HARVEY WASSERMAN – The shutdowns of Pilgrim and Three Mile Island mark huge victories for jobs, the economy, and the climate. If green advocates can now win in Ohio and Pennsylvania and roll back the insanity in New York, New Jersey, and Illinois, the march of the shutdowns just might outrun the next meltdown. Stay tuned!
Category: Archive
Pentagon Wastes Taxpayer Dollars, GAO Study Finds
RICHARD SISK – Major Problems Persist With the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle (JLTV), Zumwalt Destroyer, GAO Finds.
Trump’s Policy of Baiting Iran is Immoral and Does Not Serve US Interests
MEL GURTOV – This US policy of regime change in Iran is absolutely inexcusable: It is aggressive and baseless, oblivious to diplomacy, and guaranteed to cause untold hardship and chaos for the people of the region.
A Green New Deal Needs to Fight US Militarism
PHYLLIS BENNIS – The Green New Deal must have anti-militarism at its core. Wars and the military render impossible the aspirations contained in the Green New Deal. And slashing the out-of-control military budget is crucial to provide the billions of dollars we need to create a sustainable and egalitarian economy.
How to Dismantle the Absurd Profitability of Nuclear Weapons
JON SCHWARZ – The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists currently has its Doomsday Clock set to two minutes to midnight — the closest we’ve been to self-obliteration in nuclear history.
Oregon Agency Says No To Jordan Cove LNG Project
ALLIE ROSENBLUTH – Oregon denies critical clean water act permit for Jordan Cove LNG.
Why So Many Journalists Are Clueless About the Bernie 2020 Campaign
NORMAN SOLOMON – Mainstream journalists routinely ignore the essential core of the Bernie 2020 campaign. As far as they’re concerned, when Bernie Sanders talks about the crucial importance of grassroots organizing, he might as well be speaking in tongues. Mainstream journalists routinely ignore the essential core of the Bernie 2020 campaign. As far as they’re concerned, when Bernie Sanders talks about the crucial importance of grassroots organizing, he might as well be speaking in tongues.
It’s Time to Try Fossil-Fuel Executives for Crimes Against Humanity
KATE ARONOFF – It isn’t hyperbole to say that fossil-fuel executives are mass murderers. We should put them on trial for crimes against humanity.
Pentagon Spending Set to Hit Near-Record Levels, But ‘Establishment Says We Can’t Afford’ Progressive Policies
JAKE JOHNSON – The Congressional Progressive Caucus asserts that “very few in Congress are questioning how the U.S. can afford to spend $7.5 trillion on the military.”
North American Drilling Boom Threatens Big Blow to Climate Efforts, Study Finds
OLIVER MILLMAN – More than half of the world’s new oil and gas pipelines are located in North America, with a boom in US oil and gas drilling set to deliver a major blow to efforts to slow climate change, a new report has found.
Trump Missed Another Great Opportunity with North Korea
MEL GURTOV – Trump was correct to describe denuclearization last June as a lengthy “process†that one summit meeting could not achieve. However, the second summit, in Hanoi at the end of February 2019, again showed that personal diplomacy divorced from an engagement process that incorporates flexibility and give-and-take raises the risk of failure.
New Analysis Shows Why Democrats Are Wrong to Fear Bold Embrace of Medicare for All
JULIA CONLEY – “November’s election results show that universal, higher-quality, lower-cost health care through Medicare for All is all moral upside—without political downside.”
Why Americans Need to Act Like the Majority We Already Are
OMNESHA ROYCHOUDHURI – The next time someone tries to tell you it’s hopeless or that we need to “reach across the aisle,†because we’ve never been more divided, tell them they’re right. We’ve never been more divided: Over decades, the Democratic and Republican platforms have become increasingly out of touch. The real divide in America is between what the majority of us want and need, and what a tiny minority — a handful of extremists in power — have been offering.
Why We Won’t Quit the Climate Fight
KATHLEEN DEAN MOORE and SUEELLEN CAMPBELL – Friends and experts may tell us we’re doomed, but there are too many reasons to keep pushing for climate action
Things Congress Could Do for Peace, From Easiest to Hardest
DAVID SWANSON – Congress can take innumerable steps. some easy, some difficult, to advance peace.
Democrats Are Afraid Of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Too. And That’s A Good Thing.
NORMAN SOLOMON – Turning the Democratic Party into a truly progressive force will require turning “primary†into a verb. The corporate Democrats who dominate the party’s power structure in Congress should fear losing their seats because they’re out of step with constituents. And Democratic voters should understand that if they want to change the party, the only path to do so is to change the people who represent them. Otherwise, the leverage of Wall Street and the military-industrial complex will continue to hold sway.
