Saturday’s rally in Brattle Square Plaza, Cambridge, MA, to end the U.S.-Saudi blockade of Yemen, began just as the morning’s rain ended and pedestrians returned to Harvard Square.
Activists held signs and gave out leaflets urging an end to U.S. support for the Saudi blockade.
As the leaflet noted, “Yemen is a Massachusetts war. Raytheon is headquartered here in Massachusetts. It makes the bombs for Saudi Arabia and it makes the jet engines for the planes that drop the bombs. Let’s do all we can to end this connection between Massachusetts and this terrible humanitarian disaster.”
Further information is available at the Raytheon Antiwar Campaign (617-354-2169), and at info@masspeaceaction.org.
Pegean says: “If you’re concerned about the situation in Yemen, let your national and state legislators know.”
In late May, Vice
President Mike Pence was the commencement speaker at West Point. In part, he
told the graduating cadets this: “It is a virtual certainty that you will
fight on a battlefield for America at some point in your life. You will
lead soldiers in combat. It will happen…And when that day comes, I know
you will move to the sound of the guns and do your duty, and you will fight,
and you will win. The American people expect nothing less.”
What
Pence didn’t mention
that day is why he
could be so sure that this will come to pass. Or who the primary beneficiaries will be, if or when it does.
Because the winners won’t be the American people, who see their taxes go to
missiles instead of healthcare and education. Nor will they be the soldiers
themselves—some of whom will return in flag-draped caskets while many more
sustain life-altering physical and psychological injuries. The winners also
won’t be the citizens of other countries who experience death and displacement
on a horrific scale from our awesome military might. And our planet’s
now-fragile climate won’t come out on top either, since the Pentagon is the
single largest oil consumer in the world.
No, the
spoils will go to our massive and multifaceted war machine. The war machine is
comprised of companies like Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, and
Raytheon, among others, that make billions of
dollars each year from war, war preparations, and arms sales. In fact, the U.S.
government pays Lockheed alone more
each year than it provides in funding to the Environmental Protection Agency,
the Labor Department, and the Interior Department combined. The war machine also includes the CEOs of these defense
contractors, who personally take in tens of millions of dollars annually, and
the many politicians in Washington who help secure their jobs by collectively
accepting millions of dollars in contributions from the defense industry—roughly
evenly split between both major
parties. And let’s not forget the retired politicians and retired military
officers, who travel the pot-of-gold pipeline to become highly paid board
members and spokespersons for these same companies.
Vice-President Pence also
didn’t mention to the cadets that the U.S. military budget today exceeds that
of the next seven largest countries combined—an enthusiastic display of
Congressional bipartisanship at its very worst. Nor did he note that we’re the
largest international seller of major weapons in the world, with ongoing
efforts to promote even bigger markets for U.S. arms companies in countries run
by ruthless, repressive autocrats. That’s how it came to pass last August, for
example, that Saudi Arabia used an expensive Lockheed laser-guided bomb to blow
up a bus in Yemen, killing 40 young boys who were on a school trip.
Given these realities, I’d like to offer my perspective—as a psychologist—on a question that has never really been more timely: How is it that the war profiteers, card-carrying members of the so-called 1%, continue to thrive despite all the harm and misery they cause for so many? We know that the 1%—the self-interested very rich and powerful—set the priorities of many of our elected officials. We also know that they exert considerable influence over the mainstream media regarding which narratives are promoted and which are obscured. But in my own work, what’s most important—and what too often goes unrecognized—are the propaganda strategies they use to prevent us from realizing what’s gone wrong, who’s to blame, and how we can make things better. And nowhere is this more apparent or more consequential than when it comes to the one-percenters who run our war machine. In my next three posts, I describe these strategies.
Originally published on Tuesday, October 23, 2018, by Common Dreams
As a foreign policy crisis explodes over the apparent Saudi assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul, the failure of the U.S. Congress to assert its constitutional war powers over three years of illegal U.S. military action in the war on Yemen and booming U.S. arms sales to Saudi Arabia and its coalition partners is finally coming home to roost.
The UN already reported two years ago that a child was dying every 10 minutes in Yemen, wracked by the war and its consequences, including malnutrition, diphtheria, cholera and other preventable diseases. Data already showed that more than a third of Saudi-led airstrikes were hitting schools, hospitals, markets, mosques and other civilian sites. But none of the dire warnings by UN agencies and NGOs could trigger the constitutionally required debate and decisive action by the U.S. Congress. Even now the Trump administration is trying desperately to salvage its blood-soaked arms sales to Saudi Arabia.
Yet as early voting gets under way across the country, Congressional campaigns have focused mainly on domestic issues and personality politics, with almost nothing to say about the war in Yemen or other critical questions of war, peace and record military spending.
The elephant in the room that none of them want to discuss is that Congress keeps handing more than 60% of discretionary federal funds over to a military industrial complex whose recent wars have only succeeded in plunging half a dozen countries into intractable violence and chaos, leaving vital domestic priorities permanently underfunded.
