerous readings on some instruments and pointed them out to the captain. The captain told him he was wrong, and he accepted the captain's authority. He did nothing. Thirty seconds later the plane crashed into the 14th Street Bridge. Everyone on board died except for four passengers rescued out of the icy river.
During the latter decades of the 20th and first part of the 21st century, millions and millions of first officers on spaceship earth noticed that climate and nuclear dangers loomed. But every authoritative captain in sight, from elected officials to CEOs to media pundits, said "Don't be a fool. I've got this." And millions upon millions sat back and mumbled "Oh, all right, if you're sure."
The people pushing through the vote this week at the United Nations to create a treaty next year banning nuclear weapons are engaged in necessary disobedience to mainstream authority and acceptance. The people putting their bodies in the way of a pipeline in North Dakota are disobeying immoral orders.
Ira Chaleff's book, Intelligent Disobedience, re-examines the lessons of the Milgram and Stanford prison experiments, and other more recent demonstrations of the severe dangers of uncritical obedience. Chaleff highlights some techniques that can facilitate intelligent refusals to obey.
Anti-Pipeline March on Hillary Clinton's Office
Antiwar March on Hillary Clinton's Office
Antiwar demo on Saturday, November 5th, rallying at Brooklyn Boro Hall (209 Joralemon Street) on the steps at 1 pm, and then marching to Hillary Clinton's office:
Organizations Endorsing:
Brooklyn Greens / Green Party
Veterans for Peace-NYC, Chapter 34
Popular Resistance
World Can't Wait
U.S. Peace Council
The Nuclear Resister
Friends of Brad Will
Center for Global Justice
World Beyond War
Free Radicals (freerads.com), Houston TX
Individuals Endorsing:
Steve Ault, long-time activist
David Barouh, ActionGreens
Medea Benjamin,
Betsy Bowman, Center for Global Justice - Mexico
Howard Brandstein, Director, Sixth Street Community Center, NYC*
Lenni Brenner, author, Zionism In The Age Of The Dictators
Ellen Brown, Attorney & Public Banking advocate
Jack & Felice Cohen-Joppa, Nuclear Resister ( www.nukeresister@igc.org)
Mitchel Cohen, former Chair WBAI radio Local Station Board*
Carolina Cositore Sitrin, Raging Grannies/NJ Green Party*
Curtis Cost, Author and Community Activist
Dawn Real, community-based technologist
Ecegul "AJ" Elterman, member of Public Citizen*
Terri Ginsberg, Assistant Professor of Film, The American University in Cairo
Margaret Flowers, MD, Green Party candidate for U.S. Senate in Maryland
Robert Gold, Brooklyn Greens
Marcy Gordon, attorney, singer-songwriter
Michael Hirsch, New Politics magazine*
Ron Jacobs, writer
Edwin Johnston, Houston TX anti-war activist
Chris Kinder, coordinator of the Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal
Sallie Latch, artist
Patricia Mann, author "On the Precipice", in Radical Philosophy Review*
Alfred R. Marder, President, U.S. Peace Council
Joel Meyers,
Bertell Ollman, professor & author
Christopher Reed, environmental activist
Jack Shalom, Math Teacher
Alice Slater, World Beyond War*
Bob Stone,
Alice Sturm Sutter, retired nurse practitioner, NYC Metro Raging Grannies*
David Swanson, WarIsACrime.org
Debra Sweet, World Can't Wait
Daniel Vila, Green Party candidate for Congress, 13th C.D., NYC
Kevin Zeese, co-director of PopularResistance.org
*For ID purposes only
David Swanson: “We need to unite globally around opposition to the entire institution of war”
This post is also available in: Italian
In your website http://worldbeyondwar.org/ you say: “We strive to replace a culture of war with one of peace, in which nonviolent means of conflict resolution take the place of bloodshed”. So which role and value can nonviolence have in building such a culture?
Nonviolent action can play at least three roles here.
- It can demonstrate a superior means of resisting tyranny that causes less suffering, is more likely to succeed, and is likely to have a longer lasting success. While most of the examples, such as Tunisia 2011, are of overcoming domestic tyranny, there is a growing list of successful nonviolent resistance actions against foreign invasion and occupation as well — and a growing understanding of how to apply the lessons of domestic nonviolence to resistance to foreign attack.
