Gary Swing

Barack Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign was remarkably transparent in advancing the planned agenda for his second term as War Criminal In-Chief. Obama’s campaign boldly announced their slogan: “FORWARD.” Some people myopically viewed this as one word, rather than observing it with the proper perspective. In 2008, Obama supporters dutifully voted “For-War-A” (Afghanistan), “For-War-B” (Iraq), and “For-War-C” (Libya). In 2012, they enthusiastically voted “For-War-D” (Iran? Syria?).

Every election year we hear the same nonsense about “voting for the lesser of two evils.” Despite the spirited chants of “We Are the 99%,” 99% of American voters continue to embrace the greater evils: perpetual wars of aggression, imperialism, authoritarianism, and environmental devastation. This is the shared agenda of the two corporate parties. Yet we still hear the same tired old arguments that have never been valid: that voting your conscience is a wasted vote; that a vote for a Green Party candidate is a vote for the Republican, and so on. Voting Green can’t “spoil” elections that are already rotten to the core. If you vote for candidates who don’t represent your values, then you are wasting your vote.

The Democrats and Republicans design the election system to keep themselves in power and shut out any meaningful opposition from start to finish. The fundamental flaws in their antiquated system could easily be fixed. These issues remain because the system as it stands serves the interests of the elite and powerful.

Let’s get one thing straight: Green Party candidates don’t “take votes away” from Democrats. Democrats take votes away from Greens. When was the last time you heard someone say: “I’d love to vote for Obama, but he doesn’t have a chance, so I’ll vote for Jill Stein instead?” A legitimate election system would enable voters to cast their ballots for the candidates they prefer without the fear of “helping to elect” the candidates they like least. Modern voting systems used by most democratic countries allow voters to cast effective, meaningful votes to secure fair, proportional representation for the parties or candidates that they prefer.

Green Party candidates have been running for partisan office in the United States since 1988 and in Colorado since 1994. The Green Party has elected members of parliament in dozens of countries with party list forms of proportional representation. In the United States, about 135 Green Party members held local, mostly non-partisan elected offices as we headed into the 2012 election. These are citizens elected to offices like school boards and town councils, and who happen to be registered Green. Very few of these successful candidates appeared on the ballot with the designation “Green Party.” Twenty-four years of running Green Party campaigns under the winner-take-all voting system has brought us to the level of success and public recognition that we enjoy today. “The Green Party? What’s that?” “Jill Stein? Who’s he?”

The reality is that we face a near total media blackout of any alternative to the increasingly fascist political establishment that dominates the U.S. The Green Party is invisible in the United States. We won’t make real progress unless we change the voting system. We are yelling into the wind to a deaf and blind audience, begging for the opportunity to help rearrange a few deck chairs on the Titanic. The ship has already struck the iceberg, and it’s sinking fast, but the band is still playing the same tune.

The big issue today is survival. Human overpopulation and over-consumption have brought us to the brink of economic collapse and ecological catastrophes on an unprecedented scale.

A short-term supply of cheap, abundant fossil fuels has temporarily enabled human population to overshoot the long-term carrying capacity of the planet. The world’s human population has grown dramatically from one billion in 1804 to two billion in 1927 and seven billion in 2011. In 2010, the World Wildlife Foundation’s “Living Planet Report” estimated that human ecological impact exceeded the Earth’s carrying capacity by 50%.

About 5% of the world’s population lives in the United States, but the US accounts for 25% of global consumption and carbon dioxide emissions. If the average person on Earth consumed as much as the average American, the Earth could not support a population of more than 1.5 billion people.

A recent study by MIT revisiting the Club of Rome’s “Limits to Growth” study concluded that if we continue to follow the path of “business as usual,” the global economy will collapse and the world’s human population will start to decline precipitously by 2030.

Global warming is happening today as a result of human industrial activity, yet the Democrats and Republicans are acting together to accelerate this ecological catastrophe with new oil pipelines, coal burning, fracking, and tar sands exploitation. Mass extinction of species is taking place at an alarming rate. Topsoil is being depleted. Agricultural production is diminishing as nearly a billion people face chronic malnutrition and lack access to safe drinking water.

We need a radical and rapid transition to an environmentally sustainable way of life. We’re running out of time. The message of the Green Party is one that desperately needs to be heard, understood, and adopted.

Green politics, if it is to truly offer an alternative, is about speaking truth to power and standing up for what you believe is right, regardless of the expected outcome, even if you know that you can’t win. The truth is we don’t have much power under the existing political system. Electing a handful of citizens who happen to be Green Party members to small, rural school boards and town councils is a good start, but no more than that.

The winner-take-all voting system ensures that business as usual continues unchallenged, securing short-term profits while guaranteeing long-term catastrophes. If we believe that the message of the Green Party is important; if we think the Green Party should continue to exist; if we want the Green Party to win and gain real political power, then changing the voting system is a necessary and urgent first step towards making the Green Party a viable political entity.

We need to enact citizen initiatives to elect legislators by a system of true proportional representation, using party lists. Political parties should be represented in legislatures in proportion to their share of the vote. We need a truly representational voting system for electing legislators, like the method used to elect Australia’s Senate (not semi-proportional voting plans, winner-take-all voting systems such as instant runoff, or approval voting). If we intend to create a strong, effective Green Party that impacts public policy at all levels in the United States, we need to make implementing proportional representation a top priority.

Gary has been nominated by the Denver and Arapahoe County Green Parties to run again in 2012 as a candidate for US Representative in district 1. This nomination is subject to ratification at the Colorado Green Party's state convention, which will be held in Carbondale, Colorado on March 31st. Under party rules, Gary must receive at least 30% of the vote at the state convention in order to receive the Colorado Green Party's nomination and qualify for the ballot. The Green Party has ballot status in Colorado, so candidates who are nominated at the state convention do not need to petition or pay a filing fee to qualify for the ballot.


Swing for Congress Campaign Announcement

My name is Gary Swing. In 2010, I was a Green Party candidate for US Representative in Denver. Now I am running again for the same office in 2012.

The Green Party is a global movement that nominates candidates for public office in most democratic nations around the world.  The Green Party is founded upon the principles of nonviolence, ecology, social justice and grassroots democracy.

Green Party candidates have been elected to national parliaments in many other countries, primarily because most democratic countries use proportional representation voting systems rather than the winner-take-all voting system that we use in the United States.

Proportional representation refers to voting systems in which political parties or candidates win representation in legislative bodies in proportion to their share of the votes. For example, if the Green Party wins five percent of the vote, they would win five percent of the seats in a legislature under a proportional voting system.

There are different forms of proportional representation. Under party list systems, each political party nominates a list of candidates to represent it in legislative elections. Under a single-transferable vote system, or (STV), voters rank individual candidates in their order of preference. First choice, second choice, and so forth. If a voter’s first choice doesn’t get enough votes to be elected, then their vote is transferred to their highest ranked candidate who can be elected. The same candidate ranking method is used for what is known in the US as instant run-off voting. However, instant-runoff voting is used in a single-member district to secure the election of the most popular candidate, while STV is used in multiple member districts to secure proportional representation. In a nine-member district, a candidate could be elected with one tenth of the vote. The national platform of the Green Party advocates proportional representation for legislative offices and instant-runoff voting for single winner executive offices.

Australia combines STV with an alternative party list vote, for its Senate elections. Ninety-five percent of Australian voters choose to cast what they call an “above the line” vote for a party, rather than ranking the individual candidates in what they call a “below the line” vote. As a Green Party candidate, I propose to abolish the US Senate and elect the US House of Representatives by the method of proportional representation used to elect Australia's Senate.

True proportional representation enables most voters to elect representatives of their choice and makes every vote count. This eliminates the perceived problem of voting for the lesser of two evils under a two party system, while providing fair representation for a diverse population, and encouraging more substantive public debate of real issues.

