Inside the Belly of the Beltway Beast

Rep. Kucinich and eight other brave members of Congress are currently suing President Obama for Peace. Their case states that the commander-in-chief is in violation of the War Powers Act when it comes to the War on Libya. Obama absurdly contends that our military is not engaged in "hostilities" when it bombs buildings and kills people in this North African nation. Therefore, the pres claims the law does not apply. The War Powers Act was passed in order to further clarify Article 1 of our Constitution (that Congress and the President need to make such war-making decisions jointly). Passed in 1973, it was designed to check unlimited presidential military actions. Sadly, it has been ignored by presidents and Congress for at least a couple decades now. I doubt this lawsuit, although a very honorable step, will gain much ground. If folks haven't noticed things have not gone well for the peace and justice movement for the last few years... The American people, however, are gett...

I have neglected my blog for too long. Work at the LoC is going well, although not very exciting. I did pass the criminal background check during the last month, and they know all about my past arrests and convictions. Here is a pic of a lotus at Lake Artemesia where I walk Bruno nearly every day. My current activism remains almost exclusively focused on courageous whistle blower, Bradley Manning (now moved from Quantico to more humane Leavenworth). The prosecution and persecution of Bradley and other whistle blowers reveals the repressive nature of Barack Obama’s presidency. Although he claimed “hope” and even pushed “government transparency” during his campaign, the reality of his time as president has proven to be the opposite. We (the Bradley Manning Support Network) had a tele-press conference for Bradley (exactly one year after his arrest) recently which featured Pentagon Papers’ Daniel Ellsberg and WikiLeak’s Julian Assange. It proved to be wildly successful. Here are a couple n...

Sorry it's been so long since I last posted. Life is good. 3/20 in Quantico was a big success, and now I am signed up with Zipcar so Bruno and I can be a bit more mobile. Here is the latest on Bradley Manning (securing his freedom is my focus now)... Mistreatment of Manning Criticized by UN Torture Investigator, Hundreds of Legal Academics and Hundreds of Thousands By Kevin Zeese Colonel: "Obama Could End Torture with One Phone Call" For Immediate Release For Further Information Jeff Paterson Kevin Zeese (301-996-6582 cell) Bradley Manning Support Network Email address removed 1-202-640-4388 Mistreatment of Manning Criticized by Leading Law Professors & UN Torture Investigator Hundreds of Thousands Write Obama Urging End to Manning Abuse Washington, DC: The eight months of solitary confinement of Bradley Manning at Quantico has drawn national and international criticism in the last week. Support is growing for him around the world with 500,000 writing President Ob...

Anti-war groups demand end to Afghan War, demonstrate at the White House For Immediate Release Sept. 27, 2009 Contact: Pete Perry, 202-631-0974; Gael Murphy, 202-412-6700 Washington – Disappointed with President Obama’s unwillingness to significantly change course from the Bush administration in Afghanistan, and alarmed by the recent troop build-up there, national anti-war groups will be joining together October 5th in a day of nonviolent direct action, during the week the Afghanistan War begins its ninth year. The coalition includes the National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance, Code Pink, Peace Action, the Black is Back Coalition, Progressive Democrats of America, the War Resisters League, the Washington Peace Center, World Can’t Wait, Veterans for Peace, and Voices for Creative Nonviolence. Joining them will be Cindy Sheehan, the mother of Casey Sheehan, a soldier killed in Iraq in 2004. The White House action — the first such protest aimed specifically at the war in Afgh...

Dear Friends, 10/5 will be a great day and will mark a key step in the revival of the anti-war movement, post Obama-mania. Altogether we are at approximately 100 people signed up to risk arrest. As decided on the last conference call, we will have one final planning call before the Oct. 5 action. As Frida noted, we need to talk about media. Are there other specific things that people want added to the agenda? If so, please forward to me. Here is the tentative program for the rally in McPherson Square: MC Welcome and Intro (5 minutes) Poet 1 (one poem) (3 minutes) Song by Emma's Revolution (5 minutes) Poet 2 (one poem) (3 minutes) Elizabeth McAlister (10 minutes) Song by Emma's Revolution (5 minutes) Black is Back Spokesperson (10 minutes) Max Obuzsewski -Closing Remarks (5 minutes) Song by Emma's Revolution (5 minutes) I will make up the agenda and get it out along with a reminder early next week... In peace and resistance, Pete

President Barak Obama presses on with an escalation in a war he cannot win. A majority of the Afghan people view U.S. military forces as a foreign occupying force, and now a growing majority of Americans no longer support this war. The United States empire can not sustain this military occupation. The facts on the ground and a myriad of historical examples prove this. Afghanistan's history is replete with the tombstones of foreign occupiers. In the 18th centuries it was the Persians, twice. In the 19th and early 20th century it was the British, three times. In late 20th century the Soviets were thoroughly defeated in what was considered "their Vietnam." Commander-in-chief Obama tells us this is a just war, a war we must fight to avenge those those killed on September 11th. However, President Karzai in his recent campaign and subsequent re-election has indicated a desire to sit down at the negotiating table with the Taliban. Furthermore, his brother-in-law is a known opium...