To fill this dangerous vacuum and help voters make critical decisions at the voting booth, the CODEPINK 2018 Peace Voter’s Guide and Divestment Record has gathered data on arms industry campaign contributions from Open Secrets and the peace voting records of every Member of Congress from Peace Action, and published them all in one place for easy reference.
We invite voters to check out the Peace Voter’s Guide to see where your Senators and Representatives stand on critical issues of war and peace. How much money have your representatives collected from the arms industry in this election cycle? How have they voted on critical bills and amendments for war, peace, weapons and military spending during their time in Congress?
You can use the Guide to compare your representatives with their colleagues. You can check out the differences between Democrats and Republicans, and see who are the real hawks and doves in each party.
Figures show that arms companies, including their PACS, have contributed about equally to Democrats and Republicans in the Senate in this election cycle, giving an average of over $180,000 to each Senator. In the House, however, they have given more to Republicans (an average of $46,000 each) than to Democrats ($31,000 each).
The Senators who are most indebted to the arms industry tend to be high-ranking members of committees key to Pentagon funding. In 2017-18, the senator receiving the most weapons industry contributions, $969,550, was Richard Shelby (R-AL). Shelby chairs the powerful Appropriations Committee, the committee that allocates funding for all federal agencies.
The number one recipient on the Democratic side, with $675,8287 in contributions, is Jack Reed (D-RI), ranking member at the Armed Services Committee. Other major recipients, all on key committees, are Tim Kaine (D-VA) with $607,850; Dick Durbin (D-IL) with $550,161; James Inhofe (R-OK) with $478,249; Lindsey Graham (R-SC) with $458,893; Mark Warner (D-VA) with $399,928; and Bill Nelson (D-FL) with $391,800. The arms industry’s most favored House Reps are Armed Services Chair Mac Thornberry (R-TX-13), with $402,250; Appropriations Committee member Kay Granger (R-TX-12) with $368,410 and another Appropriations member Peter Visclosky (D-IN-1) with $328,583.
When it comes to critical votes on war, peace and militarism, the differences between Democrats and Republicans are more stark. In lifetime voting records tabulated by Peace Action, the average House Democrat has a 72% peace voting record, while the average House Republican scores only 10%. In the Senate, the difference is 69% to 14%.
There are noteworthy outliers, like Rep. Justin Amash (R-MI-3) with an 82% peace voting record and Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-CA-31) at only 18%. In the Senate, Republican Rand Paul (KY) has a better voting record (62%) than Democrat Joe Donnelly of Indiana (16%), although even Rand Paul would be below-average if he was a Democrat.
And then there are real champions for peace and disarmament in Congress: 16 Democrats and 10 Republicans in the House who have run this year’s campaigns with no arms industry cash at all; and progressive leaders who stand up to vote for peace at almost every chance they get, like Barbara Lee (CA-13), with a 99% lifetime peace voting record, Katherine Clark (MA-5) at 98%, Jared Huffman (CA-2), Mark DeSaulnier (CA-11) and Earl Blumenauer (OR-3) at 96%, and Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin with the highest score in the Senate at 94%.
At the other end of the scale, there are 22 Members of Congress (all Republicans) with a 0% peace voting record, meaning that they have never once voted as requested by members of Peace Action, CODEPINK and our partners in the U.S. peace community. They are Senator Tom Cotton (AR) and Representatives McSally (AZ-2), Walters (CA-45), Curbelo (FL-26), Carter (GA-1), Allen (GA-12), Bost (IL-12), LaHood (IL-18), Brooks (IN-5), Poliquin (ME-2), Bishop (MI-8), Emmer (MN-6), Stefanik (NY-21), Katko (NY-24), Rouzer (NC-7), Russell (OK-5), Costello (PA-6), Ratcliffe (TX-4), Hurd (TX-23), Brat (VA-7), Comstock (VA-10) and Newhouse (WA-4).
We invite you to explore the CODEPINK 2018 Peace Voter’s Guide and Divestment Record before you vote. We hope it will help you to find incumbents or challengers where you live whose campaigns are not tainted by big contributions from the arms industry, and whom you can count on to reflect your values by casting decisive votes for peace, diplomacy and disarmament in the coming years. Please vote wisely. Millions of lives depend on it.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.
9/11 Memorial logo. Author: National September 11 Memorial & Museum. In the public domain.
Monday, September 11, 2017
By Barbara Kidney
The Continuing Horror of 9/11
Sixteen years later, and tragically, the horrific legacy of 9/11 lives on. Manhattan is my home town. My Mom, like her own Mom, had been born in Manhattan. My Dad (the the Irish-American Brooklynite) worked on Maiden Lane, in lower Manhattan. He had been retired for many years at the time of 9/11, and I had left even more years ago.
At the time of the 9/11 attack, I was living in the Hudson Valley, with friends & neighbors working in Manhattan, including possibly my own husband, working as courier driver. Eventually I found out that no one close to me had died in the attack, but the brother of an acquaintance (the brother had been a Manhattan chef) was killed, and the young adult son of a lovely, typically cheerful friend of mine, on his way to visit his fiancé across the country, was on board one of the planes that hit the towers.