- It can model a world that has outgrown war. Nations can lead by example, by joining international bodies and treaties, abiding by the rule of law and enforcing it. The International Criminal Court could indict a non-African. The United States which has stopped manufacturing cluster bombs could join the ban on them. Truth and reconciliation commissions could be expanded. Disarmament talks, humanitarian aid on a new scale, and the closure of foreign bases could be the change we want to see.
- Nonviolent protest and resistance tools can be used by activists to resist bases, weapons manufacture, military recruitment, and new wars. We didn’t stop Dal Molin in Vicenza, but we don’t have to accept it. The U.S. military should not be permitted to use facilities in Sicily to murder with drones in Asia and Africa. A year’s service to one’s country should not involve participating in a military. Public and private funds must be divested from weapons companies. Et cetera.
Social Security checks to rise just 0.3% in 2017: Screwing With and Screwing the Elderly and Disabled
By Dave Lindorff
I'm Headed to Alaska
David Swanson to speak in Fairbanks, Alaska, on "How we abolish the institution of war"
WHO: David Swanson is an author, activist, journalist, and radio host. He is director of WorldBeyondWar.org and campaign coordinator for RootsAction.org. Swanson's books include War Is A Lie. He blogs at DavidSwanson.org and WarIsACrime.org. He hosts Talk Nation Radio. He is a 2015 and 2016 Nobel Peace Prize Nominee.
WHERE: University of Alaska, Schaible Auditorium, Bunnell Building, 303 Tanana Loop, Fairbanks, AK 99775
WHEN: 7 p.m. on October 22, 2016
SPONSORS: University Peace Club and Alaska Peace Center
FOR MORE INFORMATION: info@alaskapeace.org
WEBSITE: http://alaskapeace.org
FLYER: https://alaskapeace.files.wordpress.com/2016/08/swansonflyerfinal2.pdf
Keywords to add to all electronic communications: As the Surveillance Expands, Best Way to Resist is to Bury the NSA in Garbage
By Dave Lindorff
Word that Yahoo! last year, at the urging of the National Security Agency, secretly developed a program that monitored the mail of all 280 million of its customers and turned over to the NSA all mail from those who used any of the agency's thousands of keywords, shows that the US has become a total police state in terms of trying to monitor every person in the country (and outside too).
Letters to the 1% and the 99%
Gordie Fellman: Introduction
[Editor’s note: The next three posts in the Waltham Review are by Brandeis sociology professor Gordie Fellman. This post is Gordie Fellman’s introduction to his two letters, a letter to the 1 percent and a letter to the 99 percent. The previous post is the Editor’s introduction to Professor Fellman’s posts in the Waltham Review]
I am a professor of sociology at Brandeis University and chair its undergraduate interdisciplinary program in Peace, Conflict, and Coexistence Studies.
There is no consensual agreement on the definition of sociology. Here is mine: Sociology is the discipline that allows us to locate sources and dynamics of unnecessary human suffering and ways to reduce it.
Toward that end, I work on both the structural level of analysis—social class, race, gender, sexuality, religion, nationality—and the social psychological level, asking what are humans’ inner dynamics that express complex inner distress and also link to cultural contradictions and pathologies.
My book Rambo and the Dalai Lama: the Compulsion to Win and Its Threat to Human Survival makes the case that humans have so far lived under the adversary paradigm, which takes victory of any sort as its goal. The alternative, the mutuality paradigm, prizes connection, cooperation, empathy, and compassion toward solving human and planetary problems together.
I am now completing a book called The Coming End of War, which offers a three part deconstruction of war, as well as several suggestions for how to come to terms with what war has been and how to move past it.
I have received various teaching and academic honors, none more precious to me than being designated as a very dangerous professor by David Horowitz, in his 2006 book The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America. This label clearly refers back to a 2004 article in Horowitz’s FrontPageMag.com blog, where one of Horowitz’s associates attacks the peace studies program I chair at Brandeis as an example of the so-called “dangerous leftism of peace studies.”
