Progressive Democrats Sonoma County

December 16, 2009

Congress will vote this week on defense funding bill — Take Action NOW!

More war and more money for war-so what else is new? This time the war-funding bill includes money to extend unemployment benefits for the many Americans who have lost their jobs from the economic meltdown.

At a time when so many Americans are desperately seeking employment, others have lost their homes or are about to, and still others are seeing their wages cut back, the US government is about to authorize $130 billion more to spend on the futile effort in Afghanistan and Pakistan, despite the overwhelming opposition to it.

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Great interview! Afghanistan, Healthcare Not Warfare, latest updates on healthcare bills in Congress, organizing with PDA, electing progressives, and more!

Tim Carpenter was recently interviewed on the Nick and Paul Show, from December 10th 2004.

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN

Join a PDA Issue Organizing Team; learn more here

David Swanson
December 12, 2009

Join PDA’s End War and Occupations, Redirect Funding Issue Organizing Team (IOT); learn more here.

Published by AfterDowningStreet.

Sometimes it’s relief for victims of Hurricane Katrina, sometimes it’s hate crimes legislation, sometimes it’s education funding for veterans. One day soon it will be free kittens for children with cancer. It’s always something. It’s always something that could pass just fine on its own. But it’s included as lipstick on the recurring and ever-fattening pigs of U.S. politics: war funding bills.

Next week, the warfunding bill that was passed in June will come up for a final vote, as part of a larger military bill that is part of a still larger spending package. How would any member of Congress dare to vote against such a thing? Well, just in case any of them might begin to consider it, our congressional “leaders” will include in the war funding bill a special treat: funding for unemployment insurance (plus possibly COBRA health and food stamp benefits, tax breaks for small businesses, and funding for state and local governments). How’s that for alluring lipstick?

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By David Swanson
Speech at White House, December 12, 2009

video below

Can you imagine the outcries of national shame from liberal commentators if George W. Bush had accepted a peace prize by advocating for war and announcing his right to launch wars of aggression? What an embarrassment that would have been!

But Bush would have made such a speech with fewer troops in the field, fewer mercenaries in the field, a smaller war budget, a smaller military budget, bases in fewer nations, the imperial powers of the presidency less firmly established, and — of course — worse pronunciation.

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Following a speech on the floor of the House of Representatives, Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) today released the following statement:

“Yesterday, our president mused about the inevitability of war, war’s instrumentality in the pursuit of peace and just wars. It is important for us to reflect on his words, because once we believe in the inevitability of war, war becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Once we are committed to war’s instrumentality in pursuit of peace, we begin the Orwellian journey to the semantic netherworld where War IS Peace, where the momentum of war overwhelms hopes for peace. And once we wrap doctrines perpetuating war in the arms of justice, we can easily legitimate the wholesale slaughter of innocents. The war against Iraq was based on lies. Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan are based on flawed doctrines of counter-insurgency. War is often not just; sometimes it is just war. And our ability to rethink the terms of our existence, to explore the possibility of peace without war, may well determine whether we end war, or war ends us.”

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That was not a peace prize acceptance speech. That was an infomercial for war. President Obama took the peace prize home with him, but left behind in Oslo his praise for war, his claims for war, and his view of an alternative and more peaceful approach to the world consisting of murderous economic sanctions.

Some highlights:

“There are the men and women around the world who have been jailed and beaten in the pursuit of justice; those who toil in humanitarian organizations to relieve suffering; the unrecognized millions whose quiet acts of courage and compassion inspire even the most hardened of cynics. I cannot argue with those who find these men and women — some known, some obscure to all but those they help — to be far more deserving of this honor than I.”

Yet, you did argue. You argued by accepting the prize … and then making a false case for war:

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By Norman Solomon
December 10, 2009

Eloquence in Oslo cannot change the realities of war.

As President Obama neared the close of his Nobel address, he called for “the continued expansion of our moral imagination.” Yet his speech was tightly circumscribed by the policies that his oratory labored to justify.

Lofty rationales easily tell us that warfare is striving for the noble goal of peace. But the rationales scarcely intersect with actual war. The oratory sugarcoats the poisons, helping to kill hope in the name of it.

A few months ago, when I visited an Afghan office for women’s empowerment, staffers took me to a pilot project in one of Kabul’s poorest neighborhoods. There, women were learning small-scale business skills while also gaining personal strength and mutual support.

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October 19, 2009

“We’re going to organize and change policy”

Congratulations from the national PDA team! Norman Solomon has received the Marin Democratic Party’s first Alex Forman Peace Award.

The award is named after a beloved environmentalist and peace activist. Alex Forman was generous and unflagging in his community work. When he died in July from chronic lymphocytic leukemia, he was serving as board president of the Marin Municipal Water District.

Since returning from a trip to Afghanistan last month, Norman has been speaking widely in the North Bay and beyond, warning against escalation of the war.

Healthcare NOT Warfare campaign co-chair Norman Solomon has just returned from Afghanistan. He gives a report on the conditions he found there, suggests the next steps for the peace movement, and answers questions.

CLICK HERE to listen

Sunday, September 27
1:30 to 4 pm
Glaser Center
547 Mendocino Ave.
Santa Rosa, CA

International Day of Peace Celebration with award-winning documentary film “Peace is Breaking Out: Soldiers of Peace’, which showcases the extraordinary and effective peace efforts of citizen activists in fourteen countries across five continents.

Film is narrated by Michael Douglas

Free popcorn.
Donations accepted.
More Info: 707-838-8647

Film Clip: http://www.youtube.com/user/soldiersofpeace

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July 5, 2009

Join us in growing the peace movement!

In a recent article posted here, Tom Hayden discusses a strategy for the peace movement, and David Swanson offers an organizing plan here.

What’s clear is that we can expect war and more war. The peace movement must come together behind a cohesive and effective strategy to promote peace and end wasteful military spending.

We invite you to join us this Tuesday for the next End War and Occupation Issue Organizing Team (IOT) conference call featuring Healthcare NOT Warfare co-chair Norman Solomon. Norman has been a powerful voice for peace and an end to US imperialism. Don’t miss this opportunity to hear from Norman on the eve of his departure to Afghanistan!

by Linda Milazzo
July 4, 2009

This morning I received the following letter from President Barack Obama:

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By David Swanson
July 3, 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.

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MORE CALLS NEEDED RIGHT NOW! (Leave messages at any hour!) Use the virtual phonebank. Watch the whip list. Vote is planned for Tuesday morning.

Read: McGovern: Reporter Made It Up, I’m Voting NO

Read: An Exit Strategy That Keeps Wars Going.

June 16th: Catch Bob Fertik on Democracy Now! at 8:45 a.m. ET. Then catch the vote on C-Span if it happens. It IS on the schedule for late morning. Emanuel is still trying to bribe Republicans to fund war (odd as that may sound) by including funding for the flu (bizarre as that may sound, and they were going to include it anyway) in an attempt to somehow overcome the Republicans’ opposition to the IMF’s doing things Republicans support if only it were with someone else’s money. Clear? The San Francisco Chronicle has an article quoting Sam Farr putting the question of whether Obama is embarassed above the question of whether people in Iraq or Afghanistan are killed, and George Miller professing his blind obedience to the President. The same article reports that Jackie Speier and Lynn Woolsey will vote No.

Read the Rest Here, including frequent updates

SIGN THE PETITION!

by Tom Hayden
The Nation.com – May 26, 2009

The most powerful grassroots organization of the peace
movement, MoveOn, remains silent as the American wars
in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan simmer or escalate.

Watch C-SPAN’s Soldiers’ Stories, coverage of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. One of those testifying, Col. Andrew Bacevich (Ret.) eloquently recalled how John Kerry, then a youthful, highly decorated military veteran, asked a famous question: How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake? Listen to Kerry’s poignant, passionate anti-war speech from 1971 before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the committee he now chairs.

Link to Original

A Falcon of Peace – Who Wants to Be a Dove? (They Always Lose.)
By Tom Engelhardt | TomDispatch

How come they get to be the hawks? And we get to be the doves? A hawk is a noble bird. A dove. Well, basically it’s a pigeon. The sort of bird that, in New York City anyway, messes your building’s window sills, is always underfoot, and, along with the city’s rats, makes a hearty lunch for the red-tailed hawks which now populate our parks.

Even a turkey would be less of a turkey than a dove. We get to carry that olive twig — okay, they call it a “branch” — around in our beaks, but you can bet your bippy that they get the olives, or, more likely, the opportunity to trample the olive groves into oil.

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By Norman Solomon – SF Gate

Early this winter, the PBS “NewsHour with Jim Lehrer” interviewed the medical director at a community clinic in Northern California. He recalled the sight of military equipment moving along railroad tracks next to his office. “I’ve joked with my colleagues,” Dr. David Katz said, “if we could just get one of those Abrams tanks we could probably fund all the primary care clinics for a year.”

by David Swanson
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.

I do think just a couple of million people would be enough, especially if they are heavily concentrated in the United States, and the closer to Washington, D.C., the better. I think it will be easy to spread the word and reach two million people who want peace. I think we could find them without even setting foot outside Washington, D.C. The question is one of commitment, time, energy, and resources. Do you just want peace or are you willing to endure some inconvenience and unpleasantness to get it?

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