Veterans for Peace began in 1985 as an opposition group to Reagan’s wars in Central America. Now, veterans from wars in Korean, Vietnam, Panama, Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia, the Persian Gulf and others are mobilizing and taking a stance against all American wars.
The organization’s main objectives include exposing true costs of war, building a culture that supports peace and helping veterans heal from their participation in imperialist wars. They also work to disperse the tremendous amount of civilian lives that were lost during American occupations:
- Every single person would be dead in the former cities of Atlanta, Denver, Boston, Seattle, Milwaukee, Ft. Worth, Baltimore, San Francisco, Dallas and Philadelphia,.
- Every single person would be wounded in Vermont, Delaware, Hawaii, Idaho, Nebraska, Nevada, Kansas, Mississippi, Iowa, Oregon, Colorado and South Carolina,.
- The entire populations of Ohio and New Jersey would be homeless, surviving with friends, relatives or under bridges as they can.
- The entire populations of Michigan, Indiana and Kentucky would have fled either to Canada or Mexico.
- In one year, 3,000 doctors would be kidnapped and800killed. (In short, there would be nobody available “out there” to come and save us.)
(Source: thepeoplesrecord)
(Source: johnnydib, via arielnietzsche)
Forever reblog.
(via stfuhatemongers)
“Anyone who’s ever run a business knows that hiring more people is a capitalist’s course of last resort, something we do only when increasing customer demand requires it. In this sense, calling ourselves job creators isn’t just inaccurate, it’s disingenuous.” —
Nick Hanauer, a venture capitalist from Seattle, whose speech at the TED University conference was deemed “too politically controversial to post on their web site.” Last night, NJ produced the full slideshow to accompany the full text of the speech. Here they are:
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/05/here-is-the-full-inequality-speech-and-slideshow-that-was-too-hot-for-ted/257323/
(via kirklandfruits)
Successful eviction defense of the Cruz family home in South Minneapolis. May 23rd, 2012.
For almost a month, the local Occupy Homes movement has maintained a presence in a foreclosed home in South Minneapolis. The house belongs to the Cruz family who are staying elsewhere since receiving their eviction notice. With the consent of the Cruz family, Occupy Homes has been using the house as a local social center while occupying the home and protesting an impending eviction.
On May 23rd, 5-6 sheriff’s deputies arrived at the house to carry out the eviction of the home. The deputies knocked down the back door and entered the home to find 5 people. Three of the people left peacefully, but two of them locked themselves together while straddling a window that led to a second story porch. While the deputies attempted to remove the remaining protesters, Occupy Homes alerted their network of supporters and soon there were over 50 people at the home. Some protesters blocked the street in both directions to raise awareness of the eviction, while others encircled the home, holding hands and banners to show support.
The deputies eventually gave up trying to remove the remaining protesters inside the home and left. Even more people locked themselves to the home in case more police officers were on their way. Eventually the Minneapolis Police Department came to deal with the blocked traffic, but then made an agreement with the protesters. The police officers stated that they were not there for the eviction and that they would leave if the protesters stopped blocking traffic.
With all law enforcement gone, Occupy Homes declared the defense a success and continued on with the occupation of the home.
(via arielnietzsche)
[video]
I just really need a hug lately.
rain
I really love impressionism.
Speaking of the devil (irony intended)(Also trigger warning for rape).
A senior Vatican cleric has defended the Catholic Church’s decision to excommunicate the mother and doctors of a nine-year-old rape victim who had a life-saving abortion in Brazil.
Cardinal Giovanni Batista Re, who heads the Pontifical Commission for Latin America, told reporters that although the girl fell pregnant after apparently being abused by her stepfather, her twins had, “the right to live, and could not be eliminated”.
The Church has not taken formal steps against the stepfather, who is in custody. Jose Cardoso Sobrinho, the conservative regional archbishop for Pernambuco where the girl was rushed to hospital, has said that the man would not be thrown out of the Church, because although he had allegedly committed “a heinous crime”, the Church took the view that “the abortion, the elimination of an innocent life, was more serious”.
This completely reinforces everything I said in that last post. Somehow, by some depraved logic, the reproductive choices of a rape victim are more reprehensible than that of someone who repeatedly raped their step-child. A child choosing not to have a child, according to the Vatican, is more a violation of Catholic values than raping a child.
After reading this, if you think the Church’s forced-birth position is really, completely, in the interest of life, you’re taking something strong and you should do your best to stay hydrated. The thing is, the Catholic President was even like “are you serious? This is stupid.” I truly believe that this position is built on the reactionary and socially repressive nature of the church itself - not of faith itself. That’s just me, though.
They should be excommunicating war criminals and rapists, not women - especially children - making choices for themselves about their own body.
