Global
“From Ia Drang to Khe Sanh, from Hue to Saigon and countless villages in between, they pushed through jungles and rice paddies, heat and monsoon, fighting heroically to protect the ideals we hold dear as Americans. Through more than a decade of combat, over air, land, and sea, these proud Americans upheld the highest traditions of our Armed Forces.”
OK, I get it. Soldiers suffer, soldiers die in the wars we wage, and the commander in chief has to, occasionally, toss clichés on their graves.
The words are those of Barack Obama, five-plus years ago, issuing a Memorial Day proclamation establishing a 13-year commemoration of the Vietnam War, for which, apparently, about $65 million was appropriated.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
September 21, 2017
Contact:
Mari Margil
Director, CELDF’s International Center for the Rights of Nature
503-381-1755
mmargil@celdf.org
Mercersburg, Pennsylvania: The Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF)is serving as a legal adviser for the first-in-the-nation lawsuit in which a river is seeking recognition of its legal rights.
To be filed next week in federal district court in Colorado, the lawsuit Colorado River v. State of Colorado seeks a ruling that the Colorado River, and its ecosystem, possess certain rights, including the right to exist, flourish, evolve, regenerate, and restoration.
We have suffered brutal direct hits. Over half of the state of Florida is without power, in the dark. It is too soon to know what the losses are. Houston, America’s fourth largest city, suffered the most extreme rain event in U.S. history. Casualties are mounting; damages are estimated at a staggering $125 billion.
Ash from wildfires in the West is blanketing Seattle; every county in Washington is under state of an emergency. The smoke is felt in the air all the way to the East Coast. Last year was the hottest on record, exceeding the record set the year before that which exceeded the record set the year before that.
Extreme weather is becoming more frequent and more extreme. For climate scientists, this is predictable and predicted. As the Earth warms, the ice caps melt, the oceans grow warmer; more moisture is absorbed in the clouds, the rains become worse and the severe storms more severe.
Published below is the statement from Cho Young-sam, the South Korean citizen who self-immolated himself yesterday.
President Moon Jae-In is President of South Korea.
CAT CAT, Vietnam -- Northern Vietnam's minority Hmong tribe here in
Cat Cat village is escaping poverty and isolation by cleverly
marketing their lush mountains and waterfalls, rustic village
lifestyle, vivid traditional weaving and other tourist-friendly
attractions.
Their tribal tourism venture near the rugged mountainous border
with China is one of the newest and most successful attempts in
Vietnam to profit from a nationwide tourism boom.
Cat Cat village's name is said to be a mispronunciation of a former
French colonial description of the location's "cascade" waterfalls.
In planning an upcoming conference aimed at challenging the institution of war, to be held at American University September 22-24, I can’t help but be drawn to the speech a U.S.
Nobody, not racist warmakers, not imaginary non-racist warmakers, not founding fathers, not radical protesters should be made into a deity, larger than life, in marble or bronze, on horseback or otherwise. Nobody is that flawless, and nobody’s story so withstands the test of time. We need human-sized statues and memorials of whole movements.
The U.S. Constitution, along with the Declaration of Independence, has a whole marble building dedicated to its worship: the National Archives in D.C., plus the Constitution Center in Philadelphia. It’s generally taught in U.S. schools as something in the past, not something to be improved upon — hardly even to be questioned.
A flotilla was organized by World Beyond War and The Backbone Campaign in front of the Pentagon on Sunday, September 17, 2017.
The U.S. military is responsible for 69% of environmental disaster Superfund sites in the United States. It's the biggest consumer of petroleum around, consuming more than most entire nations. It poisons large areas of the globe with white phosphorus, napalm, depleted uranium, and much more. It's the third biggest polluter of U.S. waterways. It also swallows up over 50% of federal discretionary spending every year, a fraction of which could dramatically transition the United States to sustainable practices.
We need to bring the peace and environment movements together. Here's a chance.
Go to WorldBeyondWar.org and reserve a spot at the #NoWar2017 conference happening Friday, September 22nd to Sunday the 24th at American University.
Read full agenda at the website. Pay only what you are able. Use the rides & lodging board.
DEMOCRACY (SIC) Theater Review
The Democracy Zone: Theater of the People, By the People, For the People
By Ed Rampell
Don Williams’ com-dram democracy (sic) opens with a movie-like montage, accompanied by a throbbing recorded rock soundtrack and flashing lights designed by the aptly name RAY Jones. (Look closely and you’ll glimpse a red flag with a hammer and sickle in the background.) The rest of this world premiere production presented by the Harold Clurman Laboratory Theater Company at the Art of Acting Studio Los Angeles is also quite cinematic, a fast moving, often comic pastiche with seven filmic vignettes commenting on America’s contemporary political scene (and what a scene the players make!).
Riffing on TV’s famous Twilight Zone anthology supernatural series that debuted on the tube in 1959, hosted and co-written by Rod Serling, Alex Best plays an ersatz Serling who welcomes spectators to a “dimension of imagination” called “the Democracy Zone” - a demented domain that I must say is truly “demo-crazy.”