If peace and justice is in your blood and you need to find and be with people who have similar humane compassionate loving attributes; here is an up to date weekly Calendar of Events in Wisconsin and Northern Minnesota. Provided by Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice. Just click on the following link:
War profiteers are guilty of crimes against humanity and the government is full of their co-conspirator pansy lap dogs. Directly below is a short video and an article explaining the kind of profits government sanctioned criminals are making in the 1st quarter of 2012, over 10 years since the false flag inside job 9/11 operation Vigilant Warrior attacks:
This week, the three military contractors that do the most business with the Pentagon announced their quarterly profits for 2012. Their profits continue to grow while they push Washington, D.C. to protect their budgets at the expense of the rest of us.
This week’s announcement raises a fundamental question: Should people and companies be allowed to make huge profits from war? Even raising this question in today’s environment may seem trite, but we used to have different answers than those that prevail in modern-day Washington, D.C.
“Worse than traitors in arms are the men who pretend loyalty to the flag, feast and fatten on the misfortunes of the Nation while patriotic blood is crimsoning the plains of the South and their countrymen mouldering the dust.” –President Abraham Lincoln.
This last quote is particularly relevant to this week’s profit announcements. Lincoln referred to war profiteers making money by cheating the Union Army. Outrage at war profiteering during this period led to the passage of “Lincoln’s Law,” officially known as the False Claims Act. The False Claims Act is the very same law that two of the companies listed above, Lockheed Martin and Boeing, violated through price-fixing and double-billing the taxpayer, leading to their having to pay roughly $20 million in the first quarter of 2012 to settle suits brought by the U.S. government.
During Roosevelt’s time, the idea of a single contractor company making almost a billion dollars worth of profit in three months would have received short shrift. As Roosevelt’s quote above shows, the idea of people profiting from war’s “disaster” disgusted him, and during his presidency the Truman Committee relentlessly investigated and exposed war profiteers. The closest analogy in our time would be the Committee on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan, which found that up to $60 billion (as of September 2011) was lost to waste and fraud in military contracting in those conflicts.
And yet, despite this historical lack of patience for war profiteering, and despite the current record showing gross misconduct and waste, the U.S. government keeps shoveling taxpayer money at these huge corporations. Could it be that the $5 million in campaign donations and $32 million in lobbying dollars so far this election cycle from the military contractors keep Congress intentionally ignorant of the problem?
President George Washington knew a few things about war profiteers, and he didn’t mince words:
“There is such a thirst for gain [among military suppliers]…that it is enough to make one curse their own Species, for possessing so little virtue and patriotism.”
As long as we continue to allow the profit motive to play a role in America’s war, virtue and patriotism–to say nothing of peace–will continue to be in short supply.
Occupy Haywardin SOLIDARITY with Occupy Wall St. and Freedom Plaza:
I know this is a rather late notice but a Peace North member, called for a gathering on the corner of Highways 63 and 27 South this Saturday October 15th at 12 noon. I think their idea to stand on and occupy our corner, from at least 12:00 to 1:00, this Saturday is a good idea, we should express SOLIDARITY with those who are occupying Wall Street http://occupywallst.org/ and the Freedom Plaza "Human Needs not Corporate Greed", occupation in Washington DC http://october2011.org/
Thank you all for standing in solidarity with the cause of peace and justice.
Occupy Wall Street
Thank you, people of occupywallstreet.org; for peacefully bringing the war to where the headquarters of war profiteering are. The elite that bought our government do not want to pay taxes, but they are happy to take our tax dollars through no bid government contracts. We need an agenda and real demands. 1.) Sever the agreement the government made with the international banksters called the Federal Reserve; print United States dollars based on the collective wealth and assets of the nation. 2.) Investigate 9/11/01 and bring the war profiteers, so obviously guilty of crimes against nation and humanity to justice. 3.) Force all officials who so obviously violate the constitution on a routine daily business as usual basis out of office including, Obama and a majority of the administration, John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, war profiteer Daine Feinstein, the majority of the house and Senate, most of the Supreme Court. They so obvoisly bow to the bull of the Wall Street Mammon god and are treasonous to nation and humanity. 4.) After the treasonous criminals are out we must organize a constitutional convention so war profiteering and manipulation of our monetary system to enslave us rather than money being a legitimate means of exchange of goods and services can never occur again. 5.) 2012 vote in people that believe in Direct Participatory Democracy so the people can vote directly on law and appropriations, see http://whatisdemocracy.org and http://wis7thdpd.org No matter what their religious views are, we need leaders that believe that treating others as you wish to be treated, the least among us are our masters and love your enemies is a way of life. 6.) National Universal Health Care like all civilized nations have only better. 7.) Devolop a responsible educated policy to curb unsustainable unhealthy population growth including the right of each individual woman to birth control methods. 8.) Several CEOs of several colleges and universities apporved by the US Department of Education rake in $40 million a year; set a salary limit of, let say 25 times minimum wage, for higher education executives, in fact all executives of firms that do 20% or more of their annual business being paid monies that originated as government funds should be limited by law backed with criminal sanctions in cluding prison time for offenders.
TEHRAN, Sept. 22 (Mehr News Agency) -- Scandal after scandal, from Abu Ghraib and Haditha to Blackwater, the disaster goes on and on. It seems that the war in Iraq has become an endless array of immoral actions by U.S. forces. They torture prisoners, kill civilians, and now have been implicated in gunrunning in Iraq.
The war in Iraq is not really the story of a battle between U.S. troops and anti-U.S. insurgents. There are other players with their own agendas such as U.S. mercenary companies.
Everything is privatized in the United States, even the military. There are thousands of mercenaries from private companies that are augmenting the 160,000 regular U.S. armed forces in Iraq. However, none of these companies are as infamous as Blackwater in the international arena.
(The New York Sun) - WASHINGTON - In the wake of an Iraqi official last month blaming America’s use of depleted uranium munitions in its 2003 “Shock and Awe” campaign for a surge in cancer there, the Defense Department is facing an October deadline for providing a comprehensive report to Congress on the health effects of such weapons.
The report is required by the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2007, which President Bush signed into law last year.
The request for the study is an outgrowth of claims by Iraq war veterans that exposure to depleted uranium and other toxic substances there has negatively affected their health and that, therefore, their illnesses should be recognized as war-related and the treatment covered by the Veterans Administration.
Gonzales loved to tell the story of his rise out of poverty -- a Latino version of the American dream. But it is that same dream that he and his backers helped destroy for many Americans. Alberto Gonzales went down dreaming.
While announcing his resignation earlier this week, Alberto Gonzales deployed one of his most powerful and romantic rhetorical weapons. "I often remind our fellow citizens that we live in the greatest country in the world and that I have lived the American dream," he stated. "Even my worst days as attorney general have been better than my father's best days."
More than any public official in recent memory, the often smiley and sometimes smirking Gonzales -- and his supporters -- consistently framed his story as a brown embodiment of the American dream. His rise from "extremely poor" circumstances in his hometown of Humble, Tex. became the stuff of small-town mythmaking and tear-inspiring speeches in Washington corridors, especially on those occasions when he had to be confirmed -- or rebuked -- by Congress.
(Boston Globe) - WASHINGTON — The war in Iraq could ultimately cost well over a trillion dollars — at least double what has already been spent — including the long-term costs of replacing damaged equipment, caring for wounded troops, and aiding the Iraqi government, according to a new government analysis.
The United States has already allocated more than $500 billion on the day-to-day combat operations of what are now 190,000 troops and a variety of reconstruction efforts.