This article is a few years old, but it says so much.
Did I ever tell you about the plaque at my cousin/aunt/grandmother’s church? It’s the Mother Theresa quote: “I feel that the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion.” It throws me into a rage every time I have to see it. If I were to vandalize one piece of church property, that plaque would be it.
I mean, regardless of your position on abortion…the greatest destroyer? Really? The fucking greatest destroyer? Not war? Not imperialism? Not colonialism? Not racism? Not sexism? Not homophobia, but fucking abortion?
People actually believe that, with endless wars, with zionist occupations, with capitalist imperialism and neo-colonialism, abortion is the “greatest destroyer” of peace? Fucking abortion?
Don’t expect this post to say anything new or thought provoking, I’m just bitching. But seriously. It has always pissed me off that the church rationalizes it’s forced-birther position with a supposed interest in “life.”
If you gave a shit about life, you’d be concerned with war; you’d be concerned with imperialism and neo-colonialism. You’d be concerned with malnutrition, hate crimes, and the number of people who die from lack of access to health care. Narrow all that down - I mean, really, logically think about it - and all you have left is the desire to police people’s reproductive choices. That’s it. Nothing else.
You know I used to, as a Roman Catholic of sorts, be pro-life? It’s actually the church that drove me to be pro-choice. It was realizing this about the church’s “pro-life” position that made me re-think the whole issue.
And you know what’s fucked up? I saw a survey recently that showed that the majority of Catholics only vote republican because of the abortion thing. Think about that, just for a minute. It speaks volumes. Doesn’t that say just everything about the disconnect between the logical, social justice-oriented, conclusions of Christ’s teachings and the extremely reactionary and regressive role that religious institutions have always taken?
Fuck. That plaque deserves nothing less than a crowbar to the face for everything it represents.
(Source: wholockian-fettish)
“In Venezuela Chavez has made the co-ops a top political priority, giving them first refusal on government contracts and offering them economic incentives to trade with one another. By 2006, there were roughly 100,000 co-operatives in the country, employing more than 700,000 workers. Many are pieces of state infrastructure – toll booths, highway maintenance, health clinics – handed over to the communities to run. It’s a reverse of the logic of government outsourcing – rather than auctioning off pieces of the state to large corporations and losing democratic control, the people who use the resources are given the power to manage them, creating, at least in theory, both jobs and more responsive public services. Chavez’s many critics have derided these initiatives as handouts and unfair subsidies, of course. Yet in an era when Halliburton treats the U.S. government as its personal ATM for six years, withdraws upward of $20 billion in Iraq contracts alone, refuses to hire local workers either on the Gulf coast or in Iraq, then expresses its gratitude to U.S. taxpayers by moving its corporate headquarters to Dubai (with all the attendant tax and legal benefits), Chavez’s direct subsidies to regular people look significantly less radical.” — Naomi Klein (via fyeahnoamchomsky)
(via hobbit-hero)
![[Tom Morello and the National Nurses United] gathered at Daley Plaza on a sun-filled afternoon to note the problems caused by the one percent, and to highlight the fight against austerity measures hurting families worldwide.
The nurses assembled, wearing green ‘Robin Hood’ caps to show their support of the Robin Hood tax, a proposed taxing of Wall Street transactions, which would generate hundreds of billions of dollars and give the U.S. economy a major boost. NNU speakers also spoke out against the NATO summit, which took place here in the Windy City this weekend, and a comedic skit was also performed, in which ‘Robin Hood and the nurses’ scoured the trees for the G8 world leaders, who ‘decided to run off into the woods of Maryland’ due to the public outcry they faced by Chicagoans. [READ MORE]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m4he10xAxp1qcbkjro1_500.jpg)
[Tom Morello and the National Nurses United] gathered at Daley Plaza on a sun-filled afternoon to note the problems caused by the one percent, and to highlight the fight against austerity measures hurting families worldwide.
The nurses assembled, wearing green ‘Robin Hood’ caps to show their support of the Robin Hood tax, a proposed taxing of Wall Street transactions, which would generate hundreds of billions of dollars and give the U.S. economy a major boost. NNU speakers also spoke out against the NATO summit, which took place here in the Windy City this weekend, and a comedic skit was also performed, in which ‘Robin Hood and the nurses’ scoured the trees for the G8 world leaders, who ‘decided to run off into the woods of Maryland’ due to the public outcry they faced by Chicagoans. [READ MORE]
Romney’s Economic Plan Would Throw 13 Million People Off Of Food Stamps
You ever have a dream involving somebody, in which that person acts nothing like the person they actually are, and the first few hours of being awake are spent reconciling the dream version of this person with the real version, separating traits that are theirs from traits that are fictional?