Under the winner-take-all voting system that we have here, elections are largely a meaningless charade. The outcome of most elections is pre-determined by the demographics of each voting district. Most districts are dominated by a single party. The corporate media only covers establishment candidates who represent their narrow agenda. They ignore dissidents who advocate genuine reform and exclude them from candidate debates. The corporate media treats elections like horse races. They focus on distractions instead of real issues.

Campaign financing corrupts the political process, making elected officials indebted to the corporate interests that finance their expensive campaigns. As a Green Party candidate, I support a ban on corporate campaign contributions, a fair system of public campaign financing, caps on campaign spending, verifiable ballots, fair media access for all candidates, and open debates that include minor party and independent candidates.

The office of the president has become a military dictatorship, regardless of who holds the office. I propose to eliminate presidential elections and decentralize political power. We should switch to a parliamentary system with a weak chief executive who is selected by Congress. Congress should be able to remove the executive at any time on a vote of “no confidence.”

The United States has built the most extensive empire in history. As foreign policy analyst William Blum has documented, the United States has committed war crimes against at least 69 foreign countries since the end of World War Two, killing millions of people in the process of securing global economic imperialism. These war crimes are always sold to the public on a foundation of lies.

Sane people don't build and maintain an arsenal of nuclear weapons capable of exterminating all life on Earth. Sane people don't sponsor dictatorships and death squads in the name of freedom. Sane people don’t bomb hospitals and schools and churches and factories and power plants and water treatment facilities.

The Green Party has consistently opposed illegal US military interventions, including the bombing, invasion, and occupation and Afghanistan and Iraq. We demand the immediate withdrawal of all US soldiers from wars of aggression. As a candidate, I advocate upholding the Kellogg-Briand Pact, which outlaws war as a tool of foreign policy. The United States should shut down all of its foreign military bases, restrict its military to non-offensive defense of US territory, abolish its weapons of mass destruction, and eliminate the CIA. US foreign policy should focus strictly on humanitarian aid, respect for human rights, fair trade, and support for environmental sustainability.

I support a real criminal investigation into the US government’s role in 9/11 and prosecution of the people responsible for it. 9/11 was a false flag operation orchestrated by traitors at the highest levels of the US government, in order to create a false pretext for wars of aggression, seizure of dwindling oil supplies, and destruction of our civil liberties.

I oppose the racist scapegoating of immigrants. We must address the real causes of high immigration levels: an unsustainable, high consumption lifestyle in the United States; economic globalization policies that exploit Third World nations for the benefit of transnational corporations; and labor policies designed to drive down wages. We must reform international trade policies to protect labor, human rights, and the environment. Fair trade should promote local self-reliance, not foreign corporate domination. I support international work permits that are not tied to a specific employer.

Without the environment, there is no economy. Perpetual growth cannot continue within a finite environment. Climate change is happening now as a result of human industrial activity. We must reduce energy consumption at least 50% by 2030, restructuring our economy to run on solar, wind, geothermal and hydroelectric power. We must reduce greenhouse gas emissions at least 40% by 2020 and 95% by 2050. I support public investment to create jobs in energy conservation, renewable energy, sustainable agriculture, green construction and mass transportation. I support the use of carbon taxes to include environmental impacts in true cost pricing of new goods and services. We must create an environmentally sustainable economy.

Petrochemical agriculture threatens our health, food security and the environment. I support permaculture, organic farming and urban gardens. The livestock industry contributes to global warming, land degradation, air and water pollution. We should shift subsidies from animal agriculture to plant based agriculture and small local farms.

Overpopulation threatens our future. Human population has grown from 1 billion in 1804 to 7 billion now. If the average person on Earth consumed as much as the average American, the World Wildlife Federation estimates that the Earth could not sustain a population of more than one and a half billion people. We need to change the way we live to reduce consumption and decrease population by reducing birth rates. I support full public funding for family planning programs and public education about the overpopulation crisis.

The insurance industry profits by denying patients the health care they need. I support real health care reform through the creation of a single payer national health insurance program.

The Democrats and Republicans represent illegal wars without end, environmental devastation, corporate greed, and contempt for human rights. The Green Party is a voice for genuine reform. We welcome you to join us in working together to create an environmentally sustainable future based on social justice and respect for human rights, a future that values people over profits.

“We assert that no nation can long endure half republic and half empire, and we warn the American people that imperialism abroad will lead quickly and inevitably to despotism at home.”
-- Democratic National Platform, 1900

At the height of the British Empire, Great Britain had 36 foreign military bases. By 2007, the United States officially had 737 military bases in 63 foreign countries, with at least some US soldiers in 156 countries. More than 369,000 US soldiers were deployed outside the US.

The United States has built the most powerful, most extensive empire in history, with contempt for freedom, human rights and international law. The real mission of the US military and the CIA is to establish and protect authoritarian client states around the world, serving the economic interests of transnational corporations. The US sponsors proxy wars and mercenary forces to oppress the people of Third World nations and secure control of global economic resources.

The United States has engaged in illegal, immoral military attacks against more than 70 nations since the end of World War II, killing millions of people. As historian Michael Parenti documented in his book, Against Empire: “From 1945 to 2000, the U.S. government attempted to overthrow more than 40 foreign governments, and to crush more than 30 populist movements struggling against oppressive regimes. Recent decades have been marked by the US waging devastatingly one-sided wars against small, weak, impoverished nations while filling the media with propaganda designed to inflame war fever.”

The US has sponsored death squads and dictatorships in Brazil, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Honduras, Haiti, Chile, Uruguay, Indonesia and many other nations. The people of Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Angola, Mozambique and Yugoslavia have been subjected to massive terrorist attacks by the United States.

In 1953, the democratic government of Iran was overthrown in a US/British sponsored coup. The US and Great Britain seized control of Iran’s oil. They restored the Shah’s fascist dictatorship and supported this repressive regime for 25 years. After Iran’s 1979 revolution, the US encouraged Iraq to invade Iran and provided Iraq with weapons, starting a war that killed millions of people. In the Iran-Contra Scandal, the US sold military weapons to Iran in exchange for hostages, using the proceeds to fund the Contra terrorists in Nicaragua.

In 1963, a CIA-backed military coup overthrew the republic of Iraq to prevent the nationalization of their oil supply, installing Saddam Hussein’s party in power. The US armed and supported Saddam Hussein’s brutal dictatorship in Iraq until 1989, providing the raw materials and plans for Iraq’s biological and chemical weapons.

CIA intervention in Afghanistan from 1979 to 1999 created a war that destroyed President Taraki’s reformist government, induced Soviet intervention, killed more than one million Afghans, installed the US-backed Taliban regime, and trained an army of terrorists, including CIA operative Osama bin Laden.

In December 1989, The US killed more than 3,000 people in its illegal invasion of Panama, more than four times as many people as were killed in Iraq’s subsequent invasion of Kuwait. On July 25, 1990, April Glaspie, the US Ambassador to Iraq, assured Saddam Hussein that the US had "no opinion on Arab-Arab conflicts like your border dispute with Kuwait.” She told Hussein that the US would not intervene militarily if Iraq invaded Kuwait. On August 1, Iraq invaded Kuwait. Since then, the United States and its coalition partners have killed millions of Iraqi people through military attacks, systematic destruction of Iraq’s infrastructure, invasion, and occupation.

Overwhelming evidence proves that 9/11 was a "false flag” operation orchestrated by top echelon traitors within the US government to create a false pretext for previously planned US military conquests, seizure of dwindling oil supplies, and destruction of our civil liberties. People who still deny that 9/11 was an inside job should examine the evidence at www.ae911truth.org and www.911truth.org and read David Ray Griffin’s books, "The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions" and "Debunking 9/11 Debunking."

