Tag: War / War On The Public / War Against Citizens

These Are Democratic Senators

As usual, that is omitted, then people believe it when other people say Dems do nothing. Elected Dems are doing all they can. Sen. Rand Paul is also involved, as Libertarians will be in matters of war.

Politics

Senators will force a vote to prevent war on Venezuela without approval from Congress

October 17, 2025 5:00 AM ET

Claudia Grisales

Amid a wave of U.S. military strikes in the Caribbean and plans for covert operations in Venezuela, Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., is leading a bipartisan effort to force a vote to stop President Trump from unilaterally declaring war on the South American nation.

Kaine, a longtime proponent of Congress’ powers to declare war, filed the resolution late Thursday, a move that will force the Senate to take up the legislation after a 10-day waiting period. Sens. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and Rand Paul, R-Ky., co-sponsored the plan.

Kaine said concerns about war in the Latin American region are growing.

“The pace of the announcements, the authorization of covert activities and the military planning makes me think there’s some chance this could be imminent,” Kaine told reporters.

Reporters holding their smartphones surround Senator Tim Kaine as he speaks to them outside the Senate chamber on October 1.

Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., speaks to reporters outside the Senate chamber on Oct. 1. Kaine is hoping to prevent President Trump from unilaterally waging war on Venezuela without approval from Congress. Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

This week, Trump said the U.S. had conducted another military strike on an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean and announced that he had authorized CIA operations in Venezuela. He also said he was considering land operations in the country.

“We’ve almost totally stopped it by sea. Now we’ll stop it by land,” Trump said from the Oval Office on Wednesday about alleged drug smuggling.

Last week, Kaine and Schiff forced a Senate vote to limit Trump’s war powers in the Caribbean. While that vote failed 48-51, two Republicans, Paul and Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, joined Democrats in support.

Paul has been a vocal critic of the new military strikes, saying they set a precedent for the U.S. to shoot first without asking questions.

“The American people do not want to be dragged into endless war with Venezuela without public debate or a vote,” Paul said in a statement. “We ought to defend what the Constitution demands: deliberation before war.”

Kaine, Paul and Schiff are hoping more Republican members will vote in favor of the new limits. Several Republicans have voted for other war powers and use of military force resolutions led by Kaine in the past.

“I think it’s probably 10 or so [Republicans] who voted yes on at least one of them,” he said. “So we’ll start to work that.”

It remains unclear whether there are enough Republican votes for the measure to succeed.

Kaine said Congress continues to face a “black hole” of information related to action against Venezuela. Lawmakers say the administration still has not shared evidence to justify the boat strikes, which Kaine and others believe are illegal and unconstitutional.

Since September, Trump has ordered at least five U.S. military strikes on boats that the administration has claimed were smuggling illegal drugs. So far, at least 27 people have been reported killed, but their identities have yet to be shared.

Five clips from The Majority Report

Fox host tries to force him into a hole so she can bash him with bigotry.  He doesn’t fall for it.  Hugs.

tRump / Rubio are desperately trying to drum up a war with Venezuela over their oil.  The US handpicked successor to Maduro admitted she would give up the rights to the oil reserves to the western oil companies first thing.  Venezuela has more oil than Saudi Arabia.  That is why the US crippled the Venezuela economy in an attempt to get hat oil for our own.  Maduro wants to use the money for the people, he wants to help the indigenous people, he wants to destroy the class structure that existed when he was growing up.  The white people were treated better than the native brown people, he wanted to change that to where everyone is equal. People who are used to privilege react badly when everyone gets the same privilege.  Hugs

This next video talks about the “young republicans” who are anywhere from 18 to 40 and these racist bigoted republicans have important positions in state and federal government.  These republicans threatened to rape their enemies, and praised Hitler.  Hugs

The clip below talks about Chuck Schumer and his actions before the shutdown and after.  The democrats have a history of not standing up and taking action.  The base of the party is glad the leaders are now taking concrete actions.   Hugs

This last one is just for fun.  It is a comedian who acts / talks like Cuomo to his face.  Hugs

Misuse of religion by a Christian nationalist.

The right’s inflamtory rhetoric and blaming the left for inciting political violence on the left clips From The Majority Report

 

Hacks star Hannah Einbinder ended her Emmys speech with choice words for Donald Trump’s secret police force and some solidarity with the people of Palestine.

 

About The Early Bad News Yesterday-

Here’s What to Know About Poland Shooting Down Russian Drones

On Wednesday morning, Poland shot down several Russian drones that entered its airspace—a first since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. The incident disrupted air travel and set the region on edge.

