The bravest man I ever met

Last December, 2000 Americans gathered at New York's Hotel Astor to celebrate the 80th birthday of Norman Thomas. I could not be present because I had to go to Oslo to accept the Nobel Peace Prize. But before I enplaned for Norway, I taped the following message to be sent to America's foremost Socialist:

"I can think of no man who has done more than you to inspire the vision of a society free of injustice and exploitation. While some would adjust to the status quo, you urged struggle. While some would corrupt struggle with violence or undemocratic perversions, you have stood firmly for the integrity of ends and means. Your example has ennobled and dignified the fight for freedom, and all that we hear of the Great Society seems only an echo of your prophetic eloquence. Your pursuit of racial and economic democracy at home, and of sanity and peace in the world, has been awesome in scope. It is with deep admiration and indebtedness that I carry the inspiration of your life to Oslo."

Help the Columbus Coalition for Responsive Government reform Columbus City Council

The Columbus Coalition for Responsive Government is putting on the ballot a voter initiative to reform the Charter of the City of Columbus, to create a more responsive and more accountable Columbus City Council that consists of 4 members elected "at-large" in city-wide elections, and 7 members elected by the residents of each of 7 neighborhood-based Districts.

The Columbus Coalition for Responsive Government (“the Columbus Coalition”) is a time-limited gathering of Columbus citizens seeking to update the Charter of the City of Columbus. We seek to allow voters to adopt the contemporary governance model used by most large cities, to provide for better representation of our distinctive neighborhoods in Columbus City Council.

Columbus Coalition for Responsive Government is a non-partisan organization, and a local ballot issue committee. We are Liberals and Conservatives, Rich and Poor, Black and White and every color in between, and all ethnicities. In short: we are Columbus. We help to facilitate the voices of the citizens of the great city of Columbus.

Summary of What We Seek to Accomplish

Video by Occupy the Oval

An Occupy video by OSU students
Video

Before the beginning: Raven, that Lying Little Bastard

"If I had a machine gun, I'd kill every one of them white sons of bitches." Makarka didn't say, "white." He used the unkind Alutiiq phrase, isuwiq-something, bleached seal.

As a bleached seal myself, I couldn't blame him, not if you saw what I saw, the documents that British Petroleum buried deep as they could.

In my investigation of the blow-out on BP's Deepwater Horizon oil rig, I knew key evidence could only be found in the files in the hands of the Chugach Natives of Alaska. The story involved the usual mix of big oil, suicide, murder, rock and roll, and fish. Whatever, I had to get from Asia to Alaska. To understand the full story, how America went, in two centuries, from British colony to British Petroleum colony we have to go way back to ...

Raven, that lying little bastard, came to Chenega Island, where the people slept and slept because there was only darkness. From His kayak, Raven gave them a box filled with Daylight, and in return, He demanded and they gave Him a wife, Qaleratalik, "Weasel in a Summer Dress." He fed Qaleratalik only moss from His beak, which she could not eat.

Shaman slaughter in Peru

The Peruvian government is sending a team of officials to a remote region of the Amazon jungle to investigate the deaths of 14 shamans who were killed in a string of brutal murders.

The traditional healers, all from the Shawi ethnic group, were murdered in separate incidents over the last 20 months, allegedly at the behest of a local mayor.

No arrests have been made over the deaths, which took place in and around Balsapuerto, a small river port in Peru's vast Amazon region on its northern border with Ecuador, Colombia and Brazil.

The prime suspects, however, in the disappearance of one victim and the murder of another are the mayor of Balsapuerto, Alfredo Torres and his brother Augusto.

The two men were named in a report from the public prosecutor's office in the nearest town of Yurimaguas, which said seven of the victims had been shot, stabbed or hacked to death with machetes. Local people identified all of them as curanderos or native healers, said the vice-minister of intercultural affairs, Vicente Otta.

I'm thankful for Occupy

I'm thankful that a growing number of us reject the idea of a mysterious being to which we should be thankful, and for the concomitant growing assumption of responsibility for our own fate.

I'm thankful that there are so many people doing so many things for which I am thankful.

I'm thankful for the best family I can imagine. Scratch that. I'm thankful for a better family than I could merely imagine.

I'm thankful too for better employers than I could merely imagine.

I'm thankful that so many other people have families and friends and allies and bosses and colleagues that facilitate work that benefits us all.

I'm thankful to those who are alone and find the strength to push on productively.

I'm thankful that when friends and allies disagree they can reconcile.

I'm thankful that when activists burn out they can revive.

Our future depends on stopping an attack on Iran

The global Occupy Movement has come to life just in time.

War is the health of the corporate state. The 1% needs its endless cash flow to stay in power.

As the slaughters in Iraq and Afghanistan transform into something less visible, the 1% war machine must have a new profit center. The pretext for this latest war is the spectre of a nuclear-armed Iran. It's a tawdry re-run of the lies George W. Bush used to sell the 2003 attack on Iraq. It's no surprise those "Weapons of Mass Destruction" were never found---or that Bush could later joke about it.

The hypocrisy of the 1% railing against bombs allegedly flowing from Iran's "Peaceful Atom" program comes in unholy tandem with the corporate push for a "nuclear renaissance" peddling these same reactors all over the world. (It helps to remember that the nuclear industry once tried to sell 36 "peaceful" reactors to the Shah).

STOPPING THE ATTACK ON IRAN IS ABSOLUTELY VITAL TO OUR HOPES FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE AND DEMOCRACY. THE OCCUPY MOVEMENT HOLDS THE KEY.

Occupy Crackdown: PCJF and NLG Demand Records of Federal Involvemen

The Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF) and the National Lawyers Guild Mass Defense Committee filed Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests today with the Department of Justice, Department of Homeland Security, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the National Park Service (NPS) requesting that the agencies release information that they possess related to the involvement of federal agencies in the planning of a coordinated law enforcement crackdown that has taken places in multiple cities against the Occupy Movement in recent days and weeks.

The FOIA to the various federal law enforcement agencies states: “This request specifically encompasses disclosure of any documents or information pertaining to federal coordination of, or advice or consultation regarding, the police response to the Occupy movement, protests or encampments.”

Sanity in exile

Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran . . .
Or as Mitt Romney put it, playing the irresponsible-lunatic game convincingly enough to become the leading Republican presidential candidate: "If we re-elect Barack Obama, Iran will have a nuclear weapon."

The consensus congeals: Our next war must be with Iran. A report issued by the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency, which the New York Times called "chillingly comprehensive" (though this is debatable), stoked this long-simmering agenda. It charges that Iran has conducted secret experiments on nuclear triggers and created computer models of nuclear explosions, among other things, which proves that the nation, despite its leaders' protestations to the contrary, is pursuing . . . oh God, oh God . . . a nuclear weapons program.

Top 5 reasons Dick Cheney won't speak in Charlottesville VA this week

Number 5. When John Yoo came here, he got a good rowdy rule-of-law unwelcome, which no doubt made the Miller Center hesitate to promise Cheney a room free of decent human beings.

Number 4. Our brothers and sisters in San Francisco confronted Cheney with his crimes last week.

Number 3. It's a heck of a lot of crimes.

Number 2. Cheney just might have found himself face-to-face with a set of handcuffs.

And the Number 1 reason Cheney won't be seen at the University of Virginia this week: The first part of a Chicken Hawk is the chicken.

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David Swanson is the author of "When the World Outlawed War," "War Is A Lie" and "Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union." He blogs at David Swanson and War is a Crime and works for the online activist organization Roots Action

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