Democracy, International, peace January 29, 2019

Why the Black Alliance for Peace Opposes U.S. Intervention in Venezuela

The Black Alliance for Peace January 26, 2019 We, the members of the Black Alliance for Peace, uphold our political stance in the face of aggressions waged by the United States. Two of BAP’s core principles are an unwavering commitment to self-determination for peoples and nations alike and opposition to imperialism in all its varied and brutal forms. Therefore, unlike so many who are confused about Venezuela, we say without equivocation that we oppose the illegal and immoral attempts by the United States and their Organization of American States (OAS) allies to interfere in the internal affairs of Venezuela. No…

Democratic Party, Environment, military budget, Nuclear Power, political corruption, Social Justice January 9, 2019

The New Congress Needs to Create a Green Planet at Peace

Common Dreams By Medea Benjamin, Alice Slater January 8, 2019 The time has come for a New Peace Deal that repudiates endless war and the threat of nuclear war which, along with catastrophic climate change, poses an existential threat to our planet A deafening chorus of negative grumbling from the left, right, and center of the US political spectrum in response to Trump’s decision to remove US troops from Syria and halve their numbers in Afghanistan appears to have slowed down his attempt to bring our forces home. However, in this new year, demilitarizing US foreign policy should be among…

Climate Change, Democracy, Donald Trump December 31, 2018

End of the year observations

Prosperity for Rhode Island By Greg Gerritt December 27, 2018 It would be very easy to be depressed about the state of the world as we move from 2018 to 2019 with racism, authoritarianism, growing inequality, an increase in refugees from war and climate change, rising carbon emissions, ever faster deforestation, empty seas, loss of biodiversity, more nuclear weapons in the pipeline, the trampling of communities in pursuit of profit, democracy in retreat, and the hottest La Nina year in history, but it has to be balanced with the UN laughing at Trump, a repudiation in the mid term elections,…

Gun Ownership December 29, 2018

On Gun Ownership

Full disclosure up front: I own guns, some inherited, a couple purchased. I shoot, clean, and oil each of them annually. We have a violence problem in the United States, always have had. As has been pointed out above, it has a great deal to do with the country having been built on the violent genocide of indigenous people and the equally violent enslavement of a captive people. Our history with guns can never be separated from that history. Gun ownership today is often still bound up with the ethos of racist violence. I grew up effectively without guns, but…

National Politics, political corruption December 7, 2018

If There’s A Hell Below, That’s Where He’ll Go

By Bruce Dixon December 7, 2018 George Herbert Walker Bush was born in 1924, the son of Prescott Sheldon Bush, a banker and politician, senator from Connecticut from 1952 to 1963. Prescott Bush had been a World War 1 army officer, a Yale grad and a Skull and Bonesman. His father in law George Herbert Walker hooked him up with Brown Brothers Harriman, the Goldman Sachs of that day which still manages trillions of dollars worth of investor assets, where Prescott Bush became a partner in 1931. Soon after he was a founding and managing director at UBC, the Union…