“These activists have spent varying amount of time in jail for having entered a major nuclear facility to nonviolently ‘symbolically disarm’ the massive nuclear arsenal stationed there…’But decisions of the judge have largely shut the door to the jury hearing anything about such defenses of ‘justification’ or ‘necessity.’ On Friday, Judge Lisa Godbey Wood of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Georgia prohibited a whole series of defenses — including the testimony of international lawyer Francis Boyle of the University of Illinois, on the illegality of U.S. nuclear policy — writing that while the defendants’ ‘subjective beliefs…

Read more »

“When financial actors like Harvard and TIAA invest in vast tracts of land in fragile ecosystem like Brazil’s Cerrado, they are promoting exactly the kind of agro-industrial development and corporate land concentration we need to move away from in the era of ecological collapse and climate apartheid. That their landholdings appear to be literally on fire should be a wake-up call to these firms and their beneficiaries that the business model they promote is the farthest thing from sustainable or responsible.”

Read more »

“We’ve identified more than $300 billion in annual military savings alone that we could better invest in priorities like Medicare for All, working with the national grassroots movement, Poor People’s Campaign…Remaking our military as a truly defense-based institution, rather than a war machine and A.T.M. for private contractors, will require major changes. It’s a project that can’t happen overnight, and it will need serious planning and wiser uses of some of our $50 billion surplus to ensure both U.S. security and that people leaving military service find new jobs in our economy. That’s no excuse for continuing to spend hundreds of billions…

Read more »

“Nuclear weapons have been called the taproot in our civilization. They contribute to the cheapening of life and inform the other forms of violence. [What is new is that] a deep connection is coming to the surface, between climate change and nuclear weapons. What’s of particular interest to me in this [the Kings Bay action] is that the willingness to use nuclear weapons is of a piece with a general willingness to rape the earth by digging for oil when we know we’re killing ourselves in the process. … When we talk about school shootings, we don’t talk about the…

Read more »

“In fact, many of these reforms have already proven to weaken the capacity of programs to prepare teachers for the diversity and equity challenges in our schools and communities. These problematic trends exemplify what’s happening in the larger realm of K-12 schools, where blame-and-shame detracts from the deeper systemic injustices that lie at the root of the problem. Reforms, whether in teacher education or education in general, must address systemic injustices head on.”

Read more »

Former Vice President Joe Biden claimed at the Tuesday night debate: “And with regard to regime change in Syria, that has not been the policy we change the regime. It has been to make sure that the regime did not wipe out hundreds of thousands of innocent people between there and the Iraqi border.” …”Joe Biden should remember that he, President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton all called for the removal of Assad from presidency of Syria. If that isn’t regime change, what is?”

Read more »

Today, Daniel Ellsberg, who exposed the Pentagon Papers, said in a statement to accuracy.org: “I strongly endorse the action of civil resistance by the Kings Bay Plowshares 7 defendants who are now on trial for having ‘nonviolently and symbolically disarmed the Trident nuclear submarine base at Kings Bay, Georgia.’ …”I believe that omnicide, the end of civilization and most of humanity, will not be averted without a moral transformation and political mobilization that requires actions of civil disobedience — including that of the Kings Bay Plowshares 7– to inspire.”

Read more »

“The Syrian Kurds trusted the U.S. and are paying for it, as Iraq’s Kurds did in 1975 and 1991. They kept their lines open to Assad all along, so the new alliance was their only option. It remains to be seen whether Syria’s weaker, albeit battle experienced, army is a match for Turkey’s much larger armed forces with their NATO weapons and Russian air defense. Russia may broker some arrangement to turn over large areas to Assad while letting Erdogan hang onto his border corridor.”

Read more »

On April 4, 2018 — exactly 50 years after the assassination of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. — seven Plowshare activists entered a major U.S. nuclear submarine base to nonviolently and symbolically disarm nuclear weapons…When they did the action, the activists held up signs: “The Ultimate Logic of Trident is Omnicide” and “Nuclear Weapons: Illegal / Immoral.” McAlister explained of the Trident submarines at the base, with all the warheads atop each of their missiles: “If they were ever launched, it is the end of life on earth. I don’t think we have the right to end life on earth.…

Read more »

“The tax burden of the wealthy — what they pay out in federal, state, and local taxes relative to their income — has plummeted over the last seventy years. In 1950 the wealthiest 400 families paid out 70 percent of their income in taxes, 47 percent in 1980, and just 23 percent in 2018…Nor has systematically slashing the tax burden of the super rich delivered its promised faster economic growth. Economic growth rates slowed from a rate of 4 percent a year during the 1960s, to 3 percent a year during the 1980s, and then stagnated after the 1990s.”

Read more »