People caught in the attack, NYC Transit workers, police, firefighters, EMT and other emergency personnel, exerted heroic efforts to prevent further deaths and to otherwise respond to the tragedy. As a native of NYC, I certainly was not at all surprised to hear of the various stories of sudden heroism by ordinary New Yorkers, who typically rise to such occasions with down-to-earth decency, humble and amazing courage, and competence. Many of these have had their lives impeded and shortened by harm to their health, from the asbestos and toxins they breathed in, from the lack of protective equipment, and from our nation’s unique failure to provide adequate healthcare to all but the wealthy and the electeds.
And, I am proud to say, like so many of my fellow New Yorkers, including those who lost loved ones in the attack, the very last thing I wanted to have happen after 9/11 was for more civilians to be violently attacked and killed. The last thing we wanted to have happen is for normal humans doing normal activities – people caring for their babies, caring for each other, caring for their pets, going to their jobs, taking their kids to school, growing crops (and flowers), creating art, healing the sick, making music, pursuing scientific enquiry, falling in love- the last thing we wanted after that hellish day, was to have some Americans choose to continue the work of the devil, and go around bombing people, who are just trying to live their lives in their own communities.
However, the very thing we most abhor, the killing of other humans, just trying to live their own human lives, was what those Americans with the most decision-making power chose to do. After arranging for Bin Laden’s family in the U.S to be flown safely out of the US without questioning right after 9/11, W. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Rice, chose to violently kill, maim, torture Afghanis and Iraqis.
Had the governments of Afghanistan or Iraq declared war on us or even attacked us? No, they had not. Which country, besides possibly our own, was most responsible, for 9/11? Our dear friend, Saudi Arabia, to whom we give billions of US tax money for their weapons of terrorism – W. Bush, Obama, Trump…one thing these presidents all have in common is that. Many self-identified liberals and progressives opposed the invasion of Iraq during the W. Bush years, but then supported the US war on the Middle East during the Obama years.
According to well-respected human rights institutions such as Amnesty International, Reprieve, and Human Rights Watch, US military violence in the Middle East has killed hundreds of thousands of civilians, displaced millions, and under Obama, sneak drone murders of civilians in several countries has increased about tenfold compared to W., resulting in thousands of civilians being murdered, and Trump continues the dronings. I use the word “murders” advisedly – bombing people with drones operated across the world, and then bombing the first-responders who come to render aid to the victims, is officially a crime according to international courts of justice, as well to anyone with the least exacting of moral compasses.
US presidents have much decision-making power, but it takes the many to empower their decisions. So many ways to enable US military terrorism. Even though US wars and other military actions have been unjust and often illegal according to international standards, join the military or the National Guard, encourage young people to do so, and thank military members for their service (to Commanders-in-Chief with track records of violently sociopathic policy decisions).
Repeat the malarkey that the US military defends our freedoms (no, we do not have the freedom to kill people in other countries. Are they invading us? No, we are invading them. Are they threatening our Bill of Rights? No, we are doing that to ourselves, with, for example, the “Patriot” Acts, NSA, and Border Patrol allowed to do whatever they want to whomever they want, whenever). Repeat the malarkey that US military are all heroes. Keep silent when others mouth the malarkey. Never speak up about the blatant immorality of US declared and undeclared wars and the drone murders. Never join or support a peace group. Call violence “patriotic” and call failure to support mass murder “unpatriotic,” call those who try to protect their communities against US military violence “insurgents” like that’s a bad thing (hey, remember 1776 – who were the insurgents then?). And when you hear others speak this way, be sure to remain silent. Never write a letter to the editor against US military decisions, never contact your electeds to protest US military actions.
Because fact is, those who can decide to initiate violent militaristic activities, would be utterly helpless to enact them, if it weren’t for all the myriad enablers making all those atrocities possible.
Special acknowledgement to all who remain silent about all that- the ongoing hellish legacy of 9/11 would be impossible without you. So, about three thousand people killed on 9/11/01, and since then, via military actions, the US has killed or otherwise adversely impacted well over a million people, who had, incidentally, nothing to do with 9/11.
To those who did have something to do with 9/11, we continue to give heaps of our tax money and weapons. Can we stop yet? Can we stop the hellish legacy of 9/11? A reminder – in sharp contrast to the Democratic Party, as well as to the Republican Party, the Green Party accepts no corporate (think arms and drone manufacturers) funding, and the official political platform of the Green Party clearly supports peace. Thou shalt not kill. Is this really such a hard directive to follow? What will you do?
Barbara Kidney, Ph.D., a counseling psychologist in private practice, resides in the Hudson Valley of NYS and does what she can to promote the welfare of Earth and Earthlings. She is a member of American Psychological Association’s Division 48, the Society for the Study of Peace, Conflict, and Violence, and a founding member of Hudson Valley Green Party and of the Drone Alert – Hudson Valley project 2012 – 2015.
9/11 Memorial logo. Author: National September 11 Memorial & Museum. In the public domain.