Grassroots Catholics Challenge Congress to “Face the Crisis”
MARYKNOLL OFFICE FOR GLOBAL CONCERNS – January 18, 2019—On the occasion of Martin Luther King Day on January 21, eleven national and international Catholic justice and peace organizations delivered a joint statement to Congress today, entitled “Facing the Crisis: A Catholic Offer of Wisdom and Courage to Congress†which calls on Members to courageously take the first steps to end the political polarization that the group says is eroding democracy in the United States.
The Democrats Can Only Move Left
HARVEY WASSERMAN – The Democratic Party has nowhere to go but left. The faux mantra from bloviating experts, petulant pundits, and high-priced consultants has been droning on since the coming of Ronald Reagan: the Democrats must forever tack right to attract “swing†conservatives in the “mainstream middle†between the two parties. But in the Age of Trump, such voters are all but extinct. The middle ground has cratered. The swing constituency (if it ever existed) has disappeared into the abyss. What matters now is excitement, commitment, clarity, and REAL CHANGE … none of which can come with a corporate/compromised agenda.
Green New Deal Must Abolish War Preparations
ROBERT KOEHLER – The Green New Deal needs to go further than it does. Since it’s already being pilloried as the most radical piece of legislation in modern history, it might as well open itself up to become just that: the cornerstone of a truly sustainable national and global future. The Deal should take on militarism and war as well as climate change and poverty; they are all linked.
Four Reasons the Corporate Media Refuses to Talk About Things That Matter
THOM HARTMANN – Ever since the media began, in a big way in the 1980s, to ignore actual news and go for highly dumbed-down or even salacious stories, many of us who work in the media have been astonished by this behavior by the network and cable news organizations and the major newspapers. They used to report the details of policy proposals in great detail (see this report from the 1970s about Richard Nixon’s proposal for universal health care, comparing his with Ted Kennedy’s, for example). But since the Reagan era, the networks have largely kept their coverage exclusively to personality, scandal, and horse race.
Award-Winning Journalist Quits NBC Over Relentless Support For War
WILLIAM M. ARKIN – January 4 is my last day at NBC News and I’d like to say goodbye to my friends, hopefully not for good. This isn’t the first time I’ve left NBC, but this time the parting is more bittersweet, the world and the state of journalism in tandem crisis. My expertise, though seeming to be all the more central to the challenges and dangers we face, also seems to be less valued at the moment. And I find myself completely out of synch with the network, being neither a day-to-day reporter nor interested in the Trump circus.
Action Needed to Prevent Brazilian Indigenous Genocide and Protect the Amazon
J. P. LINSTROTH – It is official. On the first of the year, Jair Bolsonaro, was inaugurated as the 38thPresident of Brazil. One of his first official acts as a newly inaugurated president was doing away with demarcation of indigenous territories in Brazil. All of us living on this planet should be fearful of this act.
Beatrice Fihn Is Banning Nuclear Weapons, With or Without Us
EMILY MOON – Beatrice Fihn has spent 12 years working on a campaign to prohibit nuclear weapons, and, as she says, compiling rational arguments and scientific evidence, yet less informed strangers will still pick a fight. But, she adds, “I prefer to argue with politicians than people on the street.” Indeed, she has advanced her arguments and will never give up the fight.
The United States is First in War, But Trailing in Crucial Aspects of Modern Civilization
LAWRENCE WITTNER -Maintaining the U.S. status as “No. 1†in war and war preparations comes at a very high price. That price is not only paid in dollars—plus massive death and suffering in warfare―but in the impoverishment of other key sectors of American life. After all, this lavish outlay on the military now constitutes about two-thirds of the U.S. government’s discretionary spending. And these other sectors of American life are in big trouble.
The Green New Deal Promises Peace and Progress. Will Nuclear Advocates Undermine it?
HARVEY WASSERMAN – The environmental policy centerpiece of the incoming Democratic House of Representatives has ignited tremendous grassroots enthusiasm, but it faces many challenges, including from nuclear advocates who could undermine it?
Talk Now. A Nuclear Conflict is Unwinnable
WAR PREVENTION INITIATIVE — Press Release – The War Prevention Initiative strongly argues that there is no military solution to the rising tensions on the Korean Peninsula and that all sectors of society need to disrupt the escalation and insist on talks.