In 2009, US government arms sales to foreign governments hit $38.1 billion. By 2002, the U.S. had given $240 billion in military aid to train, equip, and subsidize 2.3 million troops in more than 80 countries, including many military dictatorships. This military aid is used to suppress political dissent. For Fiscal Year 2011, U.S. military spending is $1,398 billion, including $721 billion for the misnamed "Department of Defense,” $155 billion for the military portion of other departments, $123 billion for veterans’ benefits, and $399 billion for interest on the military portion of the national debt. This spending accounts for 48% of federal income tax revenue. In 2008, US military spending was 41.5% of all military spending worldwide. See www.warresisters.org for details.

The American war against humanity must end. The US military must no longer be used for world domination.

Campaign Speech
October 22, 2010
Green Spaces, Denver

    

I would like to thank the Colorado Greens for supporting me as a Green Party candidate in the auction for Congress.

The United States doesn’t have real elections. Public offices are auctioned off to the highest bidder. Campaign financing corrupts the political process. Without campaign spending caps or public campaign financing, establishment candidates are essentially bought and paid for by corporate lobbyists. We need a fair system of public campaign financing that is not designed by Democrats to shut out minor party and independent candidates.

The corporate media only covers establishment candidates who represent their narrow agenda. They systematically ignore, exclude and marginalize dissidents who advocate genuine reform. The corporate media treats elections like horse races. They focus on distractions instead of real issues. Fake debates corrupt the political process, shutting out candidates who challenge the political establishment. Legitimate elections require fair media access and public forums that are open to all qualified candidates.

Vote fraud corrupted the presidential elections in 2000 and 2004, enabling George W. Bush to occupy the White House for eight years even though he was never elected president.

The winner-take-all voting system shuts out candidates who don’t represent the status quo. We need proportional representation to create legitimate legislative elections. Proportional voting systems enable political parties to win seats in legislative bodies in proportion to their share of the vote. Proportional representation allows most voters to elect representatives of their choice and makes every vote count.

The office of the president has become a military dictatorship, regardless of who holds the office. We must end the imperial presidency and decentralize political power.

Democratic elections are only meaningful when voters are well informed. However, in our country, voters are indoctrinated to believe nonsense. It’s like George Orwell’s novel, "1984" where “war is peace;” “freedom is slavery;” and “ignorance is strength.” Voters need a sense of reality to make intelligent, rational decisions about public policy.

The United States is not the leader of the free world. The United States has built the most extensive empire in history. Democrats and Republicans are partners in genocide, fascism and political corruption.  The US has committed war crimes against the people of more than 70 nations since the end of World War Two, murdering millions of people in the process of securing global economic imperialism. The US government’s crimes against humanity are always sold to the public on a foundation of lies.

The American Holocaust against the people of Afghanistan dates back to at least July of 1979, when war criminal Jimmy Carter authorized the CIA to arm and finance mercenary terrorists to overthrow the progressive government of Afghanistan. More than one million Afghan people were killed in the Soviet-Afghan War that the CIA started. The US government installed the Taliban in power and financed their regime until 2001.

American war crimes against the people of Iraq date back to at least 1963, when a CIA-backed coup overthrew the government of Iraq to prevent the nationalization of their oil. The US armed and supported Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship until 1989.

9/11 was a false flag operation carried out by the Bush Administration to create a false justification for their plans to conquer Afghanistan and Iraq, to develop new military technologies, and to destroy civil liberties at home. The political establishment has used the controlled demolition of the World Trade Center to stir up a fanatical bloodlust among the American people.

I oppose American imperialism. We must end all foreign wars NOW and restrict the US military to non-offensive defense of US territory. US foreign policy should focus strictly on humanitarian aid, respect for human rights, fair trade, and support for environmental sustainability.

On October 30th, there will be a so-called “Rally to Restore Sanity” in Denver’s City Park. What does it mean to restore sanity? When was sanity ever an American political value? Sane people don't build and maintain an arsenal of nuclear weapons capable of exterminating all life on Earth. Sane people don't pollute their environment to the point that they alter the planet's climate and cause the mass extinction of other species. Sane people don't sponsor dictatorships and death squads in the name of democracy. Sane people don't vote for genocidal sociopaths like Barack Obama, Michael Bennett and Diana DeGette. Sane people don't believe ridiculous fairy tales about Muslim terrorists who “hate our freedom.” Sane people deal with reality and focus on what's important rather than pursuing a narrow agenda of cultural warfare.

Tom Tancredo is the only minor party candidate who has received significant media attention in Colorado this year. Tancredo is running for governor on an agenda of anti-immigrant bigotry. If he gets more than 10% of the vote, the American Constitution Party will qualify as a major party. Despite its name, the Constitution Party advocates theocratic government based upon biblical law. We already have two fascist major parties in Colorado. We don’t need a third.

I oppose the racist scapegoating of immigrants. We must address the real causes of high immigration levels: an unsustainable, high consumption lifestyle in the United States; globalist economic policies that exploit Third World nations for the benefit of transnational corporations; and labor policies designed to drive down wages. We must reform international trade policies to protect labor, human rights, and the environment. Fair trade should promote local self-reliance, not foreign corporate domination. Permanent border passes should be granted to citizens of Mexico and Canada. It should be easy to get work permits that are not tied to a specific employer.

Without the environment, there is no economy.  Perpetual growth cannot continue within a finite environment. Climate change is happening now as a result of human industrial activity. We must reduce energy consumption at least 50% by 2030, restructuring our economy to run on solar, wind, geothermal and hydroelectric power. We must reduce greenhouse gas emissions at least 40% by 2020 and 95% by 2050. I support public investment to create jobs in energy conservation, renewable energy, sustainable agriculture, green construction and mass transportation. I support the use of carbon taxes to include environmental impacts in true cost pricing of new goods and services. We must create an environmentally sustainable economy.

Petrochemical agriculture threatens our health, food security and the environment. I support permaculture, organic farming and urban gardens.

The livestock industry contributes to global warming, land degradation, air and water pollution. We should shift subsidies from animal agriculture to plant based agriculture and small local farms.

Overpopulation threatens our future. Human population has grown from 1 billion in 1804 to 6.8 billion now. About one billion people around the world suffer from chronic malnutrition. More than one billion people lack access to safe drinking water. The World Wildlife Foundation’s “Living Planet Report, 2008” estimated that human ecological impact exceeds the Earth’s carrying capacity by 25%. About 5% of the world’s population lives in the United States, but the US accounts for 25% of global consumption and carbon dioxide emissions.  If the average human consumed as much as the average American, the World Wildlife Federation estimates that the Earth could not sustain a population of more than one and a half billion people. We need to change the way we live to reduce consumption and decrease population by reducing birth rates.

The Democratic Party has enacted health insurance policies based on corporate profits rather than public health. I support real health care reform through the creation of a single payer Medicare for All health insurance system that is not tied to employment. I support full public funding for family planning programs and public education about the overpopulation crisis.

I encourage you to not vote for any major party candidates for any office. The Democrats and Republicans represent a political culture of death and destruction. They represent illegal wars without end, environmental devastation, corporate greed, and contempt for human rights. A vote for a Democrat or a Republican is a vote to deny reality and bury your head in the tar sands.

Help grow the Green Party as a voice for genuine reform. Let’s work together to create an environmentally sustainable future based on social justice and respect for human rights, a future that values people over profits.