Hello, You participated in the largest arrest action in U.S. Park Police history on September 26, 2005. I was with you. I was one of the 374 people of conscience acting for peace that day, including scholar Cornell West and peace mom Cindy Sheehan. As the present co-convener of the National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance, I want to invite and encourage you to join us again on the week the Afghanistan War will enter its 9th year of lost lives, lost hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars and lost direction and morality. This is a war that can not be won, yet the escalation continues. What are our troops fighting and dying for? Even President Karzai has said during his recent campaign that he wants to sit down at the negotiating table with the Taliban. It is time the war and occupation end, it is time to end indefinite detention at places like Bagram prison and begin the process of building peace and rebuilding infrastructures. Eight years ago on October 7, 2001, the U.S. and Br...

Myself and some of my dearest friends in the peace and justice movement have been working very hard on our government to acknowledge that it has engaged in torture, and that it will not tolerate it any longer. As we near the conclusion of Witness Against Torture's 100 Days Campaign, we want to acknowledge that while there have been some success there's still a lot going on in places like Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan that we don't know about. Anyhow, this recent report is promising: Senate report on prisoner abuse connects dots all the way to the top Ewen MacAskill in Washington April 24, 2009 - 12:00AM AdvertisementA HIGH-LEVEL US Senate report published yesterday directly implicates senior members of the Bush administration in the extensive use of harsh interrogation methods against al-Qaeda suspects and other prisoners around the world. The 232-page report, the most detailed investigation yet into torture by US military and intelligence personnel, undercuts the cl...

This is a positive development. As someone entirely dedicated to peace, I am extremely pleased with the direction Pres. Obama appears to be taking

By Roberto Lovato, New America Media Posted on March 3, 2009, Printed on March 3, 2009 http://www.alternet.org/story/129674/ At a time when racial conflict and discrimination are on the rise around the world, the Administration of the world's first black U.S. president will not be attending the world's most important conference on race and racism. In what may signal a dangerous new, "post-racial" approach to global race relations, President Barack Obama's Administration announced that it will not attend the second World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance in Geneva next April. According to this article in the New York Times, the Administration will boycott the conference to protest what it deems the unfair equation of Zionism with racism in the outcome documents of the first conference held in Durban, South Africa, and now the second conference, also known as "Durban II, as well." Other concerns cited by A...

Washington Post By George McGovern Thursday, January 22, 2009; As you settle into the Oval Office, Mr. President, may I offer a suggestion? Please do not try to put Afghanistan aright with the U.S. military. To send our troops out of Iraq and into Afghanistan would be a near-perfect example of going from the frying pan into the fire. There is reason to believe some of our top military commanders privately share this view. And so does a broad and growing swath of your party and your supporters. True, the United States is the world's greatest power -- but so was the British Empire a century ago when it tried to pacify the warlords and tribes of Afghanistan, only to be forced out after excruciating losses. For that matter, the Soviet Union was also a superpower when it poured some 100,000 troops into Afghanistan in 1979. They limped home, broken and defeated, a decade later, having helped pave the way for the collapse of the Soviet Union. It is logical to conclude that our massive mil...

WASHINGTON -- Witness Against Torture (www.witnesstorture.org), an organization formed from a march to Guantanamo in 2005 to protest the prison there, applauds President Barack Obama's executive orders to shut down Guantanamo and the CIA "black sites," and to end the "enhanced interrogation techniques" used by the CIA at Guantanamo and other prisons. "President Obama has taken important first steps to undo much of what was the worst Bush administration policies," said Matthew Daloisio, one of those who marched to Guantanamo. According to the Guantanamo order, "The detention facilities at Guantanamo for individuals covered by this order shall be closed as soon as practicable, and no later than one year from the date of this order." Witness Against Torture joins other human rights groups in insisting that the facility can be closed much sooner than one year. "While pleased with these developments, we are disappointed that Guantanamo will s...

By Bruce Gagnon Dandelion Salad space4peace.blogspot.com Dec. 21, 2008 Chicago teacher Jesse Sharkey writes: “In the past couple years, Arne Duncan [Obama's pick for Secretary of Education who hails from Chicago] has been turning public schools over to private operators–mainly in the form of charter and contract schools — at a rate of about 20 per year. Duncan has also resuscitated some of the worst ’school reform’ ideas of the 1990s, like firing all the teachers in low-performing schools (called ‘turnarounds’). At the same time, he’s eliminated many Local School Councils and made crucial decisions without public input.” “To me, the thing that made Duncan’s role clear came after three months of organizing at Senn High School, the community school where I teach, against the Chicago Board of Education’s proposal to install a Naval Academy.” “After an inspiring campaign that involved literally hundreds of people in the biggest education organizing effort in the area in decades, we for...