Early Wednesday morning, Poland shot down several Russian drones that had violated its airspace during a massive strike against western Ukraine. The Polish military operation, confirmed by Prime Minister Donald Tusk through a social media message in the early morning hours, marks a turning point in Warsaw’s involvement in the conflict that has affected the region for more than two and a half years. The Polish defense agency reported the presence of more than 10 objects coming from Ukrainian airspace and called the violation an “act of aggression.”

Poland Invokes NATO Article 4

In response to the raid, Poland activated Article 4 of NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty, requesting immediate consultations with allies. Tusk urgently convened a meeting of the Council of Ministers at 8 am local time, maintaining constant contact with the alliance’s secretary general, Mark Rutte, to coordinate the political and diplomatic response.

Article 4 allows a NATO member to solicit consultations whenever it believes its security, territorial integrity, or political independence is threatened. Unlike Article 5, which provides for collective military action in the event of an armed attack, Article 4 does not compel immediate military action, but its activation nevertheless constitutes a significant political escalation, as it emphasizes the unity of the alliance in responding to perceived threats against NATO members.

Poland had already been on high alert for possible aircraft overruns since at least November 2022, when a stray Ukrainian missile accidentally hit a village in the south of the country, killing two people. Until now, however, there had been no recorded cases of Polish or allied defense systems shooting down drones on national territory. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky claimed on Wednesday that “at least eight” Iranian-made Shahed drones were “aimed in the direction of Poland” during the nighttime attack, suggesting the incursion into Polish airspace was intentional.

NATO Defense Activated

Residents of the affected Polish areas reported hearing explosions in the sky during the night, followed by the activation of warning sirens. The alert was triggered precisely during a large-scale Russian attack on Ukraine’s western regions, particularly those in Volyn and Lviv that directly border Poland.

According to information released by the Polish military command, national and NATO air defense systems were activated immediately after radar detected the entry of unmanned aircraft into Polish airspace. The interception operation continued for several hours, with the armed forces neutralizing objects deemed dangerous using air defense systems. The search for the wreckage of the downed drones is still ongoing in the eastern parts of the country as of midday Wednesday.

Airports Temporarily Closed

The intervention led to the temporary closure of four airports, including Warsaw-Chopin and Lublin, as well as the Rzeszów airport, which has become a crucial hub for sending Western military aid to Ukraine in the past two years. The United States Federal Aviation Administration confirmed the temporary closure of the Polish airports for “unplanned military activity related to national security.”

The Russian drone strike also hit eastern Ukraine hard: According to reports by the BBC citing local Ukrainian officials, 24 people were killed and 19 wounded in an air raid on a village in the Donetsk region, where the victims were standing in line to collect their pensions. The incident comes amid a particularly intense phase of the conflict, where Moscow’s troops are carrying out a slow but steady offensive in much of Donetsk, in western Ukraine. Meanwhile, diplomatic attempts to reach a peace agreement have essentially stalled, and contacts between Washington and Moscow in recent months have produced no concrete results.

Rising Tensions

The incident comes at a time of particular tension in the region. Only 24 hours before Poland shot down Russia’s drones, the Polish president warned during a press conference in Helsinki that Russian president Vladimir Putin would be ready to invade other countries after the aggression against Ukraine. The timing of the incursion takes on even greater significance when one considers that on Friday, September 13, Russia and Belarus will kick off joint military exercises dubbed “Zapad,” which have already raised regional security concerns.

Poland had announced Tuesday that it was closing its border with Belarus precisely in response to what Warsaw calls “very aggressive” maneuvers, in addition to the growing number of provocations by Moscow and Minsk. Neighboring Lithuania has also decided to tighten border controls, a sign of widespread alertness among NATO member countries that border Russia and Belarus.

Wednesday’s incident also comes at a delicate time for international diplomacy: US president Donald Trump declared over the weekend that he was ready to move to a second phase of sanctions against Russia after months of unsuccessful negotiations for a peace agreement between Moscow and Kyiv. The downing of drones on Polish territory now risks further complicating any mediation efforts.

This story originally appeared on WIRED Italia and has been translated from Italian.

16-year-old Florida boy held in Israeli prison

Austrian CO Executed, Fatman Dropped, Rocky Flats, & More in Peace & Justice History for 8/9

August 9, 1943

Franz Jägerstätter, an Austrian conscientious objector who reported for induction but refused to serve in the army of the Third Reich, was executed by guillotine at Brandenburg-Gorden prison. An American, Gordon Zahn, wrote about Jägerstätter while researching the subject of German Roman Catholics’ response to Hitler.
Zahn’s book, In Solitary Witness, influenced Daniel Ellsberg’s decision to stand against the Vietnam War by bringing the previously secret Pentagon Papers to public attention.
Against the Stream by Erna Putz, the story of the courage of Franz Jägerstätter
August 9, 1945
The second atomic bomb, “Fatman,” was dropped on the arms-manufacturing and key port city of Nagasaki. The plan to drop a second bomb was to test a different design rather than one of military necessity. The Hiroshima weapon was a gun type, the Nagasaki weapon an implosion type, and the War Department wanted to know which was the more effective design.
Responsibility for the timing of the second bombing had been delegated by President Harry Truman before the Hiroshima attack to Colonel Paul W. Tibbets, the commander of the 509th Composite Group on Tinian, one of the Northern Mariana Islands in the western Pacific.