In late October, 2010, I participated in a four person panel discussion introducing the Green Party to political science students at Metro State College. Here was my opening speech as a Green Party candidate for Congress introducing the party to students:

The Green Party is a global movement that nominates candidates for public office in most democratic nations around the world. The world's first political parties with a predominantly environmental focus were the United Tasmania Group in Australia, the Values Party in New Zealand, and the Popular Movement for the Environment in Switzerland. These were all founded in 1972. Germany’s Green Party was founded in 1980, and it was the first Green Party to achieve national prominence. The German Green Party was founded upon the principles of social justice, grassroots democracy, nonviolence, and ecological wisdom. These “four pillars” became the foundation for the global Green movement. In 1984, the Green Committees of Correspondence in the United States expanded these four pillars into a statement of Ten Key Values, including Community-Based Economics, Decentralization, Future Focus or Sustainability, Feminism, Personal and Global Responsibility, and Respect for Diversity.

The Green Party has run candidates in the United States since 1985. In Colorado, Green Party candidates have run in every general election since 1994. As of the summer of 2009, about 160 Green Party candidates held elected offices in the United States, mostly at the local and county levels. Three Greens have been elected to state legislatures in California, Maine, and Arkansas. No Greens have been elected to federal offices in the United States.

Green Party candidates have been elected to national parliaments in many other countries, primarily because most democratic countries use proportional representation voting systems rather than the winner-take-all voting system that we use in the United States.

Proportional representation refers to voting systems in which political parties or candidates win representation in legislative bodies in proportion to their share of the votes. For example, if the Green Party wins five percent of the vote, they would win five percent of the seats in a legislature under a proportional voting system.

There are different forms of proportional representation. Under party list systems, each political party nominates a list of candidates to represent it in legislative elections. Under a single-transferable vote system, or (STV), voters rank individual candidates in their order of preference. First choice, second choice, and so forth. If a voter’s first choice doesn’t get enough votes to be elected, then their vote is transferred to their highest ranked candidate who can be elected. The same candidate ranking method is used for what is known in the US as instant run-off voting. However, instant-runoff voting is used in a single-member district to secure the election of the most popular candidate, while STV is used in multiple member districts to secure proportional representation. In a nine-member district, a candidate could be elected with one tenth of the vote. The national platform of the Green Party advocates proportional representation for legislative offices and instant-runoff voting for executive offices.

Australia combines STV with an alternative party list vote, for its Senate elections. 95% of Australian voters choose to cast what they call an “above the line” vote for a party, rather than ranking the individual candidates in what they call a “below the line” vote. As a Green Party candidate for Congress, I advocate unicameral state and national legislatures, elected by the method used for Australia's Senate elections, with some modifications to make them fully proportional.

True proportional representation enables most voters to elect representatives of their choice and makes every vote count. This eliminates the perceived problem of voting for the lesser of two evils under a two party system, while providing fair representation for a diverse population, and encouraging more substantive public debate of real issues.

Under the winner-take-all voting system that we have here, elections are largely a meaningless charade. The outcome of most elections is pre-determined by the demographics of each voting district. Most districts are dominated by a single party. The corporate media only covers establishment candidates who represent their narrow agenda. They ignore dissidents who advocate genuine reform and exclude them from candidate debates. The corporate media treats elections like horse races. They focus on distractions instead of real issues.

Campaign financing corrupts the political process, making elected officials indebted to the corporate interests that finance their expensive campaigns. As a Green Party candidate, I support a ban on corporate campaign contributions, a fair system of public campaign financing, caps on campaign spending, verifiable ballots, fair media access for all candidates, and public forums that are open to all candidates on the ballot.

The office of the president has become a military dictatorship, regardless of who holds the office. We must end the imperial presidency and decentralize political power.

The United States has built the most extensive empire in history. The US has engaged in illegal, immoral military attacks against the people of more than 70 nations since the end of World War Two, killing millions of people in the process of securing global economic imperialism. These war crimes are always sold to the public on a foundation of lies.

The US Green Party has consistently opposed illegal US military interventions, including the bombing, invasion, and occupation and Afghanistan and Iraq. We call for the immediate withdrawal of all US soldiers from Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. As a candidate for Congress, I advocate shutting down all foreign military bases, restricting the military to non-offensive defense of US territory, abolishing weapons of mass destruction, and eliminating the CIA. US foreign policy should focus strictly on humanitarian aid, respect for human rights, fair trade, and support for environmental sustainability.

I support a real criminal investigation into the US government’s role in 9/11 and prosecution of the people responsible for it.

I oppose the racist scapegoating of immigrants. We must address the real causes of high immigration levels: an unsustainable, high consumption lifestyle in the United States; economic globalization policies that exploit Third World nations for the benefit of transnational corporations; and labor policies designed to drive down wages. We must reform international trade policies to protect labor, human rights, and the environment. Fair trade should promote local self-reliance, not foreign corporate domination. I support international work permits that are not tied to a specific employer.

Without the environment, there is no economy. Perpetual growth cannot continue within a finite environment. Climate change is happening now as a result of human industrial activity. We must reduce energy consumption at least 50% by 2030, restructuring our economy to run on solar, wind, geothermal and hydroelectric power. We must reduce greenhouse gas emissions at least 40% by 2020 and 95% by 2050. I support public investment to create jobs in energy conservation, renewable energy, sustainable agriculture, green construction and mass transportation. I support the use of carbon taxes to include environmental impacts in true cost pricing of new goods and services. We must create an environmentally sustainable economy.

Petrochemical agriculture threatens our health, food security and the environment. I support permaculture, organic farming and urban gardens. The livestock industry contributes to global warming, land degradation, air and water pollution. We should shift subsidies from animal agriculture to plant based agriculture and small local farms.

Overpopulation threatens our future. Human population has grown from 1 billion in 1804 to 6.8 billion now. The World Wildlife Foundation’s “Living Planet Report, 2008” estimated that human ecological impact exceeds the Earth’s carrying capacity by 25%. About 5% of the world’s population lives in the United States, but the US accounts for 25% of global consumption and carbon dioxide emissions.

If the average human consumed as much as the average American, the World Wildlife Federation estimates that the Earth could not sustain a population of more than one and a half billion people. We need to change the way we live to reduce consumption and decrease population by reducing birth rates. I support full public funding for family planning programs and public education about the overpopulation crisis.

The insurance industry profits by denying patients the health care they need. The United States is the only industrialized nation without a national public health care program. I support real health care reform through the creation of a single payer health insurance program that is not tied to employment.

The Democrats and Republicans represent illegal wars without end, environmental devastation, corporate greed, and contempt for human rights. The Green Party is a voice for genuine reform. We welcome you to join us in working together to create an environmentally sustainable future based on social justice and respect for human rights, a future that values people over profits.

Shortly before the November election, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert hosted a "Rally to Restore Sanity" in Washington, DC, with satellite rallies in other cities. I spoke at the rally in Denver. Candidates were invited to wear costumes, but I was the only one who did that. I dressed up as an "Uncle Sam Grim Reaper." It was an Uncle Sam costume with skeleton hands, a skull mask, and a scythe. I took the mask off to make my speech:

Hi. My name is Gary Swing. I am the Green Party candidate for US Representative from District 1 in the current auction for Congress.

A reporter once asked Mohandas Gandhi what he thought about western civilization. Gandhi replied that he thought it would be a very good idea. I agree with him.

What does it mean to restore sanity? When was sanity ever an American political value? Sane people don't build and maintain an arsenal of nuclear weapons capable of exterminating all life on Earth. Sane people don't pollute their environment to the point that they alter the planet's climate and cause the mass extinction of other species. Sane people don't sponsor dictatorships and death squads in the name of freedom. Sane people don’t bomb hospitals and schools and churches and factories and power plants and water treatment facilities. Sane people don’t create 13 trillion dollars in national debt with bloated military budgets and corporate welfare. Sane people deal with reality and focus on what's important rather than pursuing a narrow agenda of cultural warfare.

The Green Party has consistently opposed illegal US military interventions, including the bombing, invasion, and occupation and Afghanistan and Iraq.

