War Is A Crime .org - Environment

Chasing red squirrels in DC: Dems Doom 2018 Chances by Labeling Trump a Russian Puppet, not Just Another Sleazy Plutocrat

dlindorff — Tue, 16 May 2017 21:42:38 +0000

By Dave Lindorff

What I Said at the Peace Hub of the Climate March

davidswanson — Sun, 30 Apr 2017 13:11:46 +0000

Most countries on earth have the U.S. military in them.

Most countries on earth burn less fossil fuel than does the U.S. military.

And that's without even calculating how much worse for the climate jet fuel is than other fossil fuels.

And it's without even considering the fossil fuel consumption of the world's leading weapons makers, or the pollution caused by the use of those weapons all over the world.

The U.S. is the top weapons dealer to the world, and has weapons on multiple sides of most wars.

The U.S. military created 69% of super fund environmental disaster sites and is the third leading polluter of U.S. waterways.

When the British first developed an obsession with the Middle East, passed along to the United States, the desire was to fuel the British Navy.

What came first? The wars or the oil? It was the wars.

Wars and the preparations for more wars consume a huge amount of oil.

But the wars are indeed fought for control of oil. So-called foreign intervention in civil wars is, according to comprehensive studies, 100 times more likely -- not where there is suffering, not where there is cruelty, not where there is a threat to the world, but where the country at war has large reserves of oil or the intervener has a high demand for oil.

We need to learn to say

No More Wars for Oil
and
No More Oil for Wars

You know who agrees with that? Pre-presidential campaign Donald Trump. On December 6, 2009, on page 8 of the New York Times a letter to President Obama printed as an advertisement and signed by Trump called climate change an immediate challenge. "Please don't postpone the earth," it said. "If we fail to act now, it is scientifically irrefutable that there will be catastrophic and irreversible consequences for humanity and our planet."

In fact, Trump is now acting to speed up those consequences, an action prosecutable as a crime against humanity by the International Criminal Court -- at least if Trump were African.

It's also a crime impeachable by the United States Congress -- at least if there's some way to involve sex in it.

Holding this government accountable is up to us.

No More Wars For Oil
No More Oil for Wars

Say it with me.

The F-35 and the Incinerating Ski Slope

davidswanson — Sat, 22 Apr 2017 15:15:19 +0000

By David Swanson
Remarks in Burlington, Vermont, April 22, 2017

Thank you all for inviting me. There is no place I’d rather be on earth day. And that includes marching for science at the March for Science in Washington. Although I certainly support marching for honesty, and I’d even march for the cause of getting more scientists to march — and any other group that hasn’t yet found the time to bother.

Unless resisting madness becomes mainstream, the madmen will decide our fate.

Thank you also for having started the first chapter of World Beyond War and for having given us the idea to have chapters. We now have people working on starting dozens of chapters in over a dozen countries. And we have staff to help them, and we have people in 151 countries who have signed the pledge that I’ll pass around here, pledging to work to end all war. We’re trying to get to 175 countries, because that’s how many the U.S. military admits to having troops in. So, 24 more to go. If you know anybody in Venezuela, Cuba, Honduras, Mongolia, Algeria, Lithuania, Ethiopia, or Papua New Guinea, please point them to WorldBeyondWar.org.

And thank you for having set up such a terrific program of workshops today, and — I hope — of work that will follow the workshops.

I hope my comments fit into the program, because I’m going to take a round about way of speaking in support of peace and environmentalism by praising garbage incinerators.

New Gary Lindorff poem in ThisCantBeHappening!: What am I shouting?

dlindorff — Mon, 10 Apr 2017 14:55:05 +0000

I saw a photo of an elephant in a concrete cell

alone,

so alone.

New TCBH! poem: 'True Story of a One-Legged Duck'

dlindorff — Tue, 28 Feb 2017 14:51:57 +0000

I was walking down the bike path

Uh-Oh! Violets in late February?: Signs of an Unusually Early Spring in Southeastern Pennsylvania are No Cause for Celebration

dlindorff — Fri, 24 Feb 2017 17:10:11 +0000

By Dave Lindorff

This whole winter has been anomalously warm in southeastern Pennsylvania where I live. My oil guy, Hans, is complaining that the demand for home heating oil is so low this winter that it's killing his business, causing him to lay off workers that he had already trained.

From WIPP with love: Three Years Since the Kitty Litter Disaster at Waste Isolation Pilot Plant

dlindorff — Thu, 23 Feb 2017 15:30:42 +0000

By Paul DeRienzo

Can the Climate Survive Adherence to War and Partisanship?

davidswanson — Thu, 16 Feb 2017 02:34:12 +0000

For the past decade, the standard procedure for big coalition rallies and marches in Washington D.C. has been to gather together organizations representing labor, the environment, women's rights, anti-racism, anti-bigotry of all sorts, and a wide array of liberal causes, including demands to fund this, that, and the other, and to halt the concentration of wealth.

At that point, some of us in the peace movement will generally begin lobbying the PEP (progressive except for peace) organizers to notice that the military is swallowing up enough money every month to fund all their wishes 100 times over for a year, that the biggest destroyer of the natural environment is the military, that war fuels and is fueled by racism while stripping our rights and militarizing our police and creating refugees.

When we give up on trying to explain the relevance of our society's biggest project to the work of reforming our society, we generally point out that peace is popular, that it adds a mere 5 characters to a thousand-word laundry list of causes, and that we can mobilize peace groups to take part if peace is included.

Looming climate catastrophe?: Rapidly Warming Arctic Could Unleash a Methane Climate Bomb Meaning Extinction in Nine Years

dlindorff — Fri, 10 Feb 2017 03:34:58 +0000

By Dave Lindorff

Reports from the Arctic are getting pretty grim.

Trump’s misplaced wall: It’s Not an Immigrant Tsunami We Should Fear, It’s a Climate Change One

dlindorff — Thu, 26 Jan 2017 20:13:18 +0000

By Dave Lindorff