WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS #61

 WAR WATCH WEDNESDAYS #61

By Dick Bennett February 16, 2022

Veterans for Peace: Diplomacy, Not War

Ackerman and Merriman, Civil Resistance, Nonviolence v. Tyranny

The Nation Magazine against Violence, War

VETERANS FOR PEACE, 2-9-21

Diplomacy, Not War! End the U.S. Role in Escalating the Ukraine Crisis

With the escalating crisis on the border of Ukraine, many chapters gathered in impromptu demonstrations to call on the U.S. government to use diplomacy, not war, and to back down from any military engagements with Russia. You can see the full list of chapters that took action in our Photo Album!

Tune in!

Feb 11 - VFP Nuclear Abolition Working Group meeting with guest Ray McGovern speaking on "Why Is Putin So Feisty on Ukraine?" at 6 pm Eastern, 3 pm Pacific. Zoom link

Take Action!

Call your House Member on the Capitol Hill Switchboard (202) 224-3121

For sample language, check out this letter from VFP Chapter 102 in Milwaukee to Members of Congress!

• Or use this script: " Please vote NO on S.3488 or H.R. 6470 to send $500 million more in weapons to Ukraine. We want negotiations, not escalation of the conflict with Russia. There is no military solution, only a diplomatic one. Thank you."

The Checklist to End Tyranny: How Dissidents Will Win 21st Century Civil Resistance Campaigns by Peter Ackerman and Hardy Merriman. International Center on Nonviolent Conflict, 2021. 150pp.

Publisher’s Overview -

Today the deadliest conflicts are not between states but rather within them, pitting tyrants against the populations they oppress. Over a century of data shows that civil resistance campaigns-employing strikes, boycotts, mass protests, and many other nonviolent tactics-are the most powerful means for societies to confront authoritarians. The Checklist to End Tyranny is dedicated to enabling dissidents to become more strategic in their thinking and therefore more skillful in their quest to achieve democracy and human rights. This volume is also a unique resource in helping professionals in the foreign policy and democracy promotion communities to understand at a granular level what it takes for pro-democracy activists to end the dictatorships they are living under. The stakes could not be higher. If the world is to have a Fourth Democratic Wave expanding freedom over oppression, then civil resistance campaigns will lead the way.

Customer Reviews

The Nation Magazine’s major force as an anti-war magazine was in high gear in its Sept. 20/27, 2021 number. Dick.

Cover: On a large bloodstain, in large letters: “20 Years of Bloodshed and Delusion,” the motif of the number repeated throughout. Followed by: “Six wars, millions killed, trillions wasted, and a plague of suffering inflicted on Muslims around the world.”

p. 4, Editorial, “Repeal the AUMF Now.” A history lesson and appeal to end the open-ended 2002 War Powers Resolution.

5, “Letter from Kabul.” A journalist’s account of the last few days of the occupation which embodied the “failures of the past 20 years of foreign intervention.”

7, Jeet Heer, “Cheerleaders of the Forever Wars,” a scathing denunciation of the journalists who supported the War OF Terror.

11, Aida Chavez, “Barbara Lee Has to Vote, “ on her lone vote in House and Senate in 2001 against the resolution to give President George W. Bush sweeping authorization to use military force in Afghanistan.

13, Photo, David Bacon, “No War in Our Name,” the tens of thousands of US citizens who protested the invasion of Afghanistan and the harassment of Muslims in the US.

13, Jarod Facundo, “By the Numbers,” statistics on the US “War on Terror. “

14-17, Tariq Ali, “The Foreign Master’s Rage,” illustration repeating Cover, Ali excoriates “war criminal Donald Rumsfeld,” President Bush, and all his top administration including Condoleeza. In one way she is the worst of the lot for turning her major criminality into a lucrative lecture circuit, charging the UAF $170,000. The Iraq War “has been a huge political and military and [and moral] catastrophe for the US and its NATO camp followers.” Ali is the author of many books, including The Forty Year War in Afghanistan.

18-19, Neta Crawford, ‘The Numbers”: the costs, the death toll, the price of war, the war chest, the peaks of war spending.

20-23, 27, Mustafa Bayoumi, “The Making of the ‘Muslim American.’” “After 9-11, Muslims in America stopped being a religious group and became a targeted, racialized minority.”

24-27, Andrew Cockburn, “Why America Goes to War.” “Mondey drives the US military machine.” Adapted from The Spoils of War by Cockburn, Verso, 2021.

28-31, Clair McDougall, “Gitmo’s Forgotten Ex-Detaineees.”

32-36, Samuel Moyn, “The Terror of War,” rev. of 2 books: Reign of Terror: How the 9-11 Era Destabilized America and Produced Trump by Spencer Ackerman, and Subtle Tools: The Dismantling of American Democracy from the War on Terror to Donald Trump These two books trace “what US excesses and ravages have done to America itself .” . Moyn is the author of Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War.

https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/groups-biden-ukraine/