Inspired by the now defunct Occupy movement, which started in New York five years ago this week, then quickly spread across America, I have, this election year, written a Letter to the 1% and a Letter to the 99%, both of which are posted now on the Waltham Review.
Upcoming Debate on "Is War Necessary." Please Come.
Is War Necessary?
A Debate
David Swanson (War Is A Lie) vs. Roger Bergman ("There are just wars.")
Oct. 5, 7:00 p.m., McCarthy Arts Center, St. Michael's College.
Campus Road, Colchester, Vermont 05439 (just outside of Burlington).
Sponsored by the Peace and Justice Club and the Edmundite Center for Peace and Justice.
Signup and share on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/events/1800405746862756
Damned Nations, Cursed Arms Trade
Samantha Nutt has spent decades working on humanitarian aid in war zones. Her book, Damned Nations: Greed, Guns, Armies, and Aid, is rich in wisdom drawn from experience. But more powerful and pointed, and worth beginning and ending with, is her talk titled "The Real Harm of the Global Arms Trade."
Nutt describes child armies across the global south including eight-year-olds who have never been to school but have fought and killed using automatic weapons. Yet, she says, war can be ended despite its being "as old as existence." (I think part of the path to ending it may involve rejecting myths like the one that war is as old as existence, but never mind that.)
Nutt describes a root cause of war that the wealthy of the world could easily eliminate, because it's not found in the "human nature" of Africans but in the financial records of educated, well-off, comfortable people typically not involved in war directly.
There are 800,000,000 small arms and light weapons in use in the world, Nutt says. There are places where you can get an AK47 for $10, and where you can get an automatic weapon more easily than a glass of clean water. (Of course it would cost a tiny fraction of military spending to provide the world with clean water -- $11.3 billion per year, says the U.N.)
Nutt shows two maps of the world, one highlighting the locations of wars, the other the locations of the big weapons exporters. There's no overlap. Like alcohol for Native Americans and opium for Chinese, weapons of war are products that the United States and Europe (and Russia and China) push on targeted populations. Eighty percent of all war weapons, Nutt says, come from the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany.
Nutt shows two other statistics. One is that small arms sales are up three-fold in the past 15 years. The other is that deaths caused by them are up over three-fold in the same time. Arms shipped to Iraq and Syria are in the hands of ISIS, she notes. Arms shipped to Libya are in the hands of Boko Haram. Weapons' first stop is rarely their last.
So, Nutt concludes, what we need is "transparency" in arms sales. Ignore that bit. I know that even transparency is too much to ask of the U.S. government, but that doesn't make it an appropriate demand. What we need is an end to weapons gifts and weapons sales. Everybody knows the U.S. is selling Saudi Arabia weapons with which to blow people up in Yemen, boost terrorism, and destabilize the region. Knowing it doesn't help anything. And stopping it wouldn't make a single other weapons sale or gift to a single other nation, or to Saudi Arabia next month, morally defensible. There's no proper way to deal arms.
So, if you live in the United Kingdom, make Jeremy Corbin your prime minister. And if you live in any other wealthy northern country, bring nonviolent pressure to bear on your society and your rotten government to end the arms trade. If we can divest from Israeli war crimes and nukes, we can divest from the overarching evil, which is war. Nutt also suggests weapons divestment in her book, along with numerous suggestions for improving and expanding humanitarian aid.
Antiwar and pro-aid activists need to work more closely together. Antiwar groups need Nutt's wisdom on where to best direct aid. Nutt, in my humble opinion, could use a bit more understanding of what's wrong with war. That sounds ridiculous for me to say from the safety of my home as she travels from war zone to war zone, but citing six million Jews as the greatest killing ever done by war misses the problem. And I don't mean by omitting the three million non-Jews killed in the camps (though why omit them?). I mean the 50 million or more killed in the war outside the camps, a war justified in U.S. mythology by the deaths of the Jews, despite the U.S. and U.K. governments' refusals to evacuate them or accept them as refugees.
