A recent news report asking "Where is Dubya?" found the former president totally unengaged, spending his time painting strange portraits of himself in the bath. In what seems to be a weird personal attempt to emulate Winston Churchill (but more reminiscent of Marie Antoinette playing shepherdess in her last days),...

Exactly a decade ago, when Bush-Cheney's war machine was hell-bent on invading Iraq and few Washington power figures were brave enough to get in the way, I made this appeal to FBI Director Robert Mueller. The Cassandra business of warning about catastrophes that come true is certainly a...

Senator Rand Paul is not the only one with serious questions about the nomination of John Brennan for CIA Director! Many people are rightly concerned that the CIA Nominee failed to provide a clear answer to Paul's question: "Do you believe that the president has the authority to...

As the final scene of Thelma and Louise seems to be playing out these last few days, it might be a good time to recall the dramatic end of that movie.

It's true that some think the fiscal cliff is real while others say it's just a mirage. Some in the U.S. want to just "keep goin'" as Thelma urges. But most of us probably don't see much of a choice -- it seems more like we are trapped in a car with its gas pedal stuck in the full speed ahead mode and someone has disabled the brakes. For even at this 11th hour, almost no one in the Punch and Judy Show in Washington is able to home in on, much less intelligently discuss, the real problem.

As President Obama meets with congressional leaders at the White House in last-ditch efforts to reach a budget deal, however, one clarion voice, that of Representative Dennis Kucinich was heard on Democracy Now . Here are some of Kucinich's parting words of wisdom about the phoniness of the entire fiscal cliff debate, ignoring as it does the terrible elephant in the room, the war machine:

So, you know, this is -- we really have to decide who we are as a nation. We're spending more and more money for wars. We're spending more and more money for interventions abroad. We're spending more and more money for military buildups. And we seem to be prepared to spend less and less on domestic programs and on job creation. This whole idea of a debt-based economic system is linked to a war machine... We're increasingly dysfunctional as a nation because of our unwillingness to challenge the military-industrial complex, which Dwight Eisenhower warned about generations ago. And so, we really have to look at America's role in the world. We have a right to defend ourselves, but we have no right to aggress. And we're continuing to aggress. And that's coming at a cost to our domestic priorities here, this idea of guns and butter. We are now thoroughly mired in an economy that's based on guns. We are not providing for the practical needs of the American people. And this budget and this fiscal cliff does in no way get into that debate.

Also amidst the darkness comes a news flash of a way by which ordinary people can still make a difference: "DULUTH CITY COUNCIL JOINS SAINT PAUL AND MINNEAPOLIS PASSING THE MN ASAP RESOLUTION CALLING FOR PENTAGON SPENDING REDUCTIONS: the MN ASAP resolution connects the dots between federal military spending, cuts to city council budgets, and the debate about sequestration and the fiscal cliff."

As part of the Minnesota Arms Spending Alternatives Project (MN ASAP), citizens in Minnesota have effectively begun pointing to U.S. war machine spending as the elephant in the room that needs to be noticed, then discussed and addressed. We have found that our city councilpersons and mayors, on the whole, seem more clear-headed, more approachable, less corrupted by the Military Industrial Complex and less defensive than the federal characters responsible for getting us into the costly wars and fiscal mess. As a result, on December 17, the Duluth City Council passed the resolution, calling on Congress for a reduction and redirection of Pentagon spending back to local communities.

The resolution initiative is getting real traction not only in Minnesota but around the country! The Saint Paul City Council unanimously passed a similar resolution, October 10th, 2012. And the Minneapolis City Council unanimously passed a similar version of the MN ASAP resolution on December 7. (Just a few days before, Des Moines, Iowa joined a growing group of larger U.S. cities that have passed or are passing similar resolutions.)

We have to start somewhere and everyone can do this! For instance on December 13, I requested, for the second time, that the MN ASAP resolution be put on (my own) Apple Valley City Council's agenda warning that the wars are bankrupting America and that the "fiscal cliff" is unlikely to go away as long as the U.S. continues to spend more on the Pentagon, its wars abroad and its military occupations, than on programs of social uplift. I intend to keep knocking on my city's door until they wake up and open it and put this discussion on their official agenda.