Mayors for Peace Call for Early Adoption of Nuclear Abolition Treaty
MAYORS FOR PEACE – “We call on the cities around the world to unite in cross-border cooperation to pave the way towards the abolition of nuclear weapons.†This call made by the Mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki led to the establishment of “Mayors for Peace.†Since then, we have appealed for the establishment of a legal framework to prohibit nuclear weapons as we believed it to be essential in achieving their abolition.
Ann Wright Wins 2017 Peace Prize
U.S. PEACE MEMORIAL FOUNDATION – We are pleased to announce that the US Peace Memorial Foundation has awarded its 2017 Peace Prize to The Honorable Ann Wright “for courageous antiwar activism, inspirational peace leadership, and selfless citizen diplomacy.â€
Don’t Feed the Trolls – How to Combat the Alt-Right
KAZU HAGA – Nazism and white supremacy are forms of violence. Let’s start there. The constitution does not protect violence, and I’m happy to see that the California chapter of the ACLU has taken a stand against protecting the “free speech†of hate groups. But with or without marching permits, it is clear that public displays of hatred are a growing trend in the United States. And as much as I don’t want to give these groups more attention, it is also clear that simply ignoring them is not going to make them go away. So what do we do?
Should I Go to That Neo-Nazi Rally to Fight Back?
STEPHANIE VAN HOOK and MICHAEL NAGLER – When we hear that the Neo-Nazi movement is coming to our town, most of us naturally feel called—or pushed– to some kind of action. But not every action is going to be effective, especially if we are walking into a situation where the level of dehumanization is extreme—where people are prepared to harm or kill others. How then can we draw from the power of nonviolence in a situation of escalating violence?
What Did MLK Mean by “Love”?
JOSE-ANTONIO OROSCO – As someone who regularly teaches about the political philosophy of Martin Luther King, Jr., I often spend time discussing with students the ways in which King’s ideas are taken out of context and turned into sound bites in order to support positions he would not himself have taken.
Amid the Blaring Headlines, Routine Reports of Hate-Fueled Violence
JOE SEXTON – Documenting Hate’s catalogue of incidents captures the seeming ordinariness of many of them.
Chemical Industry’s Years of Deadly Malfeasance Revealed in “Poison Papers”
SHARON LERNER – For decades, some of the dirtiest, darkest secrets of the chemical industry have been kept in Carol Van Strum’s barn. Creaky, damp, and prowled by the occasional black bear, the listing, 80-year-old structure in rural Oregon housed more than 100,000 pages of documents obtained through legal discovery in lawsuits against Dow, Monsanto, the Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Forest Service, the Air Force, and pulp and paper companies, among others. As of today, those documents and others that have been collected by environmental activists will be publicly available through a project called the Poison Papers.
To Protect Our Planet and Revitalize Our Economy, We Need a Climate Conservation Corps
DAVID BAAKE – Although programs like the Clean Power Plan would create hundreds of thousands of jobs, they are not framed as job-creating measures, and are not understood by the public as such. In fact, many people incorrectly assume that regulations lead to reduced employment. The Climate Conservation Corps avoids this pitfall by emphasizing both environmental and employment benefits.
How Congress Is Cementing Trump’s Anti-Climate Orders into Law
MARIANNE LAVELLE – These efforts are mostly flying under the radar, but they could short-circuit lawsuits and make it harder to restore environmental protections.
‘Fossil Fuels are Dead,’ Says CSX Railroad Chief: No More New Trains for Coal, Ever
JOHN VOELCKER – The industrial revolution that began around 1750 was powered in large part by coal, and the carbon-rich fuel had 200 good years after that. By the middle of the last century, however, serious studies had begun of its deleterious effects on human health—and that was before the climate-change impact of human emissions of carbon dioxide became known. Transportation will slowly electrify over the coming decades, while coal’s share of electric power generation will wane worldwide.
Why and How to Bring Environmental and Peace Movements Together
DAVID SWANSON – If war were moral, legal, defensive, beneficial to the spread of freedom, and inexpensive, we would be obliged to make abolishing it our top priority solely because of the destruction that war and preparations for war do as the leading polluters of our natural environment.
The Time for Outlawing Nukes is NOW. Get US on Board.
TOM H. HASTINGS – We have been living with nuclear weapons for 72 years, so that must make them safe and sustainable, right? Wrong.
The Ethics and Politics of Nuclear Waste are Being Tested in Southern California
JAMES HEDDLE – In the US, as more and more energy reactors are being shut down and are entering the decommissioning process, the overriding question is becoming unavoidable at reactor communities across the country: What do we do with all these decades of tons of accumulated radwaste now being stored on-site? Each canister contains a Chernobyl’s-worth of cesium; each cooling pool, hundreds more.