Scheduled for August 11 against Kokura, the raid was moved forward to avoid a five-day period of bad weather forecast to begin on August 10. English translation of leaflet air-dropped over Japan after the first bomb [excerpt]: “We are in possession of the most destructive explosive ever devised by man. A single one of our newly developed atomic bombs is actually the equivalent in explosive power to what 2000 of our giant B-29s can carry on a single mission. This awful fact is one for you to ponder and we solemnly assure you it is grimly accurate.”
Of the 195,00 population of the city (many of its children had been evacuated due to bombing in the days just prior), 39,000 died and 25,000 were injured, and 40% of all residences were damaged or destroyed.“
What on earth has happened?” said my mother, holding her baby tightly in her arms. “Is it the end of the world?”
Hear an eyewitness account of this terrrible event
 Photographic exhibit of the aftermath
August 9, 1956

20,000 women demonstrated against the pass laws in Pretoria, South Africa. Pass laws required that Africans carry identity documents with them at all times. These books had to contain stamps providing official proof the person in question had permission to be in a particular town at a given time. Initially, only men were forced to carry these books, but soon the law also compelled women to carry the documents.
August 9, 1966
Two hundred people sat in at the New York City offices of Dow Chemical Company to protest the widespread use in Vietnam of Dow’s flammable defoliant Napalm
.
Napalm in use in Vietnam
Read more about Dow Chemical and the use of napalm 
August 9, 1987
Hundreds were arrested in an all-day blockade of the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant in Golden, Colorado. Protests at Rocky Flats had been going on for some years.

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryaugust.htm#august9

VRA, 1st Electrocution, Hiroshima, & More In Peace & Justice History for 8/6

August 6, 1890
At Auburn Prison in New York state, William Kemmler became the first person to be executed in the electric chair, developed by the Medico-Legal Society and Harold Brown, a colleague of Thomas Edison.
William Kemmler received two applications of 1,300 volts of alternating current. The first lasted for only 17 seconds because a leather belt was about to fall off one of the second-hand Westinghouse generators. Kemmler was still alive. The second jolt lasted until the smell of burning flesh filled the room, about four minutes.

As soon as his charred body stopped smoldering, Kemmler was pronounced dead.
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August 6th, 1945 – 8:15 AM ANNIVERSARY OF HIROSHIMA
The United States dropped the first atomic bomb used in warfare on Hiroshima, Japan.

Hiroshima ruins
An estimated 140,000 died from the immediate effects of this bomb and tens of thousands more died in subsequent years from burns and other injuries, and radiation-related illnesses. President Harry Truman ordered the use of the weapon in hopes of avoiding an invasion of Japan to end the war, and the presumed casualties likely to be suffered by invading American troops.
The weapon, “Little Boy,” was delivered by a B-29 Superfortress nicknamed the Enola Gay, based on the island of Tinian, and piloted by Colonel Paul W. Tibbets.
Voices of the Hibakusha, those injured in the bombings
  <Hiroshima survivor 
Found watch stopped at the time of explosion>
Documents related to the decision to drop the atomic bomb
On August 6, 1995, up to 50,000 people attended a memorial service commemorating Hiroshima Peace Day on the 50th anniversary of the first atomic bombing.
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August 6, 1957
Eleven activists from the Committee for Nonviolent Action (CNVA) were arrested attempting to enter the atomic testing grounds at Camp Mercury, Nevada, the first of what eventually became many thousands of arrests at the Nevada test site.
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August 6, 1965
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was signed by President Johnson, making illegal century-old practices aimed at preventing African Americans from exercising their constitutional right to vote.

It created federal oversight of election laws in six Southern states (Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Virginia) and in many counties of North Carolina where black voter turnout was very low. Black voter registration rates were as low as 7% in Mississippi prior to passage of the law; today voter registration rates are comparable for both blacks and whites in these states.
The laws has been re-authorized by Congress four times.
Introduction to the Voting Rights Act
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August 6, 1990

