Sun May 19 2013

Stay out of Syria
by Foreign Policy Branch of the Green Shadow Cabinet
The following statement of Leah Bolger, Secretary of Defense and David Swanson, Secretary of Peace, of the Foreign Affairs Branch of the Green Shadow Cabinet, is available online here. It may be republished with attribution and a link back to its original web location.
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Libyan door to Syrian door to Iran
by David Swanson
"Our intelligence community does assess with varying degrees of confidence that the Syrian regime has used chemical weapons on a small scale in Syria, specifically the chemical agent sarin."
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Time to Renounce the "War on Terror"
by Norman Solomon
As a perpetual emotion machine -- producing and guzzling its own political fuel -- the "war on terror" continues to normalize itself as a thoroughly American way of life and death. Ongoing warfare has become a matter of default routine, pushed along by mainline media and the leadership of both parties in Washington. Without a clear and effective upsurge of opposition from the grassroots, Americans can expect to remain citizens of a war-driven country for the rest of their lives.
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Time for a Department of Peace
by David Swanson
I'm honored to have accepted the position of Secretary of Peace in the newly formed Green Shadow Cabinet. Of course, I cannot contrast my positions with those of the actual Secretary of Peace, as the United States has no such position.
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People and peace over plutocracy
by David Swanson
Remarks for conference on Building Bridges and Creating the Beloved Community, April 13, 2013
Sponsored by Maryland United for Peace and Justice, Maryland United for Peace and Justice
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The Growing Campaign to Revoke Obama's Nobel Peace Prize
by Norman Soloman
The Nobel Peace Prize that President Obama received 40 months ago has emerged as the most appalling Orwellian award of this century. No, war is not peace.
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I am hurting too: The hurt of militarized authoritarianism in Singapore, Afghanistan and the world
by Dr Hakim ( Dr Teck Young, Wee )
It’s hard for me, an ordinary citizen of Singapore, a medical doctor engaged in social enterprise work in Afghanistan and a human being wishing for a better world, to write this from Kabul.
But people are dying.
And children and women are feeling hopeless.
“What’s the point in telling you our stories?” asked Freba, one of the seamstresses working with the Afghan Peace Volunteers to set up a tailoring co-operative for Afghan women. “Does anyone hear? Does anyone believe us?” Silently within, I answered Freba with shame,” You’re right. No one is listening.”
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Bradley Manning's Nobel Peace Prize
by David Swanson
Whistleblower Bradley Manning has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, and he should receive it.
No individual has done more to push back against what Martin Luther King Jr. called "the madness of militarism" than Bradley Manning. The United States is the leading exporter of weapons and itself spends as much preparing for more wars as the rest of the world combined. Manning is the leading actor in opposition to U.S. warmaking, and therefore militarism around the world. What he has done has hurt the cause of violence in a number of other nations as well.
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Iraq War among world's worst events: Ever more shocked, never yet awed
by David Swanson
The following is a brief summary of a much longer, and fully documented, report available at War is a Crime and being made available in an attractive 88-page PDF at Coldtype.
At 10 years since the launch of Operation Iraqi Liberation (to use the original name with the appropriate acronym, OIL) and over 22 years since Operation Desert Storm, there is little evidence that any significant number of people in the United States have a realistic idea of what our government has done to the people of Iraq, or of how these actions compare to other horrors of world history. A majority of Americans believe the war since 2003 has hurt the United States but benefitted Iraq. A plurality of Americans believe, not only that Iraqis should be grateful, but that Iraqis are in fact grateful.
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Ten years ago and today: A warfare state of mind
by Norman Solomon
On a plane circling Baghdad in gray dawn light, a little Iraqi girl quietly sang to herself in the next row. “When I start to wonder why I’m making this trip,” Sean Penn murmured to me, “I see that child and I remember what it’s about.”
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