We demand the immediate withdrawal of all American soldiers from foreign wars. As a candidate for Congress, I advocate shutting down all foreign military bases, restricting the military to non-offensive defense of US territory, abolishing weapons of mass destruction, and eliminating the CIA. US foreign policy should focus strictly on humanitarian aid, respect for human rights, fair trade, and support for local self-reliance, not corporate globalization. I support a real criminal investigation into the US government’s role in 9/11 and prosecution of the people responsible for it.

Without the environment, there is no economy. Perpetual growth cannot continue within a finite environment. Climate change is happening now as a result of human industrial activity. We must reduce energy consumption at least 50% by 2030, restructuring our economy to run on solar, wind, geothermal and hydroelectric power. We must reduce greenhouse gas emissions at least 40% by 2020 and 95% by 2050.

I support public investment to create jobs in energy conservation, renewable energy, sustainable agriculture, green construction and mass transportation. I support the use of carbon taxes to include environmental impacts in true cost pricing of new goods and services.

Overpopulation threatens our future. Human population has grown from 1 billion in 1804 to 6.8 billion now. If the average human consumed as much as the average American, the World Wildlife Federation estimates that the Earth could not sustain a population of more than one and a half billion people. We need to change the way we live to reduce consumption and decrease population by reducing birth rates.

The insurance industry profits by denying patients the health care they need. I support real health care reform through the creation of a single payer health insurance program that is not tied to employment.

We need real election reform in the United States. That means electing legislators by proportional representation, eliminating corporate campaign contributions, creating a fair system of public campaign financing, placing caps on campaign spending, providing verifiable ballots, fair media access for all candidates, and public forums that are open to all candidates on the ballot.

We need a movement to establish sanity, not a rally to restore it. Voting for sanity means voting for the Green Party. We welcome you to join us in creating an environmentally sustainable future based on social justice and respect for human rights, a future that values people over profits.

I wrote the following editorial for the 2005 anniversary of the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor. I submitted it to the Rocky Mountain News and the Denver Post, but neither paper would publish it.

9/11: The Pearl Harbor of the 21st Century

     On September 11, 2001, George W. Bush wrote in his journal: "The Pearl Harbor of the 21st century took place today.” He was echoing the summary of a September, 2000 report titled “Rebuilding America’s Defenses” published by a neoconservative think tank called the Project for a New America (PNAC). This document proposed to create a "global Pax Americana” by a) establishing more U.S. military bases around the world; b) engaging in a series of military conquests to affect "regime change” in countries that were unfriendly to U.S. interests, starting with Iraq, followed by Iran, North Korea, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and ultimately China; and c) greatly increasing U.S. military spending, especially for anti-missile defense and space-based weapons systems. The report concluded that "the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor.”

     The American conquest of Afghanistan was also planned before the September 11th attacks. In June, 2001, the government of India publicly announced its support for the United States’ planned invasion of Afghanistan. Niaz Naik, a former Pakistani Foreign Secretary, was informed by senior American officials in mid-July that U.S. military action against Afghanistan would begin by the middle of October.    

     The architects of PNAC’s blueprint for American world domination included Florida Governor Jeb Bush and future high-ranking officials of George W. Bush’s administration, most notably Vice President Dick Cheney, Cheney’s Chief of Staff Lewis Libby, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, John Bolton (the Undersecretary of State for Disarmament), Richard Perle (the Chairman of the Defense Policy Board), and Zalmay Khalilzad (U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan). This elite group of policymakers would have understood the true significance of suggesting a "new Pearl Harbor” as a catalyst for their military agenda.

     The "official story” of Pearl Harbor Day is that Japan’s December 7, 1941 attack on the U.S. Pacific Fleet in Hawaii was an unprovoked sneak attack. However, historical evidence suggests that the attack on Pearl Harbor was engineered by the Roosevelt Administration to create public support for U.S. entry into World War II, just as the September 11th terrorist attacks were engineered by the Bush Administration to create public support for the U.S. conquest of Afghanistan, Iraq, and other Third World nations.

     The governments of Great Britain, the Netherlands, Australia, Peru, Korea, and the Soviet Union warned the U.S. that Japan was planning to attack Pearl Harbor. Robert Stinett, a decorated naval veteran of World War II who served under Lt. George Bush, examined thousands of U.S. government documents declassified under the Freedom of Information Act proving that FDR knew about the planned attack on Pearl Harbor but allowed it to happen.  The National Security Agency published in 1994 that the JN-25B code had been cracked in December, 1940. The entire Pearl Harbor attack plan was revealed in that code, which was regularly intercepted by U.S. military intelligence.

     Stinnett’s book, "Day of Deceit: The Truth about FDR and Pearl Harbor," exposed a previously secret strategy memo written on October 7, 1940 by Navy Lt. Commander and Japan expert Arthur McCollum, which outlined an eight point plan designed to provoke Japan into a first strike against the United States. These provocations included deploying U.S. warships in Japanese waters, seizing Japanese assets in the United States, and a total embargo on Japan. All eight points of this plan were carried out by FDR before the attack on Pearl Harbor. Internal Army and Navy inquiries in 1944 held FDR’s men in Washington, General George Marshall and Admiral Harold Stark, derelict of duty for withholding intelligence information from the commanders of the Pacific Fleet.

     Before the attack on Pearl Harbor, a Gallup Poll showed that 88% of Americans opposed U.S. involvement in the European War. Outrage over the attack instantly changed public sentiment, with Congress declaring war on Japan on December 8th. The same dynamic occurred with the September 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

     The Pearl Harbor and September 11th strikes both killed close to 3,000 Americans in devastating sneak attacks. In the case of 9/11, at least 11 other countries warned the U.S. about the attacks. However, the parallel between Pearl Harbor and September 11th ends here. Air Force fighter jets routinely intercept planes that stray off-course within 10 to 20 minutes, yet on 9/11, more than 90 minutes passed without any interceptions. Sophisticated anti-missile defenses should have shot down any aircraft approaching the Pentagon that did not broadcast a “friendly” Air Force transponder signal. Debris patterns and flight recorder data indicate that UA Flight 93 was shot down, rather than crashing as the official story proclaims. The collapse of the steel-framed twin towers and Building 7 at the World Trade Center could only have happened as the result of controlled demolition, using carefully placed explosives. David Ray Griffin’s book, "The New Pearl Harbor," presents overwhelming evidence that the Bush Administration was not only complicit in allowing the September 11th attacks to take place, but actively participated in executing the attacks and covering up the truth. Readers can examine the evidence for themselves at www.911truth.org
    
     The Bush Administration blamed Osama bin Laden, a CIA operative from the Soviet-Afghanistan War of the 1980s and his network of supporters for the 9/11 attacks, portraying "al-Qaeda” as an outside enemy that "hates American freedom.” In its documentary film, "The Terror Myth," the BBC concluded that al-Qaeda doesn’t even exist. Former British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook admitted to the UK Guardian that the name "al-Qaeda, literally 'the database,’ was originally the computer file of the thousands of mujahideen who were recruited and trained with help from the CIA to defeat the Russians.” Al-Qaeda is a database of terrorists trained by the CIA.  Michel Chossudovsky, the author of "War and Globalization: The Truth behind September 11," wrote: "When people across the U.S. find out that Al Qaeda is not linked to Saddam but is in fact a creation of the CIA and that the terrorist warnings are fabricated, the legitimacy of the Bush Administration will tumble like a deck of cards.”

     In World War Two, the United States fought against the Nazis and the Fascists. Pearl Harbor was a military attack by a real enemy, part of an Axis seeking world domination. Today, the United States is the power bent on world domination, and 9/11 shows all the signs of being a "false flag operation” – a government-staged attack against its own people, blamed on foreign enemies to create public support for foreign military aggression and authoritarianism at home. This "New Pearl Harbor” may in fact be a "New Reichstag Fire.”  On February 27, 1933, supporters of Hitler burned Germany’s parliament building and blamed it on the Communists, giving Hitler the opportunity to transform Germany from a democracy into a dictatorship.