Perpetuating World War II myths in an antiwar book for Americans is as ill advised as any of the counterproductive amateur attempts at aid that Nutt critiques. (Never mind the reduction by ten fold of the number of Iraqis killed since 2003 in the statistic Nutt uses, or her repetition of the "erase the state of Israel from the map" line/lie, or her claim that arming Paul Kagame is an example of good weapons proliferation, or her claim that we couldn't know Iraq had no nukes or chemical or biological weapons until years after 2003.)
Nutt's focus is not on debunking propaganda for war but on providing aid. She claims that "the single greatest impediment to peace [is] the marginalization of women and girls." Really? I don't deny its significance. But the single greatest impediment? Just a few pages later, Nutt is recognizing NATO's interest in pretending to have a reason to exist as a cause of the violence she's discussing in Somalia -- a place that does not manufacture the weapons used in it and still wouldn't if it stopped marginalizing women. A few lines later, Nutt is describing how using militaries trained and armed for war to provide aid tends to produce, on the contrary, war. Not only does the U.S. invest many times more in war than in aid, but it ruins prospects for private aid organizations by destroying, as Nutt recounts in Somalia, the ability of aid groups to claim neutrality, and the ability of suffering people to trust the advice of foreign doctors.
Nutt writes as well as anyone on the topic of Western society's deep financial investment in war:
"The New York State Teachers' Retirement System, for example, has nearly $2 billion invested in weapons manufacture. When teachers start betting on a boom in weapons sales to see them through their golden years, it's time to load the trunk of the car with flashlights and soup cans."
Later, Nutt writes:
"Peace, development, and security will remain stubbornly out of reach for any civilian population choking on weapons fed to them by countries with eighty times their GDP."
That strikes me as right, and as grounds for putting our efforts into ending arms dealing.
Before Presidential Debate, Obama Admin Weakened Endangered Species Act Under Oil Industry Pressure
Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons
Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog
As eyes turned to the most viewed presidential debate in U.S. history, the Obama administration meanwhile quietly auctioned off thousands of acres of land for oil and gas drilling in national forests, opened up 119 million acres for offshore drilling leases in the Gulf of Mexico, and delivered a blow to the Endangered Species Act.
Acting on Bill Ayers' Radical Manifesto
Bill Ayers' short new book, Demand the Impossible: A Radical Manifesto, is different from the typical liberal view of a better world in two ways. First, its goals are a bit grander, more inspiring. Second, it adds as the first and most important goal one that others don't include at all.
A typical proposal that a lesser evilist might give for "voting against Donald Trump" might include minor economic or police or prison reforms, a bit of environmentalism, healthcare, or education. Ayers wants to abolish prisons, end capitalism, disarm the police, redesign schools, create universal healthcare, and nationalize energy companies. And he's right. The radical vision is the better one, not just because it leads to a better place but also because the incrementalist approach will get us all killed -- only a bit more slowly than doing nothing.
The more important, because rarer, difference in Ayers' manifesto is the addition of the missing topic. Most U.S. "progressives" imagine a world of greater economic equality and opportunity, environmental sustainability, fewer police killings, shorter prison sentences, investment in human needs, and the withering away of all sorts of bigotries, prejudices, sexisms, racisms, and other sorts of unfairness and cruelty -- resulting in a multicultural community all united in our support for dumping a trillion dollars a year into preparing for battle with our collectively loathed foreign enemies, and supporting the weapons trade as a supposed economic program.
Ayers takes a different approach. "What," he asks, "if we broke from the dogma of militarism -- rejecting the anemic and seemingly endless debates about whether the United States should bomb this country or instead boycott some other country . . . -- and organized an irresistible social upheaval strong enough to stop U.S. invasions and conquest[?] What if we occupied bases, blocked munitions shipments and private militias, boycotted arms dealers, sabotaged surveillance operations and drone manufacturers -- and forced the U.S. government to disarm and close all foreign military bases within a year? . . . Or what if we built a colossal transnational movement that organized shadow elections (initially), inviting any resident of a country with a U.S. military presence within its borders to vote in U.S. national elections?"
