There’s a contradiction built into every campaign promise about transparent government beyond the failure to keep the promises.  Our government is, in significant portion, made up of secret operations, operations that include warmaking, kidnapping, torture, assassination, and infiltrating and overthrowing governments.  A growing movement is ready to see that end . The Central Intelligence Agency is central to [...]

After years of mismanagement, the Tribune Company newspapers — including the Chicago Tribune and L.A. Times – are up for sale.  And one of the potential buyers? The Koch brothers.  And wow are people outraged! Yes, it’s those Koch brothers:the billionaire businessmen who run Koch Industries, a sprawling multinational corporation involved in everything from oil to fertilizer to paper towels.  But [...]

Our elected and unelected officials tell us that drone strikes target top level enemies of the United States who are imminent threats to us, and that killing innocent people is avoided altogether or minimized. Congressional hearings, with a couple of excellent exceptions, question outside academics about the legality of this purported strategy.  The Obama administration declines to send [...]

The CIA has been so busy consulting on Zero Dark Thirty, not to mention funding Hamid Karzai, bribing Russians, lying about weapons, and conducting humanitarian drone murders, that it didn’t have any time at all to help out with Hit and Stay, and yet arguably the latter turned out to be the better film despite such a [...]

Justice Seekers Storm Unconventional Fuels Conference at the University of Utah #FearlessSummer from Steve Liptay on Vimeo. It’s not enough to point out that our political system is completely corrupted by money, including money from coal and oil and nukes and gas.  Of course it is.  And if we had direct democracy, polls suggest we would be investing [...]

Most of the world’s governments no longer use the death penalty.  Among wealthy nations there is one exception remaining.  The United States is among the top five killers in the world.  Also in the top five: the recently “liberated” Iraq. But most of the United States’ 50 states no longer use the death penalty.  There are [...]

Some human rights groups, especially Amnesty International, seem to have forgotten an important human right: peace.  A petition has been launched to remind them. These organizations are not the warmongers. They do tremendously great work addressing some of the symptoms of warmaking, including imprisonment and torture.  But, because they avoid taking any position on war, and [...]

An NPR story on Monday carried this headline: “Expansion Plans At Arlington National Cemetery Cause Environmental Concerns.”  Only environmental concerns?  Are there any other concerns that anyone can think of?  I mean if, for example, “All Things” were going to be “Considered,” would there be any other things worth considering? U.S. troop deaths were 0.3 percent [...]

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. The Obama administration has seemingly painted itself into yet another military corner by announcing that [...]

Hundreds gathered in Dallas to reject the Bush Lie Bury, and three went to jail.  I flew from Dallas to Syracuse, where hundreds protested Obama’s drone-murder program, and 32 went to jail and are still there (and will stay until trial unless bail can be raised) — some of them risk major jail time because [...]

“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.” I do assess with varying degrees of horror (some of the varying degrees rather high even) that a lot of people are going to die.  And how [...]