I wanted to see the Halloween night premier of AMC's zombie apocalypse series, "The Walking Dead," but I don't have cable TV. So I surfed the channels of the lounge TV in my apartment building. I did find brain-dead zombies driven by an insane bloodlust to destroy everything in their path, but it was just campaign ads for Michael Bennet and Ken Buck. [These were the major party nominees for US Senate.]

Most Americans this year will be voting yet again for the zombie apocalypse, out of fear that if they don't vote for zombies, then the WRONG zombies will be elected. If you would prefer not to have the world overrun by roving hordes of flesh-eating zombies, it’s time to stop voting for Democratic and Republican zombies. Vote for the Green Party!

The most interesting issue on the ballot here this year is Denver’s Initiative 300, which would establish an extraterrestrial affairs commission to study evidence that visits to Earth by aliens have been covered up by the federal government.

Although I didn’t take a public position on Initiative 300 itself, I did state that if it passes, I hope Tom Tancredo will not be appointed to the extraterrestrial affairs commission. I’m concerned that his hatred of illegal aliens might provoke an inter-planetary conflict.

Westword’s website had a discussion about Initiative 300. I found a photo on Google Images of Cindy McCain drinking martinis in a hot tub with a bug-eyed gray alien. I posted the photo on the Initiative 300 discussion with the caption: “Cindy McCain says YES to extraterrestrial affairs.” I noticed that Lakewood also has an Initiative 300 on their ballot. Their Initiative 300 proposes to impound vehicles that belong to illegal aliens. I was wondering, if both Initiative 300s pass, will Lakewood start impounding the flying saucers of illegal aliens?

During the election campaign, I have been asked many questions about what positions I take on various issues. Some of these questions were very technical, while others were just silly.

Early in the campaign, somebody asked me where I expect the Green Party to be ten years from now. I said: “In FEMA detention camps.”

AOL sent out a rather silly national survey to candidates of all parties running for the US Congress. Only about five percent of these candidates returned the survey. AOL selected me as one of the ten candidates nationally whose answers they liked the most, and I was the only minor party candidate among those ten. AOL’s first question was: “Everyone is angry with politicians in Washington. Why do you want to be one of them?” I replied that: “I am running to oppose U.S. imperialism and tell the truth about the real crises we face today. The U.S. has committed war crimes against the people of more than 70 nations since the end of World War II, murdering millions of people while serving the economic interests of transnational corporations.”

AOL also asked me: “How long can you go without checking your BlackBerry?” I didn’t know what they were talking about, so I said that: “I would be concerned that my blackberries would start getting moldy after about a week. I would want to blend them into a smoothie before then.”

AOL asked: “If you could choose, what one super power would you like to have?” I replied that: “I would choose the power to make things disappear. I would make all the world's military weapons vanish.”

The Denver Compost Online sent me a very poorly written candidate survey. It phrased questions as double negatives. They also asked candidates an obviously biased yes or no question about the war in Afghanistan that candidates could not answer without expressing support for American war crimes against the people of Afghanistan.

Some of their bad questions – like this one -- did not provide a space for candidates to explain their position, while other apparently simple questions allowed a great deal of space for a detailed response. So I took advantage of those spaces. When they asked what religion I am, I wrote that I’m an atheist and a humanist. Then I wrote about issues related to the separation of church and state. When they asked about my family, I wrote that I was the youngest of six children, but that I am childless by choice. Then I wrote about the impacts of human overpopulation.

The Denver Compost asked what three things, other than faith, family, and friends, could you not live without? I stated the obvious: food, air, and water. But then I wrote about sustainable agriculture, greenhouse gases, and the problem of diminishing drinking water supplies. The Denver Compost survey concluded by asking candidates to complete the following sentence: “Most people are surprised to find out that I (dot dot dot).

I wrote: Most people are surprised to find out that I am on the ballot as a candidate for Congress. The corporate media only covers establishment candidates, not dissidents. The US doesn’t have real elections. Public offices are auctioned off to the highest bidder.
    
Plurality voting prevents fair representation and obstructs reform. Legitimate elections require proportional representation voting systems, public campaign financing, campaign spending caps, open forums, and fair media access.

Vote USA asked my position on approximately 10,000 different issues. When they asked for a general statement about government, I quoted Pierre-Joseph Proudhon: “To be governed is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-ridden, regulated, penned up, indoctrinated, preached at, checked, appraised, seized, censured, and commanded by beings who have neither title, knowledge nor virtue."

On the issue of term limits, I wrote that “I oppose term limits for members of Congress. I believe they should be required to serve the full length of the prison terms that are appropriate for the crimes that they commit while in office.”

When Vote USA asked my opinion of military adequacy, I asked: “If they didn't feel so inadequate, why do they feel the need to build so many big missiles? And why do they feel so insecure about allowing gay people to join the military?”

In response to their question about Visa enforcement, I wrote that there is already a late fee for missing a VISA card payment, and your interest rate can be jacked up dramatically.

Vote USA asked my position on alien minors, so I said that I’m opposed to forcing extraterrestrials to work in mines. They requested a general statement about space, so I wrote: “It's big. I mean really big. So vastly, enormously big, you can't even wrap your mind around it.”

They asked what‘s my opinion of “exposing children to gay couples?” I replied by asking, “wouldn’t that be child pornography?” In response to their question about obscenity laws, I quoted Lenny Bruce. He said: "Take away the right to say "F*CK" and you take away the right to say "F*CK THE GOVERNMENT." Asked for a statement about indecency in the media, I wrote: “Turn off Fox News.”

Yesterday, I received an email message announcing that the Cannabis Therapy Institute will be hosting a kickoff event in Boulder for their Legalize 2012 initiative campaign on Wednesday evening. I strongly support the Legalize 2012 campaign. It is high time that we ought to repeal all of the reactionary, regressive laws that prohibit the year 2012 from taking place. It is vitally important that we legalize 2012 NOW -- before it's too late. Otherwise, the world will end at midnight on the evening of December 31st, 2011. I also support full legalization of marijuana. Although I don't believe the issue of marijuana legalization has quite as much urgency as preventing the end of the world, if the world should somehow manage to avoid total obliteration, then marijuana legalization could help make life on Earth more pleasant.

If the year 2012 is successfully legalized; if the world doesn’t end; and if the United States continues the charade of pretending to hold elections, I will look forward to supporting the campaigns of other Green Party candidates in future sham elections.
        
          
        
        
          
        
      
    



    
      

Overpopulation in the Year of Seven Billion

Statement by Gary Swing
2010 Green Party Candidate for US Representative (CD1, Colorado)
Earth Day Rally
Denver State Capitol, West Steps
April 22, 2011, 3-5pm

Without the environment, there is no economy.  Perpetual growth cannot continue within a finite environment.

Overpopulation is the most critical problem facing humanity. Overpopulation is a product of the number of people on Earth multiplied by their per capita consumption and waste production. Population growth is unsustainable. A short-term supply of cheap, abundant fossil fuels has temporarily enabled human population to greatly exceed the carrying capacity of the planet. World population grew from 1 billion in 1804 to 2 billion in 1927. When the first Earth Day was held in 1970, there were 3.7 billion people on Earth. World population is expected to reach 7 billion this year and 9 billion by 2040.

In 2010, the World Wildlife Foundation’s “Living Planet Report” estimated that human ecological impact exceeded the Earth’s carrying capacity by 50%. In the Western Hemisphere, the United States and Mexico have the most severe overpopulation problem. The US and Mexico each have an ecological impact about twice the carrying capacity of their land, but the average person in the United States has three times the ecological impact of the average person in Mexico. The United States now has a population of about 311 million people, but our land only has the biological capacity to support a maximum of 149 million people today at current levels of consumption.