Guns or butter is of course the real issue. It's unfortunate, all these decades after Eisenhower's warning about the pernicious, corrupting influence of the Military Industrial Complex, that we cannot count on those in Washington to heed the dangers. In fact, their plan seems to raise taxes on everyone to pay for more wars. More citizens and grassroots efforts like the successful actions of MN ASAP and the National Priorities Project are therefore necessary. People who care about their children and grandchildren's future need to replicate these type of presentations in cities and state legislatures all over the country if we are ever to end the unethical, illegal wars and get our priorities back in order.

And if we citizens choose to do nothing but go along? Note that the old movie mercifully spared its audience of watching crazy Thelma and Louise hit rock bottom. Rest assured, however, that in real life, Washington's collective euphoria and currently prevalent belief that war is the answer will undoubtedly come to a very sad crashing...

While electoral politics tends to suck the oxygen out of the room (and apparently out of many people's brains) in these last few weeks before an election, a number of U.S. citizens committed to ending the wars took to the streets this week. Demonstrations in at least 38...

And what kind of mind-boggling corruption -- of the worst kind -- influence peddling by a "foreign power" (as defined by the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to include foreign terrorist groups) -- lies hidden behind the curtain? Could some members of the MEK "foreign terrorist organization," their murderous history...

In connection with the 10 year anniversary of the shameful "torture memos" written by lawyers working for the Bush-Cheney Administration, peace and human rights activists in Minnesota managed to get their Congresspersons Keith Ellison and Betty McCollum and their Senators Amy Klobuchar and Al Franken to declare torture is wrong...

By Ann Wright and Coleen Rowley

The new Executive Director of Amnesty International USA -- Suzanne Nossel -- is a recent U.S. government insider. So it's a safe bet that AI's decision to seize upon a topic that dovetailed with American foreign policy interests, "women's rights in Afghanistan," at the...

(Author's note: Perhaps it's a good thing I was obviously too late in submitting this to run on Mother's Day so as not to cast a pall over the sentimental celebration. But it's not too late to think of next year! Given the notion that's been ushered in of "endless...

Barbara Lee turned out to be 100% right about the wrongful wars launched on Afghanistan and Iraq and she is certainly right again -- to try and stop an even more catastrophic and illegal preemptive war on Iran!

Give Diplomacy a Chance with Iran

From: The Honorable Barbara Lee

Bill:...

Dear Department of Justice and Department of Treasury Officials:

We might have just helped you bag another material supporter of terrorism this week! And you'll never believe who the culprit is! We were even able to tape record some of his own damning admissions! (That's the...

During the last four years the dispute over the implementation of Nobel's prize for the "champions of peace" has come to a head. The Norwegian awarders seem to reinterpret Nobel's wishes and award the prize for whatever in their judgment is good and valuable, based on "a broad concept of...

Since awarding U.S. President Barack Obama the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009, an award that showed just how greatly the Norwegian parliamentarians' selection process had degenerated and departed from Alfred Nobel's will, Nobel Secretary Geir Lundestad has tried to minimize the serious nature of the charges against his selection committee...

It's hard to know what to do, as mere citizens, to try and fix things so many years after the United States government decided it did not have to follow its own laws, the Geneva Conventions or the jus cogens torture prohibition. It's now 10 years after the indefinite...

Obama's re-election campaign may be focusing almost exclusively on domestic economic issues but there are strong forces pushing him and the U.S to war again, this time with Iran. The dangerous brinkmanship with Iran could be alleviated if facts were not being misrepresented and distorted. Inasmuch as American politicians have...

Sad, isn't it, that just one day before Christmas, we have to stand out in the cold and worry about getting another big lump of coal from our politicians?! But unfortunately it's expected that Obama will sign the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) into law right after the...

On "Bill of Rights Day" (Thursday, December 15), concerned Minnesotans representing Veterans for Peace, Women Against Military Madness, Amnesty International, the ACLU and other peace and justice and civil liberties groups celebrated the 220th anniversary of the ratification of the Bill of Rights by speaking out for the Constitution and...

The political, military industrial, corporate class in Washington DC continues to re-make our constitutional republic into a powerful, unaccountable military empire. Yesterday the U.S. Senate voted 93 to 7 to pass the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2012 which allows the military to operate domestically...

How many remember that this "Black Friday" marks the 10th anniversary of George Bush's famous presidential advisory just after 9/11 for citizens to do their patriotic duty by pushing their worries aside and going shopping? The idea of asking the American people to make sacrifices in the face of the...