Ayers proposes that we take on the culture of militarism, not just the industrial structure of it. "[I]magine," he writes, "any bit of the war culture transformed into a peace-and-love culture: the Super Bowl opening with thousands of local school kids rushing through the stands distributing their poetry, and then everyone singing 'This Land Is Your Land,' or 'Give Peace a Chance,' or 'We Shall Overcome'; an airlines or bus terminal clerk saying, 'We want to invite any teachers or nurses in the gate area to board first, and we thank you for your service'; urban high schools eliminating ROTC and banning military recruiters in favor of school-wide assemblies for peace recruiters featuring Code Pink, and after-school programs led by Black Youth Project 100 and the American Friends Service Committee."
Some of us like this idea so much we've organized an event this weekend to try to advance it. The event is called #NoWar2016. This Friday and Saturday, you can watch the live stream at TheRealNews.com. Videos of Friday through Sunday will be quickly posted online. Sunday will include activism workshops and a planning session for a protest at the Pentagon at 9 a.m. Monday morning. The details are all at http://worldbeyondwar.org/nowar2016.
As Dakota Access Protests Escalated, Obama Admin OK’d Same Company for Two Pipelines to Mexico
Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog
Photo Credit: C-SPAN
On September 9, the Obama administration revoked authorization for construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) on federally controlled lands and asked the pipeline's owners, led by Energy Transfer Partners, to voluntarily halt construction on adjacent areas at the center of protests by Native Americans and supporters.
Forget fast, we need accurate elections: Time to Mandate a Return to Paper Ballots Nationwide
By Dave Lindorff
Paying the Price for Peace to be screened with the director at UVA on 9/29
WHAT: Screening of Paying the Price for Peace: The Story of S. Brian Willson, and discussion with the director Bo Boudart and with peace activist David Swanson. See http://payingthepriceforpeace.com
WHEN: 7-11 p.m., Thursday, September 29
WHERE: Commonwealth Room, Newcomb Hall, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Va.
HOST: Students for Peace and Justice in Palestine
COSPONSORS: World Beyond War, RootsAction.org, the Peace and Social Concerns Committee of Charlottesville Friends Meeting, Pax Christi, Amnesty International - Charlottesville, and Charlottesville Center for Peace and Justice. (More welcome!)
COST: No one turned away. Donation appreciated: $10, or $20 to leave with a copy of the DVD. Donations pay for Bo Boudart's travel. You can also donate at http://payingthepriceforpeace.com
Please sign up on Facebook if you want to come, and please share it to spread the word: https://www.facebook.com/events/1591911061110859
Please retweet this tweet: https://twitter.com/davidcnswanson/status/776406756939399168
Security Firm Guarding Dakota Access Pipeline Also Used Psychological Warfare Tactics for BP
Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog
G4S, a company hiring security staff to guard the hotly contested Dakota Access pipeline (DAPL), also works to guard oil and gas industry assets in war-torn Iraq, and has come under fire by the United Nations for human rights abuses allegedly committed while overseeing a BP pipeline in Colombia and elsewhere while on other assignments.
Talk Nation Radio: Elizabeth Murray and John Kiriakou on Working in a Corrupt Government and Whistleblowing
https://soundcloud.com/davidcnswanson/tnr-elizabeth-murray-and-john-kiriakou-on-working-in-a-corrupt-government-and-whistleblowing
John Kiriakou is a former CIA counterterrorism officer, who in 2007 became the first U.S. Government official to publicly confirm and describe CIA use of waterboarding on al-Qaeda prisoners, which he described as torture. In January 2013, Kiriakou was sentenced to 30 months in prison and was released after serving more than 23 months. Since then, he has become a tireless writer and speaker on whistleblowing, torture, and civil liberties. Kiriakou is the sole U.S. Government official to have been jailed for any reason relating to CIA torture – a victim of the Obama administration’s unprecedented crackdown on government truth-tellers. When President Obama openly acknowledged at a White House press conference on August 1, 2014, “We tortured some folks,” John was in prison for having said essentially the same thing seven years earlier.
Elizabeth Murray served as Deputy National Intelligence Officer for the Near East in the National Intelligence Council before retiring after a 27-year career in the U.S. government. She is a member of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), and of Sam Adams Associates. She writes for Consortium News.
Murray and Kiriakou will be speaking at No War 2016. See http://worldbeyondwar.org/nowar2016
Total run time: 29:00
Host: David Swanson.