Working in Concert: Remedy for Flawed Democracy
ROBERT J. GOULD – Last year, the Economist Intelligence Unit dropped its score for the U.S. from 8.05 to 7.98 (Above 8 is a full democracy; below 8 is a flawed democracy). Not much of a change, and according to the report, no fault of the current President, as the rating has been “teetering on the brink of becoming a flawed democracy for several years.†Like other flawed democracies (France, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, and India), we have “weak governance, an underdeveloped political culture, and low levels of political participation, according to the EIU.â€
Ohio’s War On Wind Power Is Costing It Billions Of Dollars & Thousands Of Jobs
HARVEY WASSERMAN – In the corporate war against renewable energy, a single Ohio regulation stands out. It is a simple clause slipped into the state budget without open discussion, floor debate, or public hearings. The restriction is costing Ohio billions of dollars and thousands of jobs.
C’mon Millennials, Woodstock is Over and Our Seniors Deserve a Break
CHLOE MEYERE – On Jan. 21, I took a walk down Pennsylvania Avenue with a million like-minded ‘friends.’ I swore it was the beginning of an epic uprising, the first one where millennials could be the leaders. I was so certain that my generation would be responsible for the president’s downfall that I wrote about it. It even landed me a few death threats, kindly mailed to my office. But I didn’t care. I was ready to fight the good fight.
In Our America: Community Building 101
ALI KING – As the night of Tuesday, November 8, began to go downhill, like many Americans, I felt stunned and sickened. I hadn’t actually allowed myself to imagine things going the way they did and the unthinkable had happened. Just a few months earlier, everyone was scoffing at the idea of Trump becoming the president and, inexplicably, he had just won. When I woke up from my restless sleep the next morning, I could barely function. Over the next two days, I went through the usual stages of grief – disbelief, anger, sadness, but with so much on the line, I just couldn’t get myself to the acceptance stage. I knew sitting around and watching things crumble was not an option.
Is It Time to Restructure US CEO Compensation?
LAWRENCE WITTNER – An awful lot of Americans are skeptical about the value of their nation’s corporate executives. As a 2016 nationwide survey reveals, 74 percent of Americans believe that top corporate executives are overpaid. This public dismay with CEO compensation exists despite the fact that Americans drastically underestimate what top corporate executives are paid every year. In fact, the survey found that CEO compensation at Fortune 500 companies was approximately 10 times what the typical American thought it was.
The U.S. State of War – July 2017
NICHOLAS J.S. DAVIES – This is the state of war in the United States in July 2017.
KAICIID, United Nations Join Forces to Prevent Incitement to Violence
PETER KAISER – The International Dialogue Centre (KAICIID) Secretary General Faisal Bin Muaammar represented the Centre at the launch of the first ever action plan specifically designed to enable religious leaders to prevent and counter incitement to violence.
Businesses Urge Interior Dept. to Preserve Public Lands
ERIC TEGETHOFF – Public lands provide a major economic boost to local communities in Oregon. That’s the view of groups that support the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument being kept as it is, as the U.S. Interior Department reviews its status.
An Open Letter To Rep. Barbara Lee: ‘Think Through The Implications Of Our Actions’
NORMAN SOLOMON – More than a decade and a half ago, your eloquent words and courageous vote set a high bar as you stood up against a war frenzy on the House floor. Three days after 9/11, you implemented the kind of brave wisdom that we desperately need in a world beset by the massive violence of warfare and the overarching dangers of nuclear holocaust. Since then, like many other people opposed to perpetual war, I’ve deeply appreciated your leadership in advocating for diplomacy instead of reckless confrontation in international relations. Year after year, following your lone vote against a blank check for war on Sept. 14, 2001, you’ve been a steadfast voice for the necessity of diplomatic initiatives. Until now.
Trump Is Missing an Opportunity in Cuba
MEL GURTOV – President Obama’s engagement with Cuba was one of his administration’s success stories. The policy shift was based on the entirely realistic as well as humanitarian assessment that permanent estrangement deepens enmity, isolates two peoples and separates families, reduces opportunities for improvement in the quality of life in Cuba, inhibits the two-way flow of information, and prevents cooperation on common problems. But the Trump administration, pressed by Senators Marco Rubio and Robert Menendez, is still fighting the Cold War, as evidenced by Trump’s disengagement order the week of June 20.
China Firmly Opposes U.S. Arms Sale to Taiwan
MU XUEQUAN – China firmly opposes the U.S. arms sale to Taiwan and urges the United States to immediately revoke its decision, the spokesperson of the Chinese Embassy here said Friday, June 30