NORMAN SOLOMON – Willingness to challenge Wall Street would certainly alienate some of the Democratic Party’s big donors. And such moves would likely curb the future earning power of high-ranking party officials, who can now look forward to upward spikes in incomes from consultant deals and cushy positions at well-heeled firms. With eyes on the prizes from corporate largesse, DNC officials don’t see downsides to whacking at WikiLeaks and undermining press freedom in the process.
Category: April 2018
Compassionate Immigration Policy: Can We Unlock the Golden Door?
ROBERT KOEHLER – The concept of the nation, an imaginary configuration of interests protected by military strength, is becoming increasingly obsolete. The United States, as the planet’s largest superpower, must find the will and leadership to reopen itself to values beyond those coldly enforced by ICE.
In Victory for Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, Court Finds That Approval of Dakota Access Pipeline Violated the Law
EL – The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe won a significant victory today in its fight to protect the Tribe’s drinking water and ancestral lands from the Dakota Access pipeline. A federal judge ruled that the federal permits authorizing the pipeline to cross the Missouri River just upstream of the Standing Rock reservation, which were hastily issued by the Trump administration just days after the inauguration, violated the law in certain critical respects.
Which Nations Are the Happiest?
LAWRENCE WITTNER – It appears that the pursuit of ever-greater wealth and military power by national governments doesn’t necessarily create happiness for their people. By contrast, governments that seek to improve everyone’s lives―or, in the words of the preamble to the U.S. Constitution, “promote the general welfareâ€â€•do a much better job of it.
Towards a New Activism to Effectively Support a Transition to a Post-Growth Economy
MICHA NARBERHAUS – To this day, few civil society organisations are promoting the much-needed transition to a new economic system based on the principles of ecological limits, solidarity, human well-being, and intergenerational justice, nor are many organisations embracing the complexity of systemic change in their strategies, campaigns, and projects.
“Qualified Immunity” Shields Police from Accountability
LAURA FINLEY – Ending police abuse is going to take continued vigilance and a multi-faceted approach. But one important way to hold police accountable is for citizens to be able to bring and win civil suits. Today, the playing field for doing so is so deeply tilted toward protecting police that there is no semblance of accountability in the legal realm
Policy Toward Syria: The Least Bad Option
MEL GURTOV – Protect innocent civilians, gain the removal from Syria of as many occupying forces as possible, let Assad learn what it means to be dependent on Russia—these are all that is left of a Syria policy.
Time for the Truth about Lynchings Past and Present
ROBERT KOEHLER – We’re not who we think we are. We sanitize our past and call it heritage. We sanitize the present and call it justice. It’s time to start looking at the truth in all directions.
Seven Kings Bay Plowshares Activists Arrested inside Trident Nuclear Submarine Base
THE NUCLEAR RESISTER (a posting) – Seven Catholic plowshares activists were detained early Thursday morning, April 5, at the Kings Bay Naval Base in St. Mary’s, Georgia. They entered on Wednesday night, April 4. Calling themselves Kings Bay Plowshares, they went to make real the prophet Isaiah’s command: “beat swords into plowshares.”
New Cabinet Appointments Likely to Prompt Worsening of International Relations
MEL GURTOV – With the appointments of Mike Pompeo as secretary of state and John Bolton as national security adviser, Donald Trump has signaled his preparedness by the May 12 deadline to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal and ramp up pressure on North Korea if it refuses to denuclearize. The two moves would have interactive consequences.
Russia Madness on the Eve of Destruction: Hegemony Trumps Survival
PAUL STREET – Given the current state and rate of environmental destruction, the continuing advance in the destructive power of nuclear weapons systems, and the likelihood of pandemics in a warmer and more globalized world, there are good reasons to wonder if a human civilization with historians will exist a century from today. We may well be standing near the “end of history,†and not the glorious bourgeois-democratic one that Francis Fukuyama imagined with the end of the Cold War.
Students: Time is Ripe to Add Gender to Gun Debate
ROB OKUN – Students: keep up the pressure to ensure legislators pass assault weapons bans. Demand they raise the age requirement to purchase firearms. Insist on funding for mental health screenings. Also, please don’t forget to press for research dollars and training initiatives on how we raise boys.
Courtroom Science Lab: Federal Judge Tutored in Climate Change
DAVID DEBOLT – Opponents in a lawsuit rarely find themselves in the same corner of a legal boxing match. In federal court here on March 21, though, the gloves stayed on: Leading climate change experts and oil industry representatives largely agreed our planet is warming, our seas rising.
Action Needed to Save Representative Democracy
RICK ULFIK – Our system of Representative Democracy has been increasingly failing us.
Anti-Pipeline Campaigners Found Not Guilty by Judge Because ‘Protest against Climate Change Crisis’ was Legal ‘Necessity’
ANDREW BUNCOMBE – More than a dozen protesters who clambered into holes dug for a high pressure gas pipeline said they had been found not responsible by a judge after hearing them argue their actions to try and stop climate change were a legal “necessityâ€.