Producer: David Swanson.
Music by Duke Ellington.
Download from LetsTryDemocracy or Archive.
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Syndicated by Pacifica Network.
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Past Talk Nation Radio shows are all available free and complete at
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Why We Must Go to the Pentagon on September 26, 2016
A call to action from the National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance (NCNR):
As people of conscience and nonviolence we go to the Pentagon, the seat of the United States military might, to call for an end to the ongoing wars and occupations waged and supported by the US. War is directly linked to poverty and the destruction of the Earth’s habitat. The preparations for more war and a new US nuclear arsenal are a threat to all life on the planet.
This September as we observe the United Nations International Day of Peace, the great many actions around the country for Campaign Nonviolence, and the “No War 2016” conference in Washington, DC we call upon our political leaders, and those at the Pentagon to stop the planning and waging of war.
September 11, 2016 marked 15 years since the Bush regime used the criminal terrorist attacks as an excuse to wage a series of unending wars and occupations continuing still under President Obama. These wars and occupations waged by the US are in fact illegal and immoral and must end.
We demand that the planning and production for a new nuclear arsenal stop. As the first and only country to use nuclear weapons on civilians, we call upon the US to take the lead in real and meaningful nuclear disarmament initiatives so that one day all nuclear weapons will be abolished.
We demand an end to NATO and other military war-games around the world. NATO must be disbanded as it is clearly hostile to Russia thus threatening world peace. Military plans commonly referred to as the US’ “Asian Pivot” are provoking and creating ill will with China. Instead we call for real diplomatic efforts to address conflict with both China and Russia.
We demand that the US immediately start closing its military bases abroad. The US has hundreds of military bases and installations around the world. There is no need for the US to continue to have bases and military installations in Europe, Asia, and Africa while expanding its military alliances with India and the Philippines. All of this does nothing to create a secure and peaceful world.
We demand an end to environmental ecocide resulting from war. The Pentagon is the largest single polluter of fossil fuels in the world. Our dependence on fossil fuels is destroying Mother Earth. Resource wars are a reality we must avoid. An end to war and occupation will lead us on a path to saving our planet.
We demand an end to US military and foreign aid and support for proxy wars. Saudi Arabia is waging an illegal war against the people of Yemen. The US is supplying weapons and military intelligence to this corrupt undemocratic country ruled by a despotic and extremist royal family which oppresses women, LGBT people, other minorities, and dissidents within Saudi Arabia. The US gives billions of dollars in military aid to Israel where the Palestinian people have faced decades of oppression and dispossession. Israel has continuously used its military might on the unarmed Palestinians of Gaza and the West Bank. It imposes an Apartheid state and prison camp conditions on the Palestinian people. We call on the US to cut off all foreign and military aid to these countries violating international law and human rights.
We demand the US government renounce regime change as a policy against the Assad government of Syria. It must cease funding Islamic extremists and other groups attempting to overthrow the Syrian government. Supporting groups fighting to overthrow Assad does nothing for peace and even justice for the people of Syria.
We demand the US government support refugees fleeing from war-torn countries. The unending wars and occupations have created the largest refugee crisis since the last world war. Our wars and occupations are causing human misery by forcing people to leave their homes. If the US cannot bring about peace in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and the Middle East then it must withdraw, end military funding for proxy wars and occupations, and allow others to work towards stability and peace.
Since September 11, 2001 US society has seen its local police forces become militarized, civil liberties attacked, mass surveillance by the government, the rise in Islamophobia, all while our children are still recruited in the schools by the military. The path to war since that day has not made us safer or the world more secure. The path to war has been an utter failure for almost all on the planet except for those who profit from war and the economic system which impoverishes us all in so many ways. We don’t have to live in a world like this. This is not sustainable.
Therefore, we go to the Pentagon where the empire’s wars are planned and waged. We demand an end to this madness. We call for a new beginning where Mother Earth is protected and where poverty will be eradicated because we will all share our resources and redirect our economy towards a world without war.
