US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation
BACKGROUND: Israel is using weapons supplied by the United States to target Palestinian & Lebanese civilians and civilian infrastructure in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon in violation of the US Arms Export Control Act and the Geneva Conventions.

* On July 12th, Israel killed 23 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip with missiles fired from aircraft and shells fired from tanks. Israel killed 9 members of one family in a missile strike on a house near Gaza City.

* On July 12th, Israel launched a massive invasion of Lebanon. Israeli aircraft fired missiles targeting civilian infrastructure, including bridges, roads, a mosque, a community center, and the Beirut International Airport, and the Israeli navy is blockading Lebanon's ports. Israel has killed at least 50 Lebanese civilians and injured more than 100, including entire Lebanese families of 10 and 7 people killed in the villages of Dweir and Baflay.

- Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad
Euripides (480-406 BC)

Perhaps Euripides had it right.  How else to describe the strange apathy over the daily threat posed by nuclear weapons? In a recent article entitled “Apocalypse Now,” former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara states: “We are at a critical moment in history” with the main concern on nuclear weapons and proliferation of states possessing these weapons.  And still there is little concern expressed by the general public.  This situation is remindful of Hurricane Katrina.  The warnings were clear that it was only a matter of time before a killer Hurricane of Katrina’s magnitude would strike New Orleans, and yet the action required to withstand such a storm was not taken.  

It’s the same dreadful situation with nuclear weapons.  Unless there is a dramatic change in the present course of events, it is only a matter of time until a missile strike carrying nuclear weapons occurs somewhere in the world.  Moreover, such a cataclysmic event could soon spiral out of control, leading to a nuclear tsunami that could envelop much of the world.

Remarks at Democracy Fest, San Diego, July 15, 2006

More than any other weapons system, the chief products of the military industrial complex are lies.  We just learned this week that Congress was cracking down on corruption by denying another contract to Halliburton.  In reality, Halliburton has completed its main task of building five permanent bases and doesn't care as much about more contracts for services for soldiers.  And, in fact, last month the Senate rejected, nearly along party lines, a bill to create honest contracting and impose penalties for fraud of the sort almost openly engaged in by Halliburton.

Lies and secrets are what the military industrial media complex sells us.  We say the phrase "military industrial complex," but the lies that it hides behind permeate our thinking and dominate the politics of both major parties.  Some of these lies are:

Being tough and hungry for war makes us safer.

The wars we wage have something to do with defense.

The wars we wage are fought for reasons related to foreign threats or international relations.

We wage our wars reluctantly.

"The question that remains is: Are we who want the killing to stop as committed to peace as those who are committed to war?"

Ouch, this is a devilishly tough question, unless you're content to answer it in the negative. Then, of course, no problem. A bitter grimace and a stiff drink or whatever (name your poison) will get you through the day. Watch the opinion polls plummet - Gallup this week finds two-thirds of Americans opposed to the war in Iraq - and shrug in wonder that it doesn't seem to matter, but exercise patience. When three-quarters of Americans oppose the war, then the politicians - surely the Democrats at least, surely Hillary - will lip-sync a different tune . . .

Or you can scream.

One recent e-mail correspondent, after reciting the familiar litany of insanity about this war, from the lies to the slaughter to the cynicism, signed off her letter: "Wounded to the soul."

Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline isn’t a household name yet, but he may be soon. In recent months Mr. Kline has shown that he is the type of judicial nominee that President Bush is looking for. Mr. Kline has that most valuable of assets that right-wing Republicans require of a nominee: a “conservative judicial philosophy.” In recent months he has sought to deny poor women of the right to an abortion, despite federal law to the contrary. And he supported handing out a much harsher sentence to a gay teenager who engaged in consensual sex than to heterosexual adolescents.

In August Mr. Kline filed a lawsuit against Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius. The lawsuit alleges that by using Medicaid funds to provide abortions the state is depriving citizens, to include fetuses, of the right to life without due process of law. In his civil suit Mr. Kline defined conception as the beginning of life in order to bolster the argument that abortion violates an individual’s right to life. The suit claims that, “At the very moment of fertilization, a new, unique and genetically distinct human being is formed, distinct from its host while dependent upon her.”