Above Photo: From Worldbeyondwar.org
We share David Swanson’s call for help. We, the people of the United States, cannot control our own government. We live in a mirage democracy that does not serve its own people. The government serves Wall Street investors, transnational corporations and other big business interests who profit from war, inequality and environmental degradation. US foreign policy does great damage to the world with 800 foreign military bases, special forces in most countries, mass spying at home and abroad conducting regime change operations on every continent in its quest for global hegemony. Some have described the US as an “empire of chaos”. Looking at Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and other nations, this as an apt description. Under President Trump, the US has reneged on the climate agreement and on the nuclear agreement between Iran, Europe and the United States, but even before Trump, the US was doing damage on these and other fronts. KZ and MF
People, organizations, and governments around the world, and people and organizations in the United States, need to stand up at long last and nonviolently resist the lawless behavior of the rogue U.S. government.
The recent U.S. withdrawal from the nuclear agreement with Iran is not an aberration. It parallels the U.S. withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and numerous other disarmament agreements, the U.S. opposition to the International Criminal Court, its record-setting use of the veto in the United Nations Security Council, and its unique status outside the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Paris Climate Agreement (which it withdrew from) and other fundamental treaties. Of the United Nations’ 18 major human rights treaties, the United States is party to 5, fewer than any other nation on earth, except Bhutan (4), and tied with Malaysia, Myanmar, and South Sudan, a country torn by warfare since its creation in 2011.
There is a reason that most countries polled in December 2013 by Gallup called the United States the greatest threat to peace in the world, and why Pew found that viewpoint increased in 2017. Since World War II, the United States military has killed or helped kill some 20 million people, overthrown at least 36 governments, interfered in at least 84 foreign elections, attempted to assassinate over 50 foreign leaders, and dropped bombs on people in over 30 countries.
In military spending (over $1,200 billion per year) and weapons dealing, the U.S. government has no peer. Only 19 other nations on earth spend more than $10 billion per year. Seventeen of them are U.S. allies and weapons customers.
The U.S. government is directly responsible for policies that make the United States, by various measures, the worst destroyer of the world’s natural environment.
The United States government is out of control, and the force needed to resist it successfully is not a military one. It is the nonviolent organized support for the rule of law that can be mobilized among the people of the world, including the people of the United States.
People interested in helping with this effort can sign the following petition to the people of the world and submit ideas and proposals: