Jobs Not Wars

By popular demand in response to a lengthy blog on war-to-peace economic conversion, here's the attention-span-adjusted introductory version.

Our main industry is weapons. The U.S. is far and away the world's leading exporter of weapons. We fight wars with and against weapons we've produced. Our largest public expense, eating up over half of every tax dollar, is also weapons and wars -- including wars in which we fund both sides, as in Afghanistan where our payoffs are the largest source of income for the Taliban.

In addition to all the non-economic negative consequences of our wars, wars drain our economy. Even domestic spending on the military machine hurts the economy in that it drains public resources that could have produced many more jobs and better paying jobs if invested elsewhere.

By David Swanson

On Tuesday evening, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill already passed by the Senate that funds a $33 billion, 30,000-troop escalation in Afghanistan. The vote was 308 to 114. What could the good news possibly be?

By David Swanson

The late Howard Zinn's new book "The Bomb" is a brilliant little dissection of some of the central myths of our militarized society.  Those who've read "A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA's Secret Cold War Experiments," by H.P. Albarelli Jr. know that this is a year for publishing the stories of horrible things that the United States has done to French towns.  In that case, Albarelli, describes the CIA administering LSD to an entire town, with deadly results.  In "The Bomb," Zinn describes the U.S. military making its first use of napalm by dropping it all over another French town, burning anyone and anything it touched.  Zinn was in one of the planes, taking part in this horrendous crime.

By David Swanson

The Democratic leadership in the House had to resort to an unusual and underhanded tactic to pass war funding Thursday night.

Tonight the House of Representatives will try to vote over $30 Billion to escalate the war in Afganistan.  Here's how it's expected to go down (thanks to Peace Action for some of this):

First they'll vote on unemployment insurance as a stand-alone bill.

Then, following some unrelated votes, they'll debate and vote on the Rule for the Supplemental.  Rules are procedural votes that caucuses of congress members serious about blocking something can vote against.  Progressives don't tend to be serious, but there's a first time for everything, and we should ask them to vote No on the Rule.  A small group of Blue Dogs and Progressives is urging this.