George Galloway
The U.S. imposed trade sanctions on Iraq. As a result, the lack of much-needed medicines, water purification equipment and other items led to the death of many innocent Iraqis. According to British Member of Parliament George Galloway in his testimony to a committee of the U.S. Congress on May 17, 2005, these sanctions  “ . . . killed one million Iraqis, most of them children, most of them died before they even knew that they were Iraqis, but they died for no other reason other than that they were Iraqis with the misfortune to be born at that time . . . .”
When asked on U.S. television if she thought that the death of half a million Iraqi children (due to sanctions on Iraq) was a price worth paying, then U.S. Secretary of State Madeline Albright replied: “This is a very hard choice, but we think the price is worth it.” -60 Minutes (5/12/96)
Were Sanctions Worth the Price? by Christopher Hayes 
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August 6, 1998
Nearly 50,000 people attended a memorial service commemorating Hiroshima Peace Day on the 50th anniversary of the first atomic bombing which killed nearly 200,000 Japanese with a single weapon.
The headlines when it happened
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August 6, 1998
Calling themselves the Minuteman III Plowshares, two peace activists, Daniel Sicken [pronounced seekin], 56, of Brattleboro, Vermont and Sachio Ko-Yin, 25, of Ridgewood, N.J entered silo N7 in Weld County [near Greeley] in Colorado operated by Warren AFB, Cheyenne, Wyoming. With hammers and their own blood, they symbolically disarmed structures on the launching pad of a Minuteman III nuclear missile silo.


Sachio Ko-Yin and Daniel Sicken
Read about the Minuteman III Plowshares action 

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryaugust.htm#august6

PATCO Crushed, & More, In Peace & Justice History for 8/5

August 5, 1963
The U.S., U.S.S.R. and U.K. signed the Limited Test Ban Treaty in Moscow, banning nuclear testing in the atmosphere, in space or underwater. Underground testing, however, was not prohibited. It has since been signed by more than 100 countries.
 
Text of the treaty, background and signatories
August 5, 1964
President Lyndon Johnson asked Congress ”for a resolution expressing the unity and determination of the United States in supporting freedom and in protecting peace in southeast Asia.” 
The president had already used the alleged incidents in the Gulf of Tonkin [see August 4, 1964 above] to mount major air strikes on the North Vietnamese navy. The resulting Congressional Resolution authorizing military force in Vietnam was the legal basis for the war there that lasted until 1975.
Only two members of the senate voted against the resolution: Ernest Greuning of Alaska and Wayne Morse of Oregon. …

“Let’s go back to the war in Vietnam. I was here. I was one of the Senators who voted for the Gulf of Tonkin resolution. Yes, I voted for the Gulf of Tonkin resolution. I am sorry for that. I am guilty of doing that. I should have been one of the two, or at least I should have made it three, Senators who voted against that Gulf of Tonkin resolution. But I am not wanting to commit that sin twice, and that is exactly what we are doing here.
This is another Gulf of Tonkin resolution.”
Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV) in debate on the resolution to authorize use of military force on Iraq, October 4, 2002

August 5, 1981
President Ronald Reagan, having ordered striking air traffic controllers back to work within 48 hours, fired 11,359 (more than 70%) who ignored the order, and permanently banned them from federal service (a ban later lifted by President Bill Clinton). The controllers, seeking a shorter workweek among other things, were concerned the long hours they were required to work performing their high-stress jobs were a danger to both their health and the public safety.
Lessons from When Reagan Crushed PATCO Union 

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryaugust.htm#august5

With Famine, No Electricity, Fuel, Water, No Family, How Are You Going To Survive?’ in Gaza

After over 21 months of Israel’s brutal assault on Gaza, the humanitarian crisis in the Strip has reached its worst point yet. 94% of Gaza’s hospitals have been destroyed or damaged. Dozens of children have died from malnutrition. And Israeli troops continue to kill scores of Palestinians as they try to receive food from the so-called “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.”

In this second part of Zeteo’s live ‘Unshocked,’ Dr. Yasser Khan – a Canadian ophthalmologist and plastic surgeon who has traveled twice to Gaza since October 7, 2023 – describes to Mehdi and Naomi how Israel’s humanitarian assault on Gaza has turned injuries and disabilities in Gaza into, “a death sentence.”

Dr. Yasser Khan: “It was horrific, the most horrific things that I’ve ever seen.”

In the interview, Dr. Khan shares the stories of his many patients, the vast majority of whom he says were women and children.

Dr. Khan also discusses how upon returning from Gaza, many of his colleagues in the medical field refused to believe such stories, with some even going out of their way to tell him that, “‘he’s done nothing to be a hero.’”

Dr. Khan explains how he came to the conclusion that what he was seeing in Gaza was indeed a genocide and why he takes so much inspiration from the people in Gaza. Mehdi, Naomi, and Dr. Khan also take questions from a live audience.

Do consider becoming a paid subscriber so you can get early access to exclusive content like this.

Also, if you are interested in learning more about Israel’s assault on Gaza’s healthcare system, check out Zeteo’s most recently acquired documentary, ‘Gaza: Doctors Under Attack.’