In 2010, the Optimum Population Trust used ecological footprint data from 130 countries to create an Overpopulation Index, measuring per capita consumption against the biologically productive capacity of each nation’s land. They concluded that 77 countries already have unsustainable populations because they consume more than their land can produce. The most unsustainable societies are concentrated in Europe, North America, and the Middle East.

The United States now has the fifth highest per capita ecological footprint of any nation and the biggest impact of any large nation. About 5% of the world’s population lives in the United States, but the US accounts for 25% of global consumption and carbon dioxide emissions. If the average person on Earth had as much ecological impact as the average American, the Earth could not support a population of more than one and a half billion people.

Human demand on the biosphere more than doubled from 1961 to 2005. Nearly 1 billion people now suffer from chronic malnutrition and lack access to adequate drinking water. Global carrying capacity will shrink with the effects of fossil fuel depletion, destructive agricultural practices, deforestation, and climate change.  

Human population has grown by 4 billion since the “Green Revolution” started in 1950, using petrochemical fertilizers, pesticides, and hydrocarbon fueled irrigation to increase grain production by 250%. Per capita world grain production started declining in 1983. With the peak of global oil and natural gas production, petrochemical agriculture techniques cannot be sustained. A 2009 report from the Department of Energy projected that global production of all liquid fuels, including oil, will drop by 2030 to about half of what it is today, while energy demand continues to rise.

At the 1996 Earth Summit, the Presidential Council on Sustainable Development concluded that the world’s human population should not exceed 500 million people. The UN Biodiversity Assessment of 1994 concluded: “A reasonable estimate for an industrialized world society at the present North American material standard of living would be one billion people.”

We need to change the way we live to reduce consumption and decrease population by reducing global birth rates to no more than one child per family until we achieve a sustainable level. We need full public funding for family planning programs worldwide and public education about the overpopulation crisis. We should use carbon taxes to account for environmental impacts in true cost pricing of new goods. We must reduce global energy consumption at least 50% by 2030, restructuring our economy to run on solar, wind, geothermal and hydroelectric power. Petrochemical agriculture threatens our health, food security and the environment. The livestock industry contributes to global climate change, land degradation, and air and water pollution. We should shift subsidies from animal agriculture to plant based agriculture and small, local farms. We must create an environmentally sustainable economy to achieve a sustainable population.

“All murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.”
– Voltaire

“No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.”
– Voltaire

“To be truthful about it, there was no way we could have got the public consent to have suddenly launched a campaign against Afghanistan but for what happened on September 11.”
– Tony Blair, comments to Commons liason committee, July 17, 2002


BACKGROUND TO U.S. OCCUPATION OF AFGHANISTAN

CIA intervention in Afghanistan from 1979 to 1999 created the Taliban regime and the terrorist network that establishment politicians and corporate media now identify as “al-Qaeda.” Al-Qaeda was originally the name of a database of the Islamic Conference the CIA used to recruit mercenary terrorists in Afghanistan.

The history of CIA intervention in Afghanistan from 1979 to 1999 is explained in the books “The Terrorism Trap: September 11 and Beyond” by political analyst Michael Parenti and “Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower” by investigative journalist William Blum.

Historically, Afghanistan was an agrarian feudalist monarchy in which a small elite controlled the vast majority of the wealth, while most of the people lived in dire poverty. In 1973, the monarchy was overthrown and replaced with an autocracy. In 1978, a massive anti-government demonstration was held in front of the presidential palace. The military intervened to support this popular uprising and overthrew the autocracy. Military officers invited the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) to form a new government under the leadership of Noor Mohammed Taraki, a poet and novelist.

Taraki’s reform government legalized labor unions, established a minimum wage, a progressive income tax, a literacy campaign, and programs to improve public access to health care, housing and public sanitation. The PDP opened up public education to girls and women in a society where women had been greatly oppressed. Taraki cancelled debts owed by farmers and instituted land reforms. The new government also began efforts to stop the cultivation of opium poppy. Before then, Afghanistan had produced more than 70% of the opium used to make heroin.

The PDP government had popular support, but feudal landowners opposed its agricultural reforms. Fundamentalist mullahs opposed its dedication to gender equality and the education of women and children. On July 3, 1979, President Carter (the future Nobel Peace Prize winner) issued an executive order instructing the CIA to provide military aid and training to Islamic fundamentalist terrorists in Afghanistan to overthrow Taraki's moderate socialist government. The CIA, together with the Saudi and Pakistani military, began large-scale intervention to overthrow the government with the assistance of feudal lords, fundamentalist mullahs, and drug traffickers.

The U.S. provided large amounts of military aid to Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the head of the Islamic Party, whose "followers first gained attention by throwing acid in the faces of women who refused to wear the veil." According to the Washington Post at the time, "a favorite tactic" of these terrorists was "to torture victims by first cutting off their noses, ears, and genitals, then removing one slice of skin after another," producing "a slow, very painful death."

When President Carter issued his executive order authorizing intervention in Afghanistan, National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski offered his opinion that "this aid was going to induce a Soviet intervention."

Asked in 1998 if he regretted the Carter Administration's aid to the mujahideen in 1979, Brzezinski replied: "Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Soviet Union into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter: "We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam War." Brzezinski, who was proud of the key role that he played in instigating the Soviet-Afghan War, later became the top foreign policy advisor for Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. Brzezinski wrote the book, “The Grand Chessboard,” proposing a strategy for American domination of Eurasia, with a focus on seizing control of the world’s major remaining oil and natural gas supplies. Members of the Project for A New American Century (including Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz) who later became top officials of George W. Bush's administration proposed using a "new Pearl Harbor" as a public justification for the plans they outlined in “Rebuilding America’s Defenses” (September, 2000) to seize control of nations with oil and natural gas supplies, implement a massive military buildup, and develop new weapons technologies including genetically targeted biological weapons which they described as “a politically useful tool.” The 9/11 false flag operation became the "new Pearl Harbor" event that they used to implement their agenda.

In September 1979, Hafizulla Amin, a CIA operative within the Taraki government, seized power in an armed coup backed by the CIA. Amin executed Taraki, ended the reforms, and killed, imprisoned or exiled thousands of Taraki’s supporters as he began to create a fundamentalist Islamic theocracy. However, within two months, Amin was deposed by supporters of the PDP.

The re-established PDP government asked the Soviets to intervene to help them fight the mujahideen and foreign mercenaries who were being recruited by the CIA. On December 24, 1979, the Soviet Union intervened in Afghanistan at the request of the PDP government. The U.S. government called this an “invasion.” The Carter Administration feigned “outrage” at this “invasion.” President Carter used this as a pretext for increasing military aid to the CIA’s mercenary terrorists in Afghanistan, imposing a grain embargo against the Soviet Union, withdrawing the U.S. Olympic Team from the 1980 Moscow Olympics, and reinstating registration for the draft in the United States.

The People’s Democratic Party resumed the implementation of its reform programs. Meanwhile, the CIA-backed mujahideen carried out terrorist attacks on schools and teachers in rural areas. Nevertheless, Afghan women made significant progress in the 1980s. Fifty percent of college students were women and women held seven seats in parliament.

The US and Saudi Arabia spent about $40 billion to fund the war in Afghanistan. Using the “al-Qaeda” database, the CIA recruited, supplied, and trained nearly 100,000 radical Muslims from 40 countries to fight as mercenaries against the PDP government. Osama bin Laden and his cohorts were among these mercenaries.