To join us, sign up at http://worldbeyondwar.org/nowar2016
We will also be delivering to the Pentagon a petition to close Ramstein Air Base in Germany, as U.S. whistleblowers and Germans together deliver it to the German government in Berlin. Sign that petition at http://act.rootsaction.org/p/dia/action3/common/public/?action_KEY=12254
The event at the Pentagon at 9 a.m. Monday, September 26, follows a three day conference, with a planning and training session at 2 p.m. on Sunday, September 25. See the full agenda:
http://worldbeyondwar.org/nowar2016agenda
Documents: How Big Oil Pushed to Make Dakota Access-Style Permitting a New Normal
Cross-Posted from DeSmogBlog
In the two months leading up to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' decision to issue to the Dakota Access pipeline project an allotment of Nationwide 12 permits (NWP) — a de facto fast-track federal authorization of the project — an army of oil industry players submitted comments to the Corps to ensure that fast-track authority remains in place going forward.
This fast-track permitting process is used to bypass more rigorous environmental and public review for major pipeline infrastructure projects by treating them as smaller projects.
Push-ups, September 11, and Veteran Deaths
By Gar Smith
A new PR campaign is calling on Americans of all ages to do "22 push-ups in 22 days" to dramatize the fact that, on average, 22 American combat veterans commit suicide every day.
September 11 marks the day when 2,996 Americans lost their lives in attacks on the World Trade Towers and the Pentagon, leading to the start of George W. Bush's War on Terror—an "endless" battle that now has US troops engaged in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen.
By September 11, 2016, 5,588 US soldiers will have committed suicide—nearly twice as many as the number of Americans lost in the 2001 terror attacks. 5,588: That's a lot of push-ups.
(Note: This accounting does not include the thousands of soldiers killed in combat or the hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians whose epitaphs read: "Collateral damage.")
By the end of 2016, 8,030, soldiers will have committed suicide owing to the unendurable trauma of the "War on Terror."
What can we conclude from these figures? (1) Serving as a US soldier must be one of the world's most demoralizing jobs and, (2) The War on Terror is a bloody failure.
#NoWar2016 Events Planned for Washington, D.C.
A major conference presenting alternatives to permanent war has been planned for September 23-25 at American University in Washington, D.C.
Main webpage:
http://worldbeyondwar.org/nowar2016
Events on the first two days and the third morning will be in the Founders Room of the School of International Service. Closing events will be at the Kay Center nearby on the campus of American University. Media cameras and journalists are welcome throughout. But RSVP. Rooms are expected to be at full capacity.
Detailed agenda:
http://worldbeyondwar.org/nowar2016agenda
Speakers will include: Dennis Kucinich, Kathy Kelly, Miriam Pemberton, David Vine, Kozue Akibayashi, Harvey Wasserman, Jeff Bachman, Peter Kuznick, Medea Benjamin, Maurice Carney, David Swanson, Leah Bolger, David Hartsough, Pat Elder, John Dear, Mel Duncan, Kimberley Phillips, Ira Helfand, Darakshan Raja, Bill Fletcher Jr., Lindsey German, Maria Santelli, Mark Engler, Maja Groff, Robert Fantina, Barbara Wien, Jodie Evans, Odile Hugonot Haber, Gar Alperovitz, Sam Husseini, Christopher Simpson, Brenna Gautam, Patrick Hiller, Mubarak Awad, Michelle Kwak, John Washburn, Bruce Gagnon, David Cortright, Michael McPhearson, Sharon Tennison, Gareth Porter, John Reuwer, Pat Alviso, Larry Wilkerson, Thomas Drake, Larry Johnson, John Kiriakou, Craig Murray, Raed Jarrar, Alli McCracken, Lilly Daigle, and Alice Slater.
Speakers' bios and photos:
http://worldbeyondwar.org/nowar2016speakers
World Beyond War is a global nonviolent movement to end war and establish a just and sustainable peace.
Partners Include: Jubitz Family Foundation, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, RootsAction.org, Code Pink, International Peace Bureau, Voices for Creative Nonviolence, Jane Addams Peace Association, Veterans For Peace, Delaware Peace Club, United for Peace and Justice.
