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Sign this petition to The City Council of Charlottesville, Virginia:
Divest all public money from weapons companies, major war profiteers, and fossil fuel companies.
Sign Here.

The City of Charlottesville has approximately $3 million invested in fossil fuel companies ($1.4 m in energy company bonds, plus approximately $1.6 m through funds invested in by Charlottesville’s retirement fund). It may have about the same in weapons companies, as it has $1.1 m directly invested in four “aerospace and defense” companies: Boeing, Heico, Honeywell, and Moog. Boeing and Honeywell are two of the biggest war profiteers including through the wars of Saudi Arabia that even the U.S. Congress is now turning against.

Yes, is the unfortunate answer to the obvious question: The whole time that Charlottesville has discussed possibly considering finding the nerve to take down a couple of its many offensive statues, has it been investing public dollars in the mass killing of dark skinned people and the general destruction of a habitable planet?

For further information:  berniedelegates@rootsaction.org

December 13, 2018

Former Sanders Delegates Vote Overwhelmingly

To Relaunch Bernie Delegates Network for 2019

Former Bernie Sanders delegates to the 2016 Democratic National Convention have voted to reconstitute the independent Bernie Delegates Network.

The vote was 408 “yes” to 23 “no” in response to this question: “Do you favor a relaunch of the independent Bernie Delegates Network in 2019?”

Organizers called the vote “a landslide” and said they will proceed with relaunching the nationwide network in early January.

The election was conducted online over a five-day period ending December 11. Former delegates were given a unique code that could only be used to vote once.

BANGKOK, Thailand -- Tibet's government-in-exile cheered the U.S.
Senate's passage of an act demanding U.S. diplomats, journalists and
other Americans be allowed to freely visit Tibet, but Beijing warned
President Trump if he signs it into law, "China-U.S. ties and
cooperation in major areas" could suffer retaliation.

The Reciprocal Access To Tibet Act of 2018, now awaiting President
Trump's signature, includes preventing Chinese officials receiving
U.S. visas if they are involved in blocking Americans from Tibet.

"The Act interferes in China's domestic affairs with reckless
disregard for facts, and goes against the basic norms of international
relations," said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang.

"We urge the U.S. administrative bodies to take immediate measures to
stop it being signed into law, so as to avoid impairing China-U.S.
ties and cooperation in major areas," Mr. Lu said in Beijing on
December 14.

China's retaliation may include denying some U.S. officials from
receiving visas to China, reported Beijing's Global Times.

“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We're no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It is simply too painful to acknowledge -- even to ourselves -- that we've been fooled.” -- Carl Sagan,"The Fine Art of Baloney Detection" (February 1, 1987)

This morning, just as I was about to start writing my weekly Duty to Warn column, I glanced through the Duluth News-Tribune and couldn’t help but notice a full-page ad on page A3. The ad was titled “Rallying to Address Opioid Addiction”. The color-printed ad likely cost well over a thousand dollars and was paid for by an entity that I had never heard of before called “Rx ALI Minnesota” (Rx Abuse Leadership Initiative). The group was apparently a fresh new “alliance” of “concerned” corporate entities that were suddenly interested in the opioid crisis that is affecting all portions of America.

Jami Brandli’s Sisters Three has an intriguing, promising premise that is similar to Amy Heckerling’s 1995 Clueless starring Alicia Silverstone and 2011’s From Prada to Nada, which updated and adapted to contemporary milieus Jane Austen’s 19th century novels, respectively, 1816’s Emma and 1811’s Sense and Sensibility. In Sisters Three Brandli locates the real life Brontë siblings, who wrote later in the 19th century than Austen did, in the 21st century.

Adapting the Brontës to the social media era is an inspired idea, and Brandli captures the artsy, antsy, angsty anguish that reportedly troubled the three sisters - and their brother, Branwell, who is a palpable offstage presence in this clever production. The playwright extrapolates from what is known of the siblings’ real lives in her modern day-set 90 minute or so one-acter that takes place on a college campus, although it was not clear to me where - but probably closer to New York than Yorkshire.

Like Nixon in the last days of Watergate, Trumputin has begun to twist in the wind.

Let’s count some ways:

• The mighty GOP stone wall is starting to crack.

• Its only black senator, Tim Scott of South Carolina, helped kill a major Trump court nomination and says he’ll oppose any more avowed racists, pretty much wiping out Donald’s gene pool.

• As Trumputin and the Saudis feast on Jamal Khashoggi, even some Republicans have been sickened by this brazen mafia hit on an established American journalist.

• Enough GOP senators voted to derail funding for the Trumputin/Saudi holocaust in Yemen … a vote that may mark a major turn against the global empire (with special thanks to CodePink!).

• That vote shades the assumption that not enough Republican senators could ever vote to convict in an impeachment trial.

New billboards are going up around the United States and elsewhere opposing war. Some are not going up because the message is deemed unacceptable. Many more are being planned.

This ad at right is going up in various sizes and dimensions around Lansing, Michigan, thanks to the Peace Education Center. We’ll post the details on the billboards pagewhen we have em.

The billboard below is going up for the month of January in Albany, NY — specifically on Erie Blvd. 1,000 ft north of Nott St., thanks to Upper Hudson Peace Action:

This one below is enlightening the good people of Pittsburgh, thanks to WILPF Pittsburgh:

Bryant Welch’s new edition of his book, State of Confusion: Political Manipulation and the Assault on the American Mind, purports to diagnose the mental illness that produces support for and tolerance of Donald Trump in particular, and the Republican Party in general. To some extent it does so, although it’s mostly very familiar stuff, partly excusable because the first edition came out a decade ago. Welch, by the way, deserves credit for opposing participation in torture by the American Psychological Association.

What I find most illuminating in the book is the first-person account of an apparent sufferer of PHSD (Post Hillary Stress Disorder). I imagine that someone unfamiliar with the notion that Fox News lies and that political campaigns exploit bigotry and fears, or someone eager to hear reassuring accounts of how all evil originates among Republicans, would have a very different reaction to the book. My reaction is sympathy for the apparent trauma inflicted on apparently well-off educated people by Hillary Clinton’s defeat, combined with outrage at the hypocrisies and in particular the militarism of Democratic partisanship.

Belgium has joined the list of countries that are rebelling against their elected leadership. Over the weekend the Belgian government fell over Prime Minister Charles Michel’s trip to Morocco to sign the United Nations Migration Agreement. The agreement made no distinction between legal and illegal migrants and regarded immigration as a positive phenomenon. The Belgian people apparently did not agree.