The Soviets left Afghanistan in February 1989 after a long, bloody war. The PDP government continued fighting against American mercenaries until it fell in 1992. When the mujahideen took over, they fought among themselves. They ravaged Afghanistan, conducted mass executions, closed schools, and raped thousands of women and girls. Amnesty International reported that they used rape as “a method of intimidating vanquished populations and rewarding soldiers.” The CIA-backed mujahideen ordered farmers to grow opium poppy. Arundhati Roy reported in The Guardian that “within two years of the CIA’s arrival, the Pakistan-Afghanistan borderland had become the biggest producer of heroin in the world, and the single biggest source of the heroin on American streets.”

Many of the CIA-trained mujahideen extremists graduated to terrorist careers in Algeria, Chechnya, Kosovo, and Kashmir. Most of the terrorists involved in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center were mujahideen. Sheik Omar Abdul Rahman, the leader of a group of terrorists convicted of a plot to bomb the United Nations in 1995, was a former mujahideen operative who obtained his U.S. visa from a CIA agent.

In 1994, the CIA decided to finance an extremist faction in Afghanistan that wanted to impose strict Islamic fundamentalist law. Within a year, this Taliban faction seized control over most of the country. The atrocities committed by the totalitarian Taliban theocracy have been well publicized by the American media as part of the effort to stir up war fever. What has not been so well publicized is the fact that the US government paid the salary of all Taliban government officials until 1999, and continued to provide economic aid to them until 2001. Occupants of the White House never expressed concern about the plight of women in Afghanistan until October 2001, when it became part of the public justification for the American bombing which killed more than 5,000 Afghan civilians directly and unknown numbers through the indirect impacts of military attacks.

CIA intervention in Afghanistan from 1979 to 1999 destroyed a government dedicated to modernizing one of the world’s most backward countries. The war killed more than a million Afghans, with another three million disabled and five million refugees, in total about half of the population. The CIA’s intervention trained thousands of Islamic terrorists and produced brutal repression of women by the Taliban. John Ryan, the author of “Afghanistan: A Forgotten Chapter,” concluded that if the US had left the Taraki government alone in 1979, “there would have been no army of mujahideen, no Soviet intervention, no war that devastated Afghanistan, no Osama bin Laden, and no Sept. 11 tragedy.” The problem with Ryan’s conclusion here was that he accepted the official lie that Osama bin Laden and his cohorts were responsible for the 9/11 attacks. The 9/11 attacks were in fact a false flag operation carried out by elements within the U.S. military intelligence establishment with the support of top government officials including Bush and Cheney to create a false pretext for the U.S. invasion and occupation of Afghanistan.

The Guardian reported: "In 1998, Dick Cheney, now US vice-president but then chief executive of a major oil services company, remarked: 'I cannot think of a time when we have had a region emerge as suddenly to become as strategically significant as the Caspian. But the oil and gas there is worthless until it is moved. The only route which makes both political and economic sense is through Afghanistan.'"

There was a fierce competition between the U.S. supported UNOCAL and Bridas of Argentina to secure an agreement with the Taliban to construct an oil and natural gas pipeline from the rich oil fields in Turmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan, through Afghanistan and Pakistan, to the Indian Ocean. When George W. Bush was installed in the White House, he immediately reopened negotiations with the Taliban to secure a favorable contract for UNOCAL and ensure U.S. control over Central Asian fossil fuels.

Bush Administration and Taliban officials met several times in Washington, Berlin and Islamabad. Each time, the Taliban refused to accept Bush’s conditions for a pipeline agreement. The last meeting took place in August, 2001. Central Asian affairs representative Chritina Rocca and other State Department officials expressed disgust and threatened the Taliban ambassador: “Accept our offer of gold or we will bury you under a carpet of bombs.”

In June 2001, the government of India publicly announced its support for the United States’ planned invasion of Afghanistan. Niaz Naik, a former Pakistani Foreign Secretary, was informed by senior American officials in July that U.S. military action against Afghanistan would begin by the middle of October. President Bush was given detailed plans for a U.S. invasion of Afghanistan on September 9, 2001, two days before 9/11. The Bush Administration started bombing Afghanistan on October 7. The 9/11 false flag operation provided a pretext for this “carpet of bombs.” More than 5,000 Afghans were murdered in the U.S. bombing and invasion of their country.

Conveniently, Ahmed Shah Massoud, the Commander of the United Front guerilla movement and leader of the Afghan opposition to the Taliban regime was assassinated on September 9, 2001, two days before 9/11. As Afghanistan’s national hero, he would have been the presumed head of state under a post-Taliban government. Two Arab men posing as journalists carried out the assassination. One was killed by his own bomb in the attack; the other was shot to death while trying to escape.

With Massoud out of the way, the U.S. installed Hamid Karzai, a former UNOCAL executive, as the new Afghan head of state, with former UNOCAL aide Zalmay Khlailzad as President Bush’s special envoy to the new puppet government. Khalilzad had participated in UNOCAL’s talks with the Taliban in 1997 and he had been a special advisor to the State Department during the Reagan Administration, where he was instrumental in arming the mujahideen. On December 27, 2002, Karzai signed a deal for a natural gas pipeline. U.S. military bases were established along the proposed pipeline route.

“Pressure resulting from unrestrained population growth puts demands on the natural world that can overwhelm any efforts to achieve a sustainable future.”
-- “World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity,” 1993


Overpopulation is the most critical problem facing humanity. Overpopulation is a product of the number of people on Earth multiplied by their per capita consumption and waste production. Population growth is unsustainable. A short-term supply of cheap, abundant fossil fuels has temporarily enabled human population to greatly exceed the carrying capacity of the planet. World population has grown rapidly from 1 billion in 1804 to 2 billion in 1927, 3 billion in 1960 and 6.8 billion today. World population is projected to reach 9 billion by 2040.

The World Wildlife Foundation’s “Living Planet Report, 2008” estimated that human ecological impact now exceeds the Earth’s ecological carrying capacity by 25%. In the Western Hemisphere, the United States and Mexico have the most severe overpopulation problem. The US and Mexico each have an ecological footprint (impact) about twice the carrying capacity of their land, but the average person in the United States has three times the ecological impact of the average person in Mexico.

The United States has the second highest per capita ecological footprint of any nation (9.4 hectares per person). The United States has the world’s worst overpopulation problem because we consume and waste the most. About 5% of the world’s population lives in the United States, but the US accounts for 25% of global consumption and carbon dioxide emissions. The “American way of life” that George H.W. Bush said is “not negotiable,” is made possible by extracting the wealth of other nations through imperialism.

If the average human had the same ecological impact as the average American, the Earth could now support a maximum of 1.45 billion people, with no room left for nature. Human demand on the biosphere more than doubled from 1961 to 2005. About one billion people now suffer from chronic malnutrition. Global carrying capacity will shrink with the effects of fossil fuel depletion, destructive agricultural practices, deforestation, and climate change.

Human population has grown by 4 billion since the “Green Revolution” started in 1950, using petrochemical fertilizers, pesticides, and hydrocarbon fueled irrigation to increase grain production by 250%. With the peak of global oil and natural gas production, these agricultural techniques cannot be sustained. A 2009 report from the Department of Energy projected that global production of all liquid fuels, including oil, will drop by 2030 to about half of what it is today, while energy demand continues to rise.

At the 1996 Earth Summit, the Presidential Council on Sustainable Development concluded that the world’s human population should not exceed 500 million people. The UN Biodiversity Assessment of 1994 concluded: “A reasonable estimate for an industrialized world society at the present North American material standard of living would be one billion people.”

Achieving a sustainable human population requires both a reduction in global birth rates substantially below replacement level and a radical restructuring of our way of life to reduce our ecological impact. We must move away from our energy intensive, mass consumption, automobile centered economy and destructive meat-based diet. We need to shift away from globalization toward decentralization, voluntary simplicity, a low-energy economy using appropriate technology and renewable resources, alternative transportation, and a plant-based diet.