Submitted by Malachy Kilbride on Thu, 12/11/2008 - 12:50pm Next month in January the American people will joyfully celebrate the historic inauguration of President Barack Obama and the end to the criminal Bush Administration. Americans will celebrate the belief in our freedom, our vote, and the conclusion of eight years of an unaccountable regime that brought us into war and occupation on lies. We will celebrate the hope for much needed change. But how can anyone truly celebrate freedom and change when Americans know of the inhumane treatment and torture of the Guantanamo prisoners? In one month Americans will also mark the 7th year the Guantanamo Bay camp received the first prisoners into that dark, tragic, and shameful place. By now, if Americans are unaware that hundreds of men and some boys have languished in Guantanamo for years without charge, without access to lawyers, without due process or the habeas corpus rights granted to prisoners by law-abiding civilized governments the...

Our fellow DC area activist-organizers, There has been much change during the last couple years within the local peace and justice movement. The changes we have witnessed have included dissolution of the DC Anti-War Network (DAWN) as a group but not the commitment of several of its participants, there has been an increase in levels of nonviolent resistance actions, the revitalizing of the Washington Peace Center as a dynamic force in the wider DC metro community, and most recently the founding of a capacity-building coalition for future mobilizations, known as Activist Coalition of DC (ACDC). However, there is an important and vital need to share resources, creativity, and skills to unite collective energies and move beyond being only somewhat effective to being successful in our peace and social justice struggles. This needs to be our highest priority. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said that the U.S. Government was the greatest purveyor of violence in the wor...

This past weekend was the "National" Anti-War Assembly in Cleveland. It was a frustrating gathering of anti-war activists from many places across the country, but an overwhelming number were naturally from Ohio, to try and draft a plan for a mass mobilization. Most of the time was spent on specific language of their structure, specific language to be used within the movement, and ideological debates. There was a date set for Dec. 9 for regional anti-war mobilization. This decision might have been the most concrete, but the timing is obviously terrible -- wedged right in between major holidays. Here in D.C. the Washington Peace center and the new peace and social justice organizing coalition has gotten behind organizing for the inauguration. Whether it is Obama or McCain, military expenses will continue to receive the majority of our budget, and critical domestic needs will continue to suffer. However, realistically we know that the image of this mobilization will likely diffe...

The National Anti-war Assembly in Cleveland just got a little more important. I sent this out to a lot of local organizers and others in the movement late last night: This evening at our coalition organizing meeting it was revealed that UFPJ does not want to do anything for the inauguration, and will in fact will try and dissuade their member groups from doing anything on the inauguration. ANSWER may be similar; they have obtained permits, but have indicated that a lot depends on who wins the election.I was disappointed. However I was glad there was a lot of energy at our meeting and folks wanted to do something. There will be a big action(s) on January 20th! A lot of folks are afraid of doing something too close to MLK Day. The fact is we SHOULD be doing something because it is MLK Day. We need to honor King's legacy, not just a part of it -- but ALL of it. And that includes challenging militarism, and concretely working toward the beloved community he envisioned. Personally, it ...

A couple days ago the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the writ of habeas corpus, a basic legal right at the foundation of our judicial system, for those held at the Guantanamo concentration camp. Habeas corpus has been around since the 17th century; it is the right for an individual to challenge their detention. In Guantanamo, men and teenage boys have been held there for years, some for now more than six years. Some were turned over to the U.S. military by bounty hunters in Afghanistan. McCain believes this system should continue, Obama does not. This is a stark contrast between the two; one of the starkest yet during this campaign. To not respect one of the key legal rights which our Constitution was founded on is a serious flaw. Below is an article on McCain's recent blustering on this very topic. I wonder if he believes the North Vietnamese government had the right to hold him indefinitely and mistreat him. McCain blasts ruling on Guantanamo He calls decision 'one of the worst...

By Allison Kilkenny February 24, 2008 The Democrats like to cast blame for why they continually lose elections. Karl Rove's dream of a permanent Republican majority, while eventually thwarted because of Bush fatigue, was only possible because the Democrats failed to form a compelling ideology for a globalized economy. Definition through negation works in some preliminary stump speeches, but eventually voters want answers. It's not enough to be Not-Republicans. How, exactly, are Democrats different than Republicans? Spouting tired rhetoric about the New Deal and social welfare worked for a country teetering on the brink of Socialism during FDR's reign, but what now? How are the Fat Cats in the Democratic party different than the Fat Cats in the Republican wing? And Universal health care hardly seems like revolutionary thinking when the very insurance companies who have been exploiting sick Americans are invited to the negotiation table. Well, to be fair, they paid for their ...