Global
Report from Liberation News Service: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberation_News_Service
The Indigenous People's March comes to Washington today, and the snow-clad streets of the citadel of the American Empire are going Native.
It might be mistaken for any other day. The slushy sidewalks are half full of sleepy eyed company men and Trump Administration apparatchiks, sliding to and fro. Those, that is, who are still showing up for their jobs.
And then, the sound of drums in the distance, the steady beat of moccasined feet approaching. They're about to do a stomp dance that's gonna rock this country coast to coast.
We’re all children of Abraham: Christians, Muslims, Jews. In my office, I keep a Bible open on my desk to remind me of God and His Word, and The Truth.
And it’s the truth, lower-case “t,” that I’m here to talk about today. It is a truth that isn’t often spoken in this part of the world, but because I’m a military man by training, I’ll be very blunt and direct today: America is a force for good in the Middle East.
We need to acknowledge that truth, because if we don’t, we make bad choices – now and in the future. [emphasis added]
– US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, January 10, 2019
It is easy to identify the ongoing and endless violence being inflicted on life on Earth. This ranges from the vast multiplicity of assaults inflicted on our children and the biosphere to the endless wars and other military violence as well as the grotesque exploitation of many peoples living in Africa, Asia and Central/South America. But for a (very incomplete) list of 40 points see ‘Reflections on 2018, Forecasting 2019’.
However, despite the obvious fact that it is human beings who are inflicting all of this violence, it is virtually impossible to get people to pay attention to this simple and incontrovertible fact and to ask why, precisely, are human beings behaving in such violent and destructive ways? And can we effectively address this cause?
BANGKOK, Thailand -- A jailed Belarusian "huntress girl" and her
Russian lover, who together claimed to have incriminating audio of
Donald Trump's former campaign manager Paul Manafort colluding with
Russians about America's election, were found guilty January 15 of sex
crimes and will be deported.
After the couple's arrest in February 2018 near Bangkok, Anastasia
Vashukevich -- who calls herself Nastya Rybka -- said she and her
"master" Alexander Kirillov secretly recorded the scandalous audio
when she was Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska's "mistress" during
2016 and 2017.
Thai authorities jailed the couple for conducting a week-long seminar
offering sleazy seduction techniques to foreign men and women who paid
$700 each.
After being busted Pattaya, Thailand's infamously hedonistic beach
resort, Ms. Vashukevich posted a video online while inside a prison
vehicle, pleading with "friends, American press" for help.
She claimed the couple secretly made recordings about "Manafort and
Trump and all that buzz around the U.S. elections."
I hold this truth to be self-evident: That all plays are NOT created equal. I’ve reviewed around 10 shows at La Mirada Theatre for the Performing Arts and its revival of the 1969 Tony Award-winning Broadway musical 1776 is probably the best play I’ve ever seen there. Not only owing to pleasurable songs composed by Sherman Edwards (accompanied at the La Mirada by a live eight piece orchestra conducted by Jeff Rizzo), along with enjoyable acting, but because it is a rarity from the Great White Way: A historical, fact-based musical explicitly about U.S. politics, insurrection and philosophy.
– Order of the Judicial Council of the US Tenth Circuit, December 18, 2018
hat is the sound that eight federal judges make when they know full well they’re doing something rotten but can’t bring themselves to defend the integrity of their own judicial system.
Donald Trump’s campaign and presidency have been marked by extreme controversy, divisiveness, and partisan polarization. Many contend America hasn’t been this divided since the Civil War. Shortly after 2016’s election, comedian Cecily Strong played CNN’s chief political analyst Gloria Borger in an SNL skit, repeatedly complaining Trump “is not normal.”
In fact, one of the rare things an overwhelming majority of Americans can agree on nowadays is that Trump and his reign are outside of the presidential norm. Whether you voted for him or not, are a Republican, Democrat, or independent, love him, hate him, or are neutral, there is general consensus among the electorate, media and punditocracy that Trump and his governing style are different from anything we’ve seen before.
War is the most underrated danger, crisis, and moral outrage to be dealt with.
Trump is the most antiwar president the United States has seen in decades.
As a dedicated peace activist, I believe Trump needs to be removed from office immediately.
How can this be so?
First, becoming a relatively antiwar U.S. president is an extremely low bar to clear. Trump has increased weapons sales, demanded that NATO members increase weapons spending, increased U.S. military spending, increased base construction, increased drone murders, increased nuclear weapons construction, threatened nuclear weapons use, fueled hostility with Iran and China and (with a big push from Democrats) with Russia, armed Ukraine, sabotaged longstanding disarmament treaties, exacerbated the worst humanitarian crisis in Yemen, surrounded himself with hardcore warmongers, celebrated warrior culture, built up the racism and xenophobia and blind subservience that can make wars easier to start, bombed nine nations, not actually ended any wars anywhere, and scared the living hell out of half the globe with his unpredictability.
Following is my response to an average American, of average intelligence and gullibility, who is also a brain-washed “true believer” in Big Pharma’s propagandistic “Big Lie” (that the pharmaceutical/vaccine industry’s obvious over-vaccination agenda is safe or even effective in preventing so-called childhood “vaccine-preventable infectious diseases”. Below is an email message that I received awhile ago - and my response to it (October 2018):
Hi Gary,
As for the alarmist anti vaccination rhetoric expressed in this and other emails you've sent warning people of the dangers of vaccinations of seemingly all types, I wonder how you discount the success of the vaccines that reduced so many formerly fatal childhood diseases and others like polio.
People who've accepted "information" such as is expressed here have gotten these preventable diseases because they've refused vaccinations for their children. The more people who refuse vaccinations the more likely they are to contract the formerly preventable diseases and bring back the threat of another wider spread problem.