Co-Sponsors Include: Washington Peace Center, Pace e Bene/Campaign Nonviolence, Liberty Tree Foundation, TheRealNews.com, Nonviolence International, Peace Action Montgomery, Fellowship of Reconciliation, Military Families Speak Out, Peace Action, WILPF-DC, International Movement for a Just World (JUST), Center for Bangladesh Studies, Society for Peace and Conflict Resolution at American University, Nuke Watch, Friends of Franz Jagerstatter, National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance (NCNR), WILPF-DC, International Society for Inter Cultural Study and Research (ISISAR), Charlottesville Center for Peace and Justice, On Earth Peace, The Virginia Defenders, UNAC, Pax Christi Metro DC-Baltimore, Albuquerque Center for Peace and Justice, National Campaign for a Peace Tax Fund/Peace Tax Foundation.
U.S. Groups, Citizens Ask World: Help Us Resist U.S. Crimes
The following letter is being delivered to the New York U.N. consulate office of every nation on earth: 
This year’s UN General Assembly comes at a critical moment for humanity – 3 minutes to midnight on the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ Doomsday Clock. Recognizing our country’s primary role in this crisis, 11,644 Americans and 46 U.S.-based organizations have thus far signed this "Appeal from the United States to the World: Help Us Resist U.S. Crimes," which we are submitting to all the world’s governments. Please work with your colleagues at the General Assembly to respond to this appeal.
The appeal has been signed here: http://bit.ly/usappeal The first 11,644 individual signers and their comments are contained in a PDF document here: http://bit.ly/usappealsigners
Since the end of the Cold War, the United States of America has systematically violated the prohibition against the threat or use of force contained in the UN Charter and the Kellogg Briand Pact. It has carved out a regime of impunity for its crimes based on its UN Security Council veto, non-recognition of international courts and sophisticated "information warfare" that undermines the rule of law with political justifications for otherwise illegal threats and uses of force.
Former Nuremberg prosecutor Benjamin B. Ferencz has compared current U.S. policy to the illegal German "preemptive first strike" policy for which senior German officials were convicted of aggression at Nuremberg and sentenced to death by hanging.
In 2002, the late U.S. Senator Edward Kennedy described post-September 11th U.S. doctrine as "a call for 21st century American imperialism that no other nation can or should accept." And yet the U.S. government has succeeded in assembling alliances and ad hoc "coalitions" to support threats and attacks on a series of targeted countries, while other countries have stood by silently or vacillated in their efforts to uphold international law. In effect, the U.S. has pursued a successful diplomatic policy of "divide and conquer" to neutralize global opposition to wars that have killed about 2 million people and plunged country after country into intractable chaos.
As representatives of civil society in the United States, the undersigned U.S. citizens and advocacy groups are sending this emergency appeal to our neighbors in our increasingly interconnected but threatened world. We ask you to stop providing military, diplomatic or political support for U.S. threats or uses of force; and to support new initiatives for multilateral cooperation and leadership, not dominated by the United States, to respond to aggression and settle international disputes peacefully as required by the UN Charter.
We pledge to support and cooperate with international efforts to stand up to and stop our country's systematic aggression and other war crimes. We believe that a world united to uphold the UN Charter, the rule of international law and our common humanity can and must enforce U.S. compliance with the rule of law to bring lasting peace to the world we all share.
A Good Beginning
By Kathy Kelly
It seems that some who have the ears of U.S. elite decision-makers are at least shifting away from wishing to provoke wars with Russia and China.
In recent articles, Zbigniew Brzezinskiand Thomas Graham, two architects of the U.S. cold war with Russia, have acknowledged that the era of uncontested U.S. global imperialism is coming to an end. Both analysts urge more cooperation with Russia and China to achieve traditional, still imperial, U.S. aims. Mr. Graham recommends a shifting mix of competition and cooperation, aiming toward a “confident management of ambiguity.” Mr. Brzezinski calls for deputizing other countries, such as Israel, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Iran to carry out the combined aims of the U.S., Russia and China so that this triumvirate could control other people’s land and resources.
It’s surely worthwhile to wonder what effect opinions such as Brzezinski's and Graham's might have upon how U.S. resources are allotted, whether to meet human needs or to further enlarge the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) and further enrich the corporations that profit from U.S. investments in weapons technology.
