Wednesday, May 30, 2018

BDS the USA

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War

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.


I commit to supporting strategic targeted efforts to boycott, divest from, and sanction the U.S. government until it supports the rule of law, peace, and justice on earth. For people, organizations, and governments outside of the United States, this means such actions as seeking to hold the U.S. government and its officials to the rule of law, formally sanctioning the U.S. government and its officials, avoiding travel to the United States, assuring that online purchases made don’t originate in the United States, and any other means available to avoid supporting the U.S. government and military, including canceling all purchases of U.S.-made weapons (not to be replaced with any other weapons). For U.S. residents and organizations, this means such actions as purchasing goods from locally owned, small, community businesses, boycotting large corporations and military contractors, choosing goods and services provided by foreign nations that do not promote militarism, and refusing to pay war taxes, as well as seeking the unelection, impeachment, removal, and prosecution of U.S. officials guilty of lawless abuses of power.


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