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Facing Decades in Prison, Activists of Conscience Confront “Culture of Death”
“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…
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* Chicago Strike * Education “Reforms”
“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.”
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Biden’s Syria Regime Change Lie
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?”
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Ellsberg: Plowshares Action Justified to Prevent Omnicide
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.”
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Syria vs Erdogan?
“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.”
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The Coming Trial: Activists Facing Decades in Prison for Turning Weapons into Plowshares
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.…
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Taxes on Rich Plummet, Economic Growth Slows and More Are Left Behind
“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.”
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U.S. Allowing Turkish Assault on Kurds in Syria: Escalating Chaos and Helping ISIS?
“One word describes President Trump’s decision to withdraw from Syria. Perhaps he loves and thrives on chaos, which will be its upshot.[Turkish leader Recep] Erdogan, alas, watched Islamic State grow into a threat to the Middle East and the world. Kurds and their Arab allies waged an existential war to rid the world of this menace. Instead of thanking the Kurds and their allies, we are now going to witness their slaughter in the hands of the Turkish army. It is a disaster in the making with ramifications for the world.”
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Behind Ecuador’s State of Emergency
“In March, Ecuador signed an agreement to borrow $4.2 billion from the IMF over three years, provided that the government would adhere to a certain economic program spelled out in the arrangement. In the words of Christine Lagarde — then the IMF chief — this was ‘a comprehensive reform program aimed at modernizing the economy and paving the way for strong, sustained, and equitable growth.’ But is it? The program calls for an enormous tightening of the country’s national budget — about 6 percent of GDP over the next three years. (For comparison, imagine tightening the U.S. federal budget by…
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Why Are Some Real Whistleblowers Derided? The Case of MoveOn and “Whistleblower Aid”
“After many years of carefully refusing to launch a single campaign in support of brave whistleblowers who faced vicious prosecution during the Obama administration — including Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning, NSA whistleblowers Thomas Drake and Edward Snowden, and CIA whistleblowers John Kiriakou and Jeffrey Sterling — MoveOn.org has just cherrypicked a whistleblowing hero it can support…The organization that MoveOn just teamed up with — Whistleblower Aid — explicitly does not support people like Snowden, Drake, Kiriakou, Sterling, and Manning, or the more recent whistleblower Reality Winner. The founding legal partner at Whistleblower Aid, Mark Zaid, has maintained a vehement position…
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“With a tiny staff, it has managed to place on the air and in newspapers, points of view otherwise excluded from the